Max Players For Multiplayer!

[Foxtrot]

So it would work for half-life? They could make the players 1/4 of their normal size and go 1/4 as fast as normal...that way the map would seem 8 times the size! Right? I suck at math.

 

[ShinRa]

Imagine de_dust with 256 players, source enhanced, and no lag.

/jizzes

 

[Foxtrot]

I can see it now....Go go go! Within about 5 seconds everyone but 10 people are dead because of TKers and then the 10 who live just spawn camp and start sky walking. Sounds like fun.

 

[Rupertvdb]

but source is using that principal whereby you can expand the map to whaetver size you want it's just that the accuracy of the physics is equal to 1/32th of each unit. So if each unit is like 32 centimetres then you get physically accurate results within a centimetre, making things very accurate. You could however put each unit to like a kilometre and the physics wouldn't be able to do jack.


So this big deal over map size is fairly bizarre.... can't you just find a reasonable threshhold between physical accuracy and large maps?

 

[lonestar]

the source engine would theoratically be able to handle that many players (256). that's awesome! but, there would be no server, which could handle it. and the client should also be a monster of a computer.

so, hl2 supports 64 players, or what?

 

[Rupertvdb]

that's what i figure would be average, maybe some going up to like 100.

 

[Crusader]

Somebody somewhere has got to try and pull off 256 players. I don't care if it lagged to hell for me, I'd just want to experience it ^^

Btw, all the talk of "daisy chaining" servers, can somebody elucidate, or direct me to some specifics?

I am interested in how I could apply this

 

[crabcakes66]

Imagine de_dust with 256 players, source enhanced, and no lag.

/jizzes

would be the worst ****ing game ever....

 

[Shuzer]

would be the worst ****ing game ever....

I'm going to have to agree, considering dust is such a small map it'd suck.. alot.

 

[Dalamari]

And 32 is the most assholes I can take in one server, so that would suck. I don't need OMFG H4X said 255 times.

 

[Cyber$nake]

Ok heres the map- One HUGE perfectly flat field w/ 256 free-for-all players on it evenly spaced 10 feet apart and all equiped w/ Para machine guns...

 

[mrchimp]

Has anyone considered a LAN event yet? I rekon one quad Opteron server could handle it. Bandwidth wouldn't be a problem, not if you had a star network on 1GB/s to 3 switches which play host to a 100mb ring network each. You would have barely any lag on that setup.

You would still have the problem of how many player's can be rendered at once in the Source engine.

 

[Gunner]

You know they did say they planned something big for HL2's MP, maybe it's a 64 player thing, who knows

 

[Foxtrot]

You know they did say they planned something big for HL2's MP, maybe it's a 64 player thing, who knows

Since Tribes,BF1942 and UT2k4 are so popular maybe they are going to add vehicles. I already had all these sweet ideas on what it could be but I know they won't do that so it will probably be combine vs C17 resistance fighters. Combine get all the vehicles and they spawn in at a base, and the C17 get vehicles(which wont make too much sense) and spawn in at a base somewhere.

 

[Dalamari]

256 players sucks no matter how you look at it, it will NOT work unless you like mindless killing (not that there is anything wrong with it) if I wanted that ill go play Tribes 2 or something else, I want HL2 so I can do more than OMFG SHOTGUN PWN W00T W00T.

 

[Rico]

There's a common misconception going around in this thread and I just wanted to put an end to it.

The multiplayer will only be limited by the server, not by the clients. The way most good engines work for multiplayer is by sending different data between clients and the server. The clients only receive the information that MATTERS to it, they do not receive info about some guy throwing a grenade 10000 miles away (when yo ucan't even see him) and it does not render people in the opposite side of the wall, the server knows all this and it tells the client what and when to render such things. The client requests it and the server sends it for interpretation.

That being said, the only way MP could be limited is by overloading the server with too many calculations. Clients have nothing to do in the equation, if too many people were onscreen at once it would cause video lag, not network lag (maybe on the rare occassion of having 200 people shooting physics enabled objects which are calculated server side). Such bad performance however would not come down the the engine but it would actually come down to bad modders or bad mappers. You're not suppossed to be seeing 200 people at once no matter what, this isn't some kind of MMORPG with 500+ people spamming chat. As a good rule of thumb, you should only have around 32 people per area fighting at once (say split a big map into different sections, think of 4 CS maps melded into one, each 'part' would contain 32 person skirmishes with people fluctuating between each smaller map) and that would be a lot even then.

