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tSerious Game Server Question

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Dantoo

Golden Member
This forum seems to a wealth of game-server addicts/inventors (and they can crack blocks of course) so I've come here looking for a serious answer to a serious question.

I am thinking of constructing a game server to provide a local mirror of a professional site. Ping times for gamers in my locality are so high that it is impossible for them to "play away".

Now the question:

What sort of specs would be needed for a machine so that it could handle say 200+ gamers simultaneously? (Bandwidth will be adequate).

I can provide more info on the site I wish to mirror in a PM if that is required.

Thanks guys
 
For 200+ gamers, you're going to need a very high-end machine, but it'll help us help you more if you tell us what games you want to run.
 
Dantoo, you are going to need some serious hardware and bandwidth. We're talking upwards of Quad Xeon 800s on 1 GB RAM hooked up to at least 2 T1s (where it doesn't share much at all) if you're wanting to play a game like Quake 3 or Unreal Tournament.

If you figure 10 K/s per user (relatively safe), for 200 users, that puts the requirement at 2000 K/s... more than a T1 can dish out. You'll either have to band at least 2 T1s together or go for something faster (Premium SDSL (6M up/down) if you're lucky enough to live that close to a telco that actually supports it?).

These days, we can handle 10-15 people for a relatively low cost, but when you get into the serious stuff like this, the costs go way up.
 
It would be better to have multiple machines as servers for a project like this. You get better relibility that way. If the one machine goes down, you're out 200+ players, not just 50 or so if you had many servers. You may want to split it up by game and type possibly too. It's also probable that you may want/need different OS's too for the servers. Linux is a great choice as a game server OS, but some games may not have ports to linux (Duke Nukem 4 comes to mind). There are lots of variables. PM me if you wish.
 
Thanks for the replies so far guys, they really are quite helpful.

The bandwidth isn't a problem, genuinely! The machine would be placed with/used by a major Telco and linked to their backbone. The hardware would most likely have to be provided by me or at least a major portion of it.

The software and software support would be done by them as it would mirror one of there sites.

Local players are being chewed up on ping times 200/400 and are looking for better.

It may be that they will specify an equipment level or provide it and I be required to pay. I would much rather be able to discuss this with them from the point of view that I know more or less what is needed. If the offer I take to them includes the equipment ready to go, it may well make the difference.

Whilst money does matter in this project (it will have to be recovered through my business) it isn't as scary for me as you might think. This doesn't mean though that I want the specs of somebodys dream machine, just an honest appraisal of what is actually needed.

1KF you have mail.
PF low head problem, it went over mine!🙂
Joe if you had PM enabled you'd have one

Thanks
 
Ok, I've gotten your PM, and here's what I reccomend so far: build a different machine for each game, with as many games as you seem to want to run, it's just not very feesable to put it all on one machine, even if it's a quad Xeon, as I'm not aware of any games with SMP compatible server software.😱
 
Thanks, I'll keep digging here and if I can get any specs of existing machines, I'll post them (for interest purposes).
 
I think your best bet would be serveral 900mhz Athlons. Load each up with 256MB of RAM, and you should be able to get 2 games going per machine. Check with LD on that though, as I mightbe overlooking something.
 
Dantoo, The only problem I can see with 200 people is finding a map big enough to hold them all. I've seen 64 person deathmatch maps for Quake II, but nothing more than like 16 - 18 people in Unreal Tournament.

My UT server consists of:
Asus P2B-S Motherboard BX chipset w/ Adaptec 7890 & 3860 built in
Intel Pentium III 500 @ 560MHz SECC II Katami core
Alpha P3-125S heatsink w/ 2 60mm YS Tech 27cfm fans
192MB CAS 2 SDRAM
Canopus Spectra 2500 TNT1 8MB AGP card
SoundBlaster Live! Value
Netgear FA-310TX 10/100 network card
US Robotics 56K ISA Voice/Data/Fax modem
IBM 9.1GB & 4.5GB 7,200RPM LVD U2W SCSI hard drives
Plextor UltraPlex 40x Wide reader
Yamaha 8x4x24 SCSI burner
Windows 98se

I had the server up a few weeks back on a Sprint T1+ and had no problems hosting 12 players. I left the server advertised the first night just to make sure it could handle the load. There were quite a few people with sub 100ms ping times playing on ADSL or Cable Modems. Dialing up from a different ISP in town I was getting 200-300ms ping times, which I didn't think was too bad. You really gotta worry when people with broadband connections start going 300+ and with a bunch of packet loss. Then it's time to start checking what's going wrong.

