server clusters

[ringnull]

Hello,

I'm new to this board, so forgive me if this is already discussed, some brief, and perhaps bit too hasty searches yielded no results though ,and i think the idea will be nice to enable more massive multiplayer games.
i've been watching some YouTube videos of this game (also got it, but i dont play alot at the moment unfortunatley...)

I was thinking, looking at some of the issues, including bandwidht issues of ppl hosting games etc. that it might be a cool idea to enable the synchronisaton of 2 or more servers. Perhaps even where the master server unloads players to other servers if they are too busy.

i think if the servers are clustered, then the processing can be shared / offloaded to cluster members, where the map itself and players etc could be synchronised between the servers.

Perhaps this is a bit overkill for factorio, but i think the massive multiplayer aspect is very fun idea, especially if you could have 2 or 3 dedicated boxes running 1 game so tons of people can join it..

i'm not sure how feasible this is with the code base and how the game is built as i havent really looked at the server / network traffic that it generates but if it's possible then that would save alot of effort optimizing the game to be able to house a big player base on a single server. you could even then just cap the player count to a reasonable amount by default, and tell ppl they can add servers to the cluster to add more slots.

Either way thanks for making a game i'm scared to play now... i played it 4-5 times, but probarbly like 60 hours... and then i thought i'd have to stop untill i have some time off can't stop playing once i start damnit!

Cheers for al lthe hard work to bring this game to us so far!

[impetus maximus]

from what i've heard, the limit isn't the server. it's all the clients unable to keep up with the server jam packed with people.
the game was never intended to be a MMO. in great numbers we could do great things. sadly it only takes 1 or a few trolls to ruin it.

[jorgenRe]

from what i've heard, the limit isn't the server. it's all the clients unable to keep up with the server jam packed with people.
the game was never intended to be a MMO. in great numbers we could do great things. sadly it only takes 1 or a few trolls to ruin it.

And the few people who cant get the right mods so that they keep desynching. And when being disconnected many times the limit they still trye to rejoin

[hoho]

it might be a cool idea to enable the synchronisaton of 2 or more servers. Perhaps even where the master server unloads players to other servers if they are too busy.

That would introduce massive synchronization issues.

i think if the servers are clustered, then the processing can be shared / offloaded to cluster members, where the map itself and players etc could be synchronised between the servers.

It's significantly easier to multithread more parts of the game. That's what they've planned for next big release.

[ssilk]

Hm.
Factorio has the very cool concept of Surfaces ( http://lua-api.factorio.com/latest/LuaSurface.html ). The default surface is Nauvis (the surface of the origin planet).

I think it is possible to connect two of those surfaces together with some kind of "exchange path" (a tunnel, a bridge, a hyperspace-gate, a (space)ship, etc., or better: some tunnels, some bridges etc.) and the two surfaces are then connected, but running on different servers.
Because of those small connections between the surfaces it is simple to keep them synchronized: A bridge or tunnel can be seen as a queue. That regulates the incoming and outgoing items&entities. Once something is on the queue it cannot return and must wait, until it is synchronized with the other world. The worlds can run then also on different speeds without problem.

Now we could connect a third surface. A fourth. The fifth is connected to the second and fourth. And so on. And then you have some kind of "truly endless" worlds. All running and producing things. All interconnected in (more or less) real-time.

I think to worlds (other surfaces), where we have much dangerous lifeforms. Other worlds with colonists. Worlds in orbit. Worlds with mega-mega-factories, that are split into different surfaces...

The problem here is just this: There is a dev-team with only 10 people or so. It will take some person-years to develop such kind of interconnection.

[ringnull]

Thanks for feedback, i think the surfaces idea might be cool yeah. if you could connect via portals (in what kind of form you want them to be , appropriate to the setting..) then you could just have a little load map action everytime you go to other area on the other server.

Didnt realise that it was a client side thing, i guess it's hard for some computers / connections to handle such stuff.

The inter connection between servers can be as complex or simple as you want it to be honest, but ofcourse, after you finnish it wil be like 9000 years of bugs though if it's a client side issue, none of this are particularly helpful for this idea.

I know its not designed to be mmo, i was already pleasantly suprised i could do some local games with a friend ^^... but since there seems alot of interest in the topic maybe some dev has some sticky note hiding somewhere under a pile of higher priority things..


@ devs or other ppl familiar with the inner workings of the game:
Would it be possible to use external scripts or tool to sync the surface file and other critical data across to another server while its running or is this all kept in memory apart from save map actions? If you could alter the files, if there are any, while server is running, then it would be interesting as people other than dev team could make tools to do this...


Also side note on the mods issue:
Why doesnt the server dictate the mods, like with something as counter-strike , that if you connect, you can download the mods from server. Or if you have them, they get enabled/disabled appropriatley on connect so your mods match the server?