Zxurian

Join Date 02/2008

Dedicated Server for Sins?

I've got myself and 3 roomates that all play this game on a LAN, and with me creating / running bigger and bigger universes, the game-lag is getting worse and worse.

Is there any option, or can there be created an option in a future patch to run a Dedicated Server for Hosting a game?

IE, run the game on whatever server you want, and then host a multiplayer game marked as a dedicated server, then it'll remove the actual player from that computer. Other people can then connect to that game and play as normal.

Hosting/Playing is one thing, but when your trying to host a universe with 5+ Stars & 10+ players, late in the game everything slows down to a crawl, as well as it stopping for a second or two at a time before continuing.

Any comments? Developer Feedback?

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the_Monk

Join Date 01/2008

+222

No plans for a dedicated server that I know of. I can't see how that would work at the moment anyway, a re-work of the game's network code would have to happen (its not like you can take a peer-to-peer game and "switch" it to client-server at will....hehe).

the Monk

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They don't have hundreds of thousands to spend on dedicated servers.

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Lets just highjack some of Blizzards servers. I'm sure they wont notice.

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I would not expect a dedicated server flavor of Sins to be officially developed or even authorized to be honest. The current ICO system is setup as a gatekeeper for obvious reasons. So I dont think SD/IC would undermine themselves.

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no no no. I'm not talking about a dedicated server on the part of Ironclad's system.

I'm talking about the ability for ME to host a game of my choosing on my computer just for the sake of playing that game locally.

Doesn't have anything to do with ICO, in fact, I hardly every play online, i'd rather play locally with people I know, but it would help the memory load out if there was a way to offload the game data onto it's own system, vs the hosting player trying to host the game AND run the game.

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what he's suggesting is that they make a version of sins to be run on a server that a home user can setup and run, this would obviously mean that there would be considerably less lag when playing locally, he's not asking for Ironclad to run any kind of dedicated server.

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RonLugge

Join Date 05/2004

+50

Its not possible to do that. All copies of the computer have to run the game -- its a peer to peer structure. The only thing the host does is route the information, basically. He doesn't have a "master" copy -- thats why desyncs are so deadly, and there's no way to recover from them.

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I remember seeing a post about the ability to "spawn" a second instance of Sins on another PC (using one cd-key). You could setup a "hosting" PC with an AI player. That's about as close to it I think you can come to getting what you want.

On a similar note...what is the procedure to do this anyway? Do you just load SDC on the other PC and login with your credentials, then choose the Sins install? After that, fire up both games to test and it'll just work for LAN play? I assume this is the procedure.

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well what do you mean by "master" copy?

If your running a game with AI (however many players), then one computer is responsible for handling the running of those AI's.

Combined with running the rest of the game, that can take a toll on the hosting machine.

wouldn't that be the "master" copy?

I'm guessing that if we just played with live players and no AI, the strain in the host computer would be alot less because their'd be far less computations.
I guess i'm just looking for a way to offload the AI control onto a different computer that doesn't have to have any human component, but by the way people are describing, every computer running Sins have to have a human component and be running the entire game with it.

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the_Monk

Join Date 01/2008

+222

, but by the way people are describing, every computer running Sins have to have a human component and be running the entire game with it.

That is correct (I haven't tried with just AI, but either way it won't be a dedicated server in the "traditional" sense). That is how the game was designed (several examples could be listed here, Spartan and Ron's for instance)

the Monk

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Damn the Monk beat me to a reply. Good to see him here nonetheless.

Anyway I was going to post a link to his thread about this topic. I just had to spend some time trying to find it. The thread is here.

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I want a dedicated server as well I play with 8 of my friends and the multi lag is HORRIBLE, after a while no matter whose quad core pc is hosting the game just stops responding and will crash randomly and we have to reload from the last autosave. This option would be great.

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Thank you for your support.

I would like to get more people playing locally as well, and we all like playing large universes. (10+ stars, 400~500+ planets).

I shudder to think of any computer's reaction to trying to host that large a game.

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You can always have a "5th player" who hosts the match. Once the game starts have him surrender, but watch the game. That way the computer is still hosting the game, but no additional resources are used by the computer since the fifth player isn't actually playing.

Not sure if this would work, but it seems logically possible.

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the_Monk

Join Date 01/2008

+222

Since so many people were unable to host during "release-week" I hosted many games for others in just that way. Of course I didn't stick around to "watch" a 4-hour game.......lol...too busy for that!

the Monk

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The server in sins only provides a single location for all clients to talk to and makes sure everyone is in sync. It doesn't require really any CPU. Every client is processing the entire simulation on their own computer. If one computer is slower it will drag down everyone else. A dedicated server won't help here.

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I'm not an expert on network protocols and the like, but from this thread it sounds like there's no extra demand on the host, as each rig runs its own simulation. Is that true?

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But if there are AI players , which PC is the one that is doing the AI calculations?

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the_Monk

Join Date 01/2008

+222

Didn't you hear the man?

Every client is processing the entire simulation on their own computer. If one computer is slower it will drag down everyone else. A dedicated server won't help here.

monk out.

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Spish, do you know for certain that's the way it is with SoaSE?

If every computer was processing the AIs then the game would be completely out of sync as each computer's random number generator will cause different outcomes to occur. In all the multiplayer games I've hosted there is just one computer that processes the AIs and then syncs that info with the others.

For now as host I will turn all the effects and graphics to minimum as well as remove any unnecessary programs running in the background.

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Necromancy is forbidden. And yes Excimer, every computer does simulate the AIs. The random number generator should never give different resualts, provided alls tart with the same seed. In rare occasions soemthign may cause desync because of soem unforcene driver/hardware configuration. When this happens the game usually minidumps.

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