[Linux] Headless server / vnc (Maybe too soon?)

[Dracohouston]

I'm glad someone else thought to try all this, I was about to look into it

James says he'll try to make me an embedded mod first, that will pause entities when no one is connected.

I hope the official implementation, if any, has this feature. I'm finding it hard to make time to play separate savegames with people and a drop in/drop out dedicated server would be ideal. Here's hoping they make it so we can just run it in server mode loading a savegame/starting a new map from shell

[Cre8torzn]

Does the dedicated server still use the p2p connection or have you managed to work round that? My friend and I have got a game going and we both have 4mb line and we have got to the stage in the game with so much going on that there is incredible lag that the 2 of us cannot play anymore...

[MF-]

It's not a different binary, just the regular linux version run with no video output using Xvfb.
It won't cut the p2p links (those should be fine even for 56kBps dialup connection!)

But it might (and probably will) help
a) keeping the game up for anyone to join
b) preserving the save game where everyone can reach it
c) re-sending the map on desyncs

Given that doing OpenGL in sofware is rather slow, considered --no-gui option might save quite some power there
PS: Haven't heard of xdummy. Does it do even less than than Xvfb (ie. not even keeping the rendered image?)

[icecube45]

It's not a different binary, just the regular linux version run with no video output using Xvfb.
It won't cut the p2p links (those should be fine even for 56kBps dialup connection!)

But it might (and probably will) help
a) keeping the game up for anyone to join
b) preserving the save game where everyone can reach it
c) re-sending the map on desyncs

I'm writing my guide atm..
includes a script for pausing the game when no players are there..

[icecube45]

https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =53&t=6585

[Nova]

Does the dedicated server still use the p2p connection or have you managed to work round that? My friend and I have got a game going and we both have 4mb line and we have got to the stage in the game with so much going on that there is incredible lag that the 2 of us cannot play anymore...

Changing to a server/client system would make this problems worse, not better. There's no real difference between the start or the end of a game. With the peer to peer system, only your input gets send to the other players, nothing else. The client/server system would have to send everything of the world, every tiny change on a belt or the differences between two logistic systems.
The lag you experience comes from the early multiplayer version without any latency hiding, not from the underlying p2p system. (Oh, and version 0.11.1 has some lags while auto saving the game, that's the reason for the more extrem lags.)

[theonewolf]

I bet there is a lot of redundancy in the games communication between two peers.

I think this issue about WAN bandwidth would be solved if compression was applied. Even coarse-grained compression just wrapping the UDP packets into a "compressed tunnel" would be good enough.

That said, if the lag is instead the game processing these packets and keeping up with the updates...then compression would not help.

[mowfax]

Hi, I really enjoy MP but can't leave my PC running all the time. The only other option I have is a hosted VPS Server, so I would like to know if an official headless linux server is somewhere down the todo list until release. Doesn't have to be soon, I just want to know if it will be possible. And thanks a lot for such a great game!

[cube]

- Factorio can run as a dedicated server without graphics (https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... ess_server).