So as you can see it's not a client limitation, it's a server-side issue and there are plenty of servers capable of calculating these things. The only drawback would be that these more powerful servers would be more costly.

 

[Wolf]

So this big deal over map size is fairly bizarre.... can't you just find a reasonable threshhold between physical accuracy and large maps?

I see no reason why not. Fenric mentioned entity limits, but I seriously doubt whether bf1942 style maps are going to be a problem...

 

[dugly]

wow it would be awful playing CS with more than 32 people....it's a pain in the ass WITH 32 people.....it would clearly have to be a deathmatch game.....unless of course they added game types in CS to allow for multi objective based things i guess....it would definitely not work with round times and such

 

[dugly]

what that guy said about 4 maps being molded together would own....if you could get it to work right that is....

 

[Dead-Inside]

Id ask him if we where able to link pcs, but i will be happy with the email he sent me It was so nice to finaly get one back hehe.

Oh ya, i dont see it happening this year... But if you have been looking at the xbox leak specs... pcs are getting a nice boost next year...

3 cpus and 2 gigs of ram + oc3 connection = most played server in the world with 256 players.

I think you're looking for a 2x 2GB DDRAM, at least, running dual channel, 800mhz buss speed all together. You use more RAM then CPU power, so 4 GB at dual channel at least.. Preferably more.

Edit: About HL2 multiplayer sizes I have no doubt it will be, at minimum, capped at 64 players. Lots of servers to day would without hesitation support it on one map.

 

[lonestar]

rico

it would be no fun, when you play on a normal-size map with such a huge amount of players. you just would lose the overview. maybe cool for some minutes, but after that you go crazy.

but you could make a map as double large as a battlefield map and give it a try. just to get the experience of it.. hehe.. it would be interesting.

quote rico:
"if too many people were onscreen at once it would cause video lag, not network lag (maybe on the rare occassion of having 200 people shooting physics enabled objects which are calculated server side)."

wouldn't a high speed internet connection be required? i mean something like t3. how could it be handle, otherwise?!

 

[mrchimp]

There's a common misconception going around in this thread and I just wanted to put an end to it.

The multiplayer will only be limited by the server, not by the clients. The way most good engines work for multiplayer is by sending different data between clients and the server. The clients only receive the information that MATTERS to it, they do not receive info about some guy throwing a grenade 10000 miles away (when yo ucan't even see him) and it does not render people in the opposite side of the wall, the server knows all this and it tells the client what and when to render such things. The client requests it and the server sends it for interpretation.

That being said, the only way MP could be limited is by overloading the server with too many calculations. Clients have nothing to do in the equation, if too many people were onscreen at once it would cause video lag, not network lag (maybe on the rare occassion of having 200 people shooting physics enabled objects which are calculated server side). Such bad performance however would not come down the the engine but it would actually come down to bad modders or bad mappers. You're not suppossed to be seeing 200 people at once no matter what, this isn't some kind of MMORPG with 500+ people spamming chat. As a good rule of thumb, you should only have around 32 people per area fighting at once (say split a big map into different sections, think of 4 CS maps melded into one, each 'part' would contain 32 person skirmishes with people fluctuating between each smaller map) and that would be a lot even then.

So as you can see it's not a client limitation, it's a server-side issue and there are plenty of servers capable of calculating these things. The only drawback would be that these more powerful servers would be more costly.

You can say that you should only have 32 players in one area at a time but the fact is that won't happen (unless you split it up but then you might as well have one 32/64 player server). On a 256 player server there is a good chance that 128 of those players will end up in close enough proximity to have to have all there data sent to each other, bandwidth on the clients side would not be a problem, but on the servers end it would.

There is also the possibuility that 128+ players might end up on screen at once which only the really high end cards would be able to handle. BTW the server does not tell the client what to render thats purely up to the client. Obviously players that are not haveing there positional data sent to you won't be rendered, but they would be in a different visibuility sector anyway so it's a mute point. Infact they wouldn't be rendered if they were behind a wall held inside the BSP tree.

