Friday Facts #302 - The multiplayer megapacket

[factoriouzr]

This is all great but where are the blueprint library improvements we have been promised for version 0.17, it's now version 0.17.54 and still no blueprint library improvements that were promised.

[vanatteveldt]

Why does the game state need to know what entity the player has selected anyhow? If the player executes an action, pass that action to the server rather than passing the player.selected property. This seems like an unnecessary linkage between view and controller of model/view/controller design.

I had the same question, and I guess if the game was developed as a mmo maybe they would have made different choices.

otoh, it's a deliberate user action, so I doubt most people select more than one entity on average per second... so it should normally not be that much data...

[Rebmes]

Don't listen to the whiners, and very well done!!

[slippycheeze]

Clusterio is /r/nextfuckinglevel

Nah, champ. ClusterIO is impressive, but this. This is the next darn level right here: https://github.com/justarandomgeek/Fact ... thernet.md

IPv6 autoconfiguration, including publicly routable addresses ... using Factorio combinators. Oh, and ClusterIO to interface to the outside world.

...but IPv6 in Factorio. Just .... yeah.

[Oktokolo]

Great news exhibiting the right amount of technical information.

But as Factorio runs smoother and has more robust network code than WoW while supporting more concurrent players per instance now - where can i find the official Factorio role play servers?

[TatsuZZMage]

Wow, Actual use cases for jumbo frames, i know my network card doesn't have that on by default.

[Twinsen]

But as Factorio runs smoother and has more robust network code than WoW

As an avid WoW player I doubt we're that good. But I'm flattered that someone would compare our netcode to Blizzard's.

[Twinsen]

Wow, Actual use cases for jumbo frames, i know my network card doesn't have that on by default.

The megapacket name is a bit misleading as it's not really a big network packet, but rather a game packet that is split into lots of 576 byte network packets. So there are no actual jumbo frames.

[Nova]

I can't say if your netcode is better than WoW's, but at least your bugfixing is so much better. I know that... *blinks against speck of dust*

[slippycheeze]

I can't say if your netcode is better than WoW's, but at least your bugfixing is so much better. I know that... *blinks against speck of dust*

Because it uses UDP, it is, in context. ...but, remember that scale makes a difference, too. If Factorio had 14 million active players and about as many years of legacy code, it might now move quite so fast.

[Yijare]

If Factorio had 14 million active players and about as many years of legacy code, it might now move quite so fast.

Yes, but actually no. Blizz has removed myrriads of lines from the code with cataclysm. effectively making them reverse engeneer thier classic mode because 'classic' wow just simply doesn't exist anymore. But tahts way off of this FFFs scope.

So, theoretical question at twinsen: let's say you play on a locally hosted server (127.0.0.1) and your best friend wants to join in, Ports set and everything - does what you fixed appliy on the small scale too? Because we had this one odd thing, when a friend tried to connect to the server he was the only one (out of 5) to be dropped constantly.

[Twinsen]

let's say you play on a locally hosted server (127.0.0.1) and your best friend wants to join in, Ports set and everything - does what you fixed appliy on the small scale too? Because we had this one odd thing, when a friend tried to connect to the server he was the only one (out of 5) to be dropped constantly.

It does apply to the small scale since the big packet can still be generated, but the bug it's self is very rare, hence it only realistically shows with 200 players. Also with less players it's easy for the server and the clients to 'absorb' the bandwidth spike.

So it's possible your problem got fixed but more likely it's just a bad connection issue.

[Yijare]

It does apply to the small scale since the big packet can still be generated, but the bug it's self is very rare, hence it only realistically shows with 200 players. Also with less players it's easy for the server and the clients to 'absorb' the bandwidth spike.

So it's possible your problem got fixed but more likely it's just a bad connection issue.

We are talking fiber optics here :'D - i know that doesn't exclude the bad connection problem but it is less likely. But thank you for the reply.

[slippycheeze]

It does apply to the small scale since the big packet can still be generated, but the bug it's self is very rare, hence it only realistically shows with 200 players. Also with less players it's easy for the server and the clients to 'absorb' the bandwidth spike.

So it's possible your problem got fixed but more likely it's just a bad connection issue.

We are talking fiber optics here :'D - i know that doesn't exclude the bad connection problem but it is less likely. But thank you for the reply.

Twinsen, elsewhere someone commented that the default socket buffer size was being used, and they observed many fragment drops and retransmits once you got a packet greater than the default 8k buffer on Windows 7; could that influence recovery here too? (or were they wrong, and y'all set a sensible socket buffer size, as I imagine you would do?)

Yijare, I got the impression that y'all were talking over the Internet, yes? Unfortunately that means the fibre optic part would then only be one step in the overall path, and anywhere along the path could cause the problem. In my experience when things work great for 4/5 people, and badly for one, it turns out to be something unique to that one person - a dodgy router inside an ISP or between them, something firewall related on their part, or whatever. It can be very hard to track down why exactly their system has trouble, but even inside the same ISP you can hit this. Networks are annoyingly complicated, and with dozens of different systems touching every packet between y'all, that can definitely be "the cloud is when someone else's computer breaks, and makes your life a misery."

[Yijare]

Yijare, I got the impression that y'all were talking over the Internet, yes?

No.

We're talking Intraweb.

[Twinsen]

That sounds really strange. If you think it's an issue with Factorio you can gather as much info as possible(minimal test with wireshark captures, etc) and we will look into it.

[slippycheeze]

This is all great but where are the blueprint library improvements we have been promised for version 0.17, it's now version 0.17.54 and still no blueprint library improvements that were promised.

Coming later. ...or possibly soon, or possibly never. Development plans are a best guess at what will be done to start with, but honestly, version numbers are even less useful as a guide to what should show up when during development.

For all I, and I'm gonna guess you, know they have the 99 percent of the blueprint library stuff that is invisible infrastructure to make it work complete, and the last one percent will be super-fast. or not, IDK. I'd kind of rather no crashes and library improvements later, if I had to choose.

[factoriouzr]

Or work on both at the same time. That's the benefit of multiple employees

[Oktokolo]

Or work on both at the same time. That's the benefit of multiple employees

They are currently all fully occupied with fixing the massive "biters are too cute" game refunds. So expect some real badass biter action soon™ !

[Yijare]

That sounds really strange. If you think it's an issue with Factorio you can gather as much info as possible(minimal test with wireshark captures, etc) and we will look into it.

I think it's more likely an freak occourence with that particular computer.