Hope this helps your planning. 😀
 
I can server 15 people off of mine easily. Pings aren't bad either (90-150ms nationwide)

Its a P3-800 with 512MB. The limiting factor of course is my bandwidth.
 
Hmmm I think I may be misleading a little. I don't want to have 200 people on one game, more like say 4 or 5 UT games running simultaneously along with Q3 and the like, with about 6-8 in each game (or whatever's normal).

I am presuming that a large amount of memory is necessary to allow for high speed processing and communication (say up to a GB). I am also presuming that high speed drives are also probably necessary (but perhaps not critical). Again I'm thinking that speed is the need and not bulk storage.

Somehow I had it in my mind that the processor requirement would not be "over the top".

If it can be done from say a dual P3 machine with a GB of RAM and 2-4 small scsi's then it probably is a starter.

(Of course I wouldn't like the idea of it wasting unused cycles but programming would not be my responsibility)

If it is better to say run a cluster of say 4 single processor machines 256MB and a 7200 IDE drive, then that is in the same ballpark and a darn site easier for me to build.

 
ßGød

I wonder if it's like Warrenton (hi and welcome to the team) says and bandwidth becomes the limiter rather than the machine for a home server.

I'm guessing here, but your up speed on home cable/adsl is probably 128-256? If it does take 10k / person (Joe's helpful estimate) then the limit could be bandwidth and/or processor.

If we take bandwidth out, what is the next limiting factor here. CPU? RAM? HDD?

How much information is processed on a game server as against the amount processed on the players machine? I'm guessing that the code that is going up the line is fairly skinny as it is possible to have fairly reasonable 1-1 games on a 28.8 modem to modem in some of the "classic" games.
 
Dantoo, I really wish I'd run DU Meter to see what kind of bandwidth was being use. I have no exact idea what it would be. Joe's estimate sounds about right though.

The biggest trick I've learned in Unreal Tournament is to have at least 192MB of CAS 2 RAM. Then edit your UnrealTournament.ini file to read something like this:
[Engine.GameEngine]
CacheSizeMegs=128

You should set the CacheSize to approx 80% of available system memory. That way when it tries to load a map/texture/etc it's not caching it right back to the hard drive. The default when UT installs is just 4MB. Also set the Virtual Memory in Winblows manually and at 1.5-2x the ammount of available system memory. Defrag the drive when you're done too.
 
Using Bgod's data, I'd have to reccomend this. A pair of P3 CPUs(at least 600mhz, though 700-800 might be better depending on the number of people), 384MB RAM, and a seperate IDE hard drive(and channel) for each instance of UT(or whatever's being run). It should give you the power you need to get 2 games running, which will be at least 32 people total, though 40's probably a better number.🙂

PS PM LD and ask him what he thinks
 
OS will play a role as well. WinOS suffers from packet loss more than the Unix clones from what I understand.

Jay
 
I could probably get one of the AP2500 (the current version of this)
[L]http://www.asus.com/Products/Server/value-range.html[/L] within the price range I'm budgeting for.

The next suitable step up might be the 7500.

They meet the dual processer, RAM requirements. I am guessing (gagging at the cost) that a chain of scsi drives works at least as well as IDE's on their own channel. If as Virge suggests, it's best to run each game on its own drive it may be the way to go as it offers expandability.

I just want to be able to offer them something realistic. It may well be that they insist on different specs because of their existing equipment.

Jay I don't even have a clue which OS they're using at this stage. I am endeavouring to find out. I think I'm getting to the point now where I can make the initial phone call. Any more advice before I do?

PS: this is what I'm trying to do [L]http://203.134.65.105[/L]

Damn link doesn't work🙁 Got me, how do you view the ip of the page you're looking at again??

Thanks everybody so far.
 
SCSI's interesting, but I really don't think it'll be nessisary if you put the games on differnt channels. Since it'll only be 2 games per machine, you only need the 2 channels of IDE.
 
Why in the hell do you need SCSI for a game server? There's not much disk action at all when running games. Only at startup and during map changes, but a fast 7200 RPM IDE drive would be fine enough for that. Don't waste your money. Either save it or spend it on more CPU horsepower.

Really, a few machines would be ideal. Duallies would be OK. Even though no games have multi-threaded servers, the OS will delagate CPU time to the servers.

Bah, I run 3 UT servers on one hard drive on a dual celery 550 w/ 224 megs of RAM. It runs fine. Try not to over do it right away. As your popularity goes up, you may want to add more servers. Just take pains to watch the CPU% and resources and stuff like that.

Oh, and the cachesize cariable does nothing for servers. That's straight from the horses' mouth.
 
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