How many ppl max. could play online at the same time on one server?

[hERd]

How many ppl max. could play online at the same time on one server?

 

[Angry Lawyer]

It's hardcoded at 256, I think. But you'd either need to optimize the game into basically a physicsless thing with no jumping and jerky movements, or have a supercomputer with a broadband line thicker than a sewer to get the data sent.

-Angry Lawyer

 

[Jonsi]

I've seen this question asked a few times already that I'm waiting for some intrepid individual to unlock the limits and just run a scalability test. I imagine with an emphasis on single-player and optimized multiplayer for 24-32 players the answer is: It doesn't scale very well. Maybe it's the toxic fumes from my old Jeep, but I seem to recall UT2K4 scaled to 64 somewhat well(Without having the server spontaneously combust anyways).

 

[Dynasty]

hmmm are you only talking about steam games? fps??? if not then games like eve online etc etc can get 10s of thousands...literally on 1 server

 

[Angry Lawyer]

Well, as this is a HL2 messageboard, and HL2 modding area, I'll asssume he's talking about HL2. Which means 256. Or it could be 128. One or the other.

-Angry Lawyer

 

[The Dark Elf]

Well, as this is a HL2 messageboard, and HL2 modding area, I'll asssume he's talking about HL2. Which means 256. Or it could be 128. One or the other.

-Angry Lawyer

The max is 256, but they recommended 128 as the upper limit. I imagine 256 would be reserved for very simplified online games or just as spare incase anyone somehow needed it.

 

[Angry Lawyer]

They reccomend 128, that's true. But it's always fun to add one extra player, just to show that you're better. Aim for a 129 player server!!

-Angry Lawyer

 

[kmack]

Oh ya! well my server has 130 :hmph:

there is a possible 256, but thats just because its easy enough to allow for that many on paper (in reality it would be chaos resulting in melting servers) but like everyone is saying uppermost is 128 and thats a stretch, it all depends on the game

 

[Angry Lawyer]

Shareddefs.h has the following:

// Max number of players in a game ( see const.h for ABSOLUTE_PLAYER_LIMIT (256 ) )
// The Source engine is really designed for 32 or less players.  If you raise this number above 32, you better know what you are doing
//  and have a good answer for a bunch of perf question related to player simulation, thinking logic, tracelines, networking overhead, etc.
// But if you are brave or are doing something interesting, go for it...   ywb 9/22/03

Yahn also posted on VERC a short while ago the following:

When I wrote the comment in code, here's what I thought would be required:

1) Need to come up with a better PVS solution so that you don't have all 255 players in one spot at the same time
2) Need to remove most of the complex animation layering for players, it's too expensive on the server
3) Need to greatly simplify player movement code, or completely ditch it from the server (i.e., let the client do movement and report positions to the server in the CUserCmd -- obviously have to deal with possible cheating...)
4) Need to greatly reduce the amount of bandwidth required for each entity/player in the game -- you could consider doing almost all animation client side, etc, etc
5) If you have AIs they need to be extremely lightweight, might even have to rewrite them from scratch, otherwise the CPU load would be severe
6) Probably need to turn off PvP collisions
7) Probably need to reduce the # of updates per second each player gets from the server down from the default of 20 to just 2 to 4 maybe (would have to measure networking perf and bandwidth usage to find the right number). This would require upping the interpolation amount to 250 to 500 msec and making other changes to keep rendering smooth, etc.
8) Probably would need to disable lag compensation and do more hit detection and reporting client side (again modulo ability to deal with possible cheating)

The big effort will be to move as much "interesting" game logic as possible into the client .dll and out of the server .dll

Anyway, I think given the proper game design, something like this would be very doable. I'm happy to provide guidance to any teams trying to experiment with this.

It would be really cool to see a "mini" MMO game done this way, I think you could do something fun with 255 players max. Making a seemless world, however, is not going to be totally possible. For now, you would need to build a really huge map (and would probably have to have it be somewhat sparse due to memory and budget constraints).
Yahn

Yahn Bernier
Valve

(Source: http://www.chatbear.com/board.plm?a=viewthread&t=302,1108064141,29358&id=793253&b=4991&v=flatold)

-Angry Lawyer

 

[hERd]

Oh thx guys. 64-100 player is more then enough.

 

[Angry Lawyer]

You'll still have dodginess abound by going above 64 players. Trust me.

Why on Earth would you want that many players?

-Angry Lawyer

 

[hERd]

I think even 64 wud be enough. Its cos of the way of the mod.

 

[Angry Lawyer]

And where, precisely, will you find 64 people to test if the network optimisation will work?

Hell, I'm struggling to find even one person I really trust to ast as an Alpha-tester for my mod.

-Angry Lawyer

 

[Argyll]

My mod will have support up to 64 players. I don't expect that server counts would get that high, but the capability is there just incase that ideal amount can be reached.