anders^on Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 It's me again .. bothering the comm with another question: Has anyone seen annoucements 'bout the dedicated server and its linux support ? Some of you probably know 'Söldner' and 'Farcry' .. two games with great multiplayer modes and stuff .. but in both cases the developers broke their games' neck by releasing the linux-server far too late. That's why I'm asking here .. don't wonna see my fav game going down again just because of a lack of servers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZinC°hda Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 No idea m8, I also own a dedicated server and im awaiting the annoucement as to how servers will be hosted. If its like JO - Joint Operations, you need a graphics card on the server to run it in screwd (Idiots) why would you even want a card on your server box ? lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anders^on Posted July 23, 2004 Author Share Posted July 23, 2004 JO needs a graphics card ? Weird. Hopefully Pandemic won't do the same crap .. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frayedends Posted July 28, 2004 Share Posted July 28, 2004 First off, most of the larger hosting companies run FreeBSD or some form of 2.6 Linux kernel. Very few use windows. A server that uses windows almost always relies on DirectX (see most of EA's games). Servers should not do this, they are designed to serve clients, and crunch code. That's it. So, with that in mind, a unix-based, stand-along, POSIX-compliant server engine is a top priority, as that's where the fan base will be generated from for online multiplayers games. (See half-life for a good example) A windows server should be no problem to adapt from the unix base. No audio or video requirements in the server engine. It's a daemon - WITH A CONSOLE!!! I cannot stress this enough, that there needs to be a console (curses or xterm) for server admins to ssh into and manage from. It must also have a user-friendly means of console-input for administration. No cryptic aliases or cvars. Logging. Must log. Not xml logs - that's stupid. Use simple delimited formats so we can export the logs or parse them with a variety of tools that the community will create. Logs will need to be able to be streamed to a remove server for collection. Running apache on your gameserver doesn't make sense. You run Apache on your WEBSERVER, and you host games on your GAMESERVER. Seperate boxes, please. Big deal here for the hosting companies. Efficient netcode. Send what is needed, not everything. The big deal with this happens to be the means that it will cut down on cheating, since not all the player data and entities will be sent to all clients. Use the "fog of war" mentality, and send what's close by, not the whole shebang. It'll also cut down on the bandwidth usage as well. Remember you need a HUGE pipe to run 64-player BF1942. It's gotta be less than that. A mailing list for server admins. This is a must NOW! Before you guys finish the code, talk to the community guys who actually HOST this stuff for a living and find out what they want. Then build it in! Boy this will save you alot of headaches, and the feedback you get from testing server binaries prior to release will be worth it's weight in gold. Best example: BF1942/DICE and the programmer who devised the linux binaries - Andreas Fredrickson. mailing list, forums, and constant communication with the admin base. The server admins got what they needed, and Andreas got the feedback he needed to get bugs, features, and other issues pushed out to live servers much faster than he would have without it. Community involvement. If the developers haven't already, get in contact with UnitedAdmins. UA can help develop any needed tools for interface to the engine, they're a registered company and can work under and NDA, and they're top notch in the anti-cheat community in developing server side and client side solutions. Working alongside them can realy help the Pandemic guys so they can consider certain things before they finish it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VanLingo Posted July 28, 2004 Share Posted July 28, 2004 Sorry to break into this discussion with a console comment, but a few of the previews have mentioned that anyone with a second PlayStation 2 or PC can use that system as a host (Nothing about X-Boxes, though). I would assume that this means dedicated servers will be very easy to configure. I don't remember the link -- there's so many previews out there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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