I wouldn't exactly call 300 players on a non optimised networking protocol (with underlying TCP) with full server-sided computing a 'small multi player game'.

In your position, I'd re-evaluate the need for a dedicated server and consider a virtual private server instead. You're likely to get away with far less expanses on a comparable result. In which case, ATP Host would seem like a viable alternative.

Writing a game that already lacks with a single player on any computer you run it is rather simple. Which is likely why it does happen this often ;)

So, if ATP Host isn't a valid solution for you, I fear you'd have to provide some sort of specifications on what you want.

2DExtremeProductions wrote:

Using BYOND as an example, id like to be able to have 100's of clients, lets say 300, playing an Action/RPG type game with no lag.

This is not possible, not even on a LAN, with BYOND.

This has almost nothing to do with hosting and everything to do with BYOND, its networking protocol, people writing games that don't scale well, etc.

Schnitzelnagler wrote:

Which is why you'd need to provide the specifications I asked for.

By specifications, what do you mean exacly?

~David

Well, generally when looking to rent a server, you'd consider location, carriers, peers, bandwidth, transfer, RAM, CPU allocation, disc I/O and space, virtualisation, operating system, access restrictions, price and service. So these should suffice for now.

2DExtremeProductions wrote:

Alathon wrote:

This has almost nothing to do with hosting and everything to do with BYOND, its networking protocol, people writing games that don't scale well, etc.

How do you go about resolving/improving this?

You don't. Any BYOND game, almost irrespective of what the programmer has done, will show signs of lag with a certain amount of players. From what you're saying, that suggests it begins happening around the 30-40 person mark.

You can certainly do things wrong and make it worse, but you can't make it any better. Even a game with a map and just players will lag visibly with 30-50 players around. The system simply isn't built to handle it.

I should mention that when I said 'fault of BYOND', I mean this in the sense that lagless FPS games and Action games simply aren't BYONDs forte. And by lagless I literally mean lagless, not 'jagged movement here and there'. YMMV

Airjoe wrote:

As the official ATP Host dude-you-need-to-speak-to, I'm just going to step in here for a second and say that if a game is only handling 35-45 players, it is almost certain fault of the game.

And how would I evade this fault?

We've had users hit 120+ players on games like REO2

Custom 'package'? Or one of the ones you openly offer? May you give that information?

I'm not sure what kind of game you're making

Design stage. But it can be classified as Action/RPG.

or what your level of programming experience is

Just beggining. Time is an issue at the moment.

but do know that the problem most likely being referred to by 'this customer' is shoddy game making, not a poor server.

I am currently(when I can) reading all the acticles I can find on the dev site. Can you give a quickie on what ''shoddy game making'' is using BYOND as your dev platform?


~David

2DExtremeProductions wrote:

And how would I evade this fault?

By programming your game to be efficient and robuts. Most developers on BYOND don't understand the fundamentals of computer programming. You might start looking into Big O, for example. Additionally, this book on Algorithms is excellent, but I'd be willing to be less than one percent of all BYOND developers can comprehend whats going on. This isn't meant to be insulting, of course; it's simply that BYOND is seen as an "easy" developing platform, and while it's true you can make a game very quickly, the likelihood of that game being able to perform well is not very great in this community. That said, you don't need to be a computer science genius to make a game that can support many players, but BYOND is not the fastest platform to begin with and making mistakes like excessive nested loops, poor understanding of recursion versus iteration, lack of properly designed data structures, and so on will be detrimental to a game- this is true in any language, and especially true for BYOND.

We've had users hit 120+ players on games like REO2

Custom 'package'? Or one of the ones you openly offer? May you give that information?

This is our highest standard package, the Phi package.

Just beggining. Time is an issue at the moment.

Again, not to be condescending or insulting, but it is quite likely your first few ventures will not scale well. If you're just entering the world of programming- and we're glad you are- there's a lot of knowledge to be attained. BYOND has some great tutorials, but they tend to be geared towards BYOND itself and the DM language, not to programming concepts.

I am currently(when I can) reading all the acticles I can find on the dev site. Can you give a quickie on what ''shoddy game making'' is using BYOND as your dev platform?

What I mean is that a good portion of BYOND games are made by new developers who don't understand some of the basic concepts outlined above. Furthermore, many BYOND games are based upon other BYOND games' source, whether allowed or stolen, and this leads to less learning and poorer performance. To put it in shoddy automotive terms, imagine you had a car that only got ten miles per gallon: you might be able to tweak the engi and the fuel intake and whatever else, but you're going to have a hard time increasing the efficiency of the vehicle. Sometimes it's better to start over and build a new car. By the same token, if you have no clue how to build a car, you're not going to end up with a reliable vehicle, are you?

To further explain, I'll link you to this comment thread which shows how the creator of the "best game on BYOND" is a really terrible programmer.

Stephen001 wrote:

I feel you're perhaps under-quoting a little there, Alathon.

I don't think I am; lagfree means lagfree. If we go by the BYOND 'standard' for what people consider lagfree, then its everything better than unplayable. But thats really not the meaning at all.

If its not running at 10FPS with smoothe movement and immediate response to interface actions, its lagging. If characters around you are 'skipping' or jumping, or moving in chunks, then its lagging.

If you just want something that runs 'okay', then yes, its entirely possible. Rereading the OP post, it strikes me that the OP says that he's seen 'some worlds that run okay'. In which case I guess we in fact are talking 'BYOND lagfree'. My bad.

To address the part about optimization, splitting the game into many sub-worlds that communicate is a solid thing to do. Network traffic increases fairly quickly per player, even *if* you do things right. However, unless link() gets fixed that isn't feasible. So right now standard programming common sense just applies.