I don't see the point of haveing a 256 player server if as far as the player is concerned it's only 32/64. The 128 player Tribes2 servers were only fun because of the ridiculesness of it all . :afro:

 

[tCh]

has anyone played in a hl map where the boundaries are at the edge of the maximum allowed,, that is probably big enough to hold 60- 80 people with out any trouble of gameplay or anything, look at www.kreedz.com, they have some of the biggest maps i have ever seen

 

[Rico]

Having 200 people on screen at the same time is poor map design. Look at Joint Ops, 150 players, do you ever see everyone at the same place? Nope, 2 objectives at the same time and big maps with hills and jungle to make vision harder.

Battlefield: Big maps, open places, you hardly see more than 10 infantry units or maybe 20 at the most at once. When infantry gets into a vehicle the bandwidth is actually lessened because 2 or 3 players go into a single entity (a tank).

Need I go on? It's not a limitation, it all amounts to using the capabilities intelligently (its dumb to have 200 people on screen). Oh and also, clients do NOT need a T3 to play such games, why would hl2 be any different exactly? Clients only receive the information they need, the stuff you can see is the only thing you even render and it's also the only data it requests from the server. The stuff that affects the client immediately.

PS: Chimp that may be your opinion but it doesn't mean someone with good ideas on the implementation of large player numbers couldn't make use of it to make excellent gameplay. I Believe you also took my example too literally, the idea was to explain how it could work in the engine, not to establish a gameplay mode of sorts. However if yo uwant to argue that I could easily put objectives in each part of the map, things that motivate people to go there and fight, and put equally entizing objectives on other parts of the map.

It's possible and I fully intend to explore the possibilities on my own mods.

PS: I intended to avoid getting too technical when explaining why it would work. I am aware that the server does not tell the client what to render but that the client establishes it by analyzing what is in the player's FOV. However if you think about it it still holds true because if the server didn't tell the client that someone is there, the client won't render it, therefore one could state that in MP, the server tells the client what to render.

 

[Diablo2k]

You know they did say they planned something big for HL2's MP, maybe it's a 64 player thing, who knows

Hope big levels mp wont be the only gametype if that was true. Then HL 2 would be a bad clan game

 

[63]

Hope big levels mp wont be the only gametype if that was true. Then HL 2 would be a bad clan game

Is the battlefield series unsuitable for clan play? No.

 

[Icarus]

I'm just wondering about the physics for that many players

 

[urseus]

Imagine de_dust with 256 players, source enhanced, and no lag.

/jizzes

Imagine being the first one killed...


Say no to more than 40 man servers.

 

[Diablo2k]

Is the battlefield series unsuitable for clan play? No.

Are there alot of clans in BF? No

I was just saying that if the gametypes requires alot of people to play, like 12 vs 12 then there will be alot less clans cause they would have to be bigger and better organized. And its a pain in the ass to get 12 members online at the same time. Even 5 is usually hard enough.

 

[tommie]

Imagine being the first one killed...


Say no to more than 40 man servers.

That's the bad thing about CS, you have to wait... while in DoD you only wait for a matter of seconds

 

[Iced_Eagle]

LoL I see only one downside to this...

The mapping.... Mappers now have to make 256 spawns lol lol

I bet it will take at LEAST 3 times as long to make a decent map. That's my opinion. But then you also gotta worry, what if there are only 2 people in it? Eek, poor mappers.

I think with this, we are going to see more respawn timers maybe... Mods couuld still lock the game at player counts probably, like CS so then they can keep in their current no-respawn system.

 

[Rico]

It will be ultimately up to each individual mod team to decide what to do with the new capabilities. Why would you want 200 players in CS? On the other hand, why wouldn't you want 200 players in DoD?

 

[ThomasToad]

I really don't think CS levels should become much bigger than they are now, it just won't be cs after that. All you people talking about 256 players or even 128 in a cs server are insane. As for DoD I would love to have maps much bigger than they are now, only problem is respawning at the very start of the map each time you die, maybe add checkpoints where you have flags captured(surprised they havnt done this yet).