Quake 3 Server...on a slow older comp. ?

[looper]

Can I use a slow older comp. in the house to run as a dedicated Quake 3 server...(Pent 200...80 meg ram) thanks...

 

[yoyo25]

Hey, by no means am I an expert in how Quake3 works, but in most multiplayer games, memory is big bottleneck. As the number of players increases, more memory is needed to keep track of the relative world of each player. A faster processor wounld't hurt either. Anyhow, give it a try and find out..and let us know how it turns out.

 

[Poontos]

Sure.


It would be REALLY SLOW, though.

 

[bex0rs]

Ok llamas, here is the authoritative answer. Authoritative because I've done it. 🙂


A P200 w/ 80 ram would be a fine dedicated Q3 server. RAM does matter, but the OS you are running also matters. I'd say that on average, you're going to need about 20 more MB of RAM in an OS with a GUI (i.e. windows) than you would if you ran the Q3 server on a console based OS (linux / freebsd).

Last year, while pimpin' the dorm connection, I had a Q3 dedicated dm17 only server using a heavily modified pak file (5 mb total from 400+ mb) running on a FreeBSD box with a Winchip 200 and 24 ram (yes you read that right). The max clients was set to 8, and it would NEVER lag due to a lack of hardware even with 8 clients playing. (Now Berkeley's connection on the other hand would have issues.) I needed to use the same computer with 48 ram to handle the same number of clients when the server was run in NT4. Also, be sure that the network card you use is PCI as they have much lower CPU usage than ISA's.

Now the other nice thing about having your Q3 server run in a console based OS is that you can just telnet / ssh to it and enter commands, settings, etc. as if you were directly in front of it. If the server was far away, this could be a real time saver.

Good luck with the project. I'd say that you could do 12 clients on 1 map, max.

~bex0rs

 

[looper]

The Pent 200 is running Win95... max # of players will only be 4.. think that rig will run well as a Q3 server ?? ( BTW, it has a PCI NIC ) I will connect to the server from in the house on other comp. thru our fast LAN with hub. 3 of my friends will jump in who live within a half-hour of our home. (I have Wingate so both comps can web surf..would this help/hinder what I'm trying to do...) thanks..

 

[bex0rs]

I'm not quite sure why you would have both a router and wingate, but you are basically going to need to make sure that outside clients will be able to get to the server. If the P200 is acting as your router, then you shouldn't have much of a problem because people will be able to connect directly to it. If you have one of those linksysnetgearsmcdlinkhawking dsl/cable routers then you will need to forward the proper ports to the P200, namely 27950-2 and 27960 udp.

As for choice of OS, Win95 isn't the best, but having 80 megs of ram and only a 4 client max shouldn't pose too much of a problem for it. If you can somehow get ahold of NT4 Workstation, do so because it has a much better networking stack than Win95 and might even result in ping times of a few ms lower. It would also allow you to remain under the shelter of a windows gui. Also, I've been able to tweak NT4 Wkstn so that it uses < 16 mb of ram at startup. Of course the optimal thing to do, provided that the P200 would never do anything but serve Q3, would be to throw some distro of linux on it and learn a bit.

But anyway, what you have now in terms of hardware and software should be just fine to run a 4 person server. Just don't expect to use the computer while it is running the Q3 server.

Best of luck,
~bex0rs

 

[bubba]

I used to run a Q3 server on a PPro 180 with 96 MB of RAM running Linux off of my DSL connection. Would quit Xwindows and boot it from a console. Worked fine. The DSL connection was the bottleneck before the processor.

 

[looper]

Thanks for info...I mis-typed...don't have a router...I meant a hub....