Host Compensation

[Westfall]

What Westfall says is not correct.

I ping 20 (which is actually high for the distance) to the servers I have in Amsterdam. Neverdown pings 9.
The good point of a dedicated server:
No crap on the harddisk, no crap in the RAM (antivirus, Word, Internet Explorer or w/e), so it's only the OS and the game => more stable.

Add to that an upload of 100mbit/s and that's it.

A 'dedicated server' that you host on your own PC and where you can play on is called a 'listen server'.
CT's dedicated servers aren't really dedicated: you need a graphical interface to run it and therefor it's usually hosted by normal PCs. (99.99999% of all servers do not have a graphics card. It's all onboard).

I can't believe your ping is that high. The computer is like..right next to you right?

[Xris]

i think what most ppl mean is something like xbox live.
when you host a game on live it is hosted on MS servers not on your xbox, you are still the "host" and make in-game descision, however everyones ping is better because the game is being hosted on a dedicated server, there is no host glitches then. also multiple sessions could be on one server

[Ion.67]

I completely agree with spekkio. It is coding, not the lag (although the lag is bad, because of bad coding). There is no reason for any of those bugs, just because of lag.

[Farley4Fan]

You guys are right.  I was having my fantasy.  All it is is netcode issues that will be gone right?

[Ion.67]

Hopefully.

To anyone who thinks dedicated servers are the way to go... They aren't. You do not host a dedicated server, for a mod, that will most likely have a small, dedicated fanbase, that has 4 players per game. It is not worth it. You will just have to find a server close to you.

[kronf]

You are wrong. Dedicated servers is the best option no matter what. 4 players per game doesn't mean that you have to have one dedicated server per game. You can run multiple games on one server. I don't know exactly how many, but I'm sure one dedicated server will be able to host AT LEAST 4-5 games meaning 16-20 players. In a small community its even harder to find a server thats "close to you", because people are spread out around the world. Take ct at the moment, its practically impossible to find ANY US server at all for me, so I have to play on euro servers. A lot of them have bad connections and I end up getting 250 ping with insane warping skipping etc even though I'm conveniently located on the east coast and my normal ping to euro servers in games which have dedicated servers is around 100-150 ms. If someone has a bad connection and hosts a listen server no matter how good the game's netcode is, it WILL lag. The only problem with dedicated servers is money.

[Westfall]

You are wrong. Dedicated servers is the best option no matter what. 4 players per game doesn't mean that you have to have one dedicated server per game. You can run multiple games on one server. I don't know exactly how many, but I'm sure one dedicated server will be able to host AT LEAST 4-5 games meaning 16-20 players. In a small community its even harder to find a server thats "close to you", because people are spread out around the world. Take ct at the moment, its practically impossible to find ANY US server at all for me, so I have to play on euro servers. A lot of them have bad connections and I end up getting 250 ping with insane warping skipping etc even though I'm conveniently located on the east coast and my normal ping to euro servers in games which have dedicated servers is around 100-150 ms. If someone has a bad connection and hosts a listen server no matter how good the game's netcode is, it WILL lag. The only problem with dedicated servers is money.

Multiple games on one server would lead to uber lag b/c all of the bandwidth is being taken up. No? I live on the east coast too and never find servers up. Play with the euros all the time. It sucks because of the ping, but you always learn to deal with it. Running more than one server on a dedicated server would just clog it up. If I'm wrong, someone let me know.

[frvge]

Multiple games on one server would lead to uber lag b/c all of the bandwidth is being taken up. No? I live on the east coast too and never find servers up. Play with the euros all the time. It sucks because of the ping, but you always learn to deal with it. Running more than one server on a dedicated server would just clog it up. If I'm wrong, someone let me know.

Which is why real dedicated servers aren't on home connections... The server running this site and all my others can upload at 12.5MB/s, maximum. I can upgrade to 125MB/s. Depending on the amount of RAM and CPU that the 'base' UT3 executable takes, 8 servers should be possible bandwidthwise. If you get a good server, which has approx 80-100 slots for CS:S etc, you can probably run 10 servers of 4 people.

[Gawain]

some morons pay 10€/month to play wow, so i guess we can afford 2-5€/month to play ps without all the lag related issues and other bs.

[Farley4Fan]

Multiple games on one server would lead to uber lag b/c all of the bandwidth is being taken up. No? I live on the east coast too and never find servers up. Play with the euros all the time. It sucks because of the ping, but you always learn to deal with it. Running more than one server on a dedicated server would just clog it up. If I'm wrong, someone let me know.

Which is why real dedicated servers aren't on home connections... The server running this site and all my others can upload at 12.5MB/s, maximum. I can upgrade to 125MB/s. Depending on the amount of RAM and CPU that the 'base' UT3 executable takes, 8 servers should be possible bandwidthwise. If you get a good server, which has approx 80-100 slots for CS:S etc, you can probably run 10 servers of 4 people.

I think this is the kind of dedicated server I was thinking of westfall.

[Spekkio]

You are wrong. Dedicated servers is the best option no matter what. 4 players per game doesn't mean that you have to have one dedicated server per game. You can run multiple games on one server. I don't know exactly how many, but I'm sure one dedicated server will be able to host AT LEAST 4-5 games meaning 16-20 players. In a small community its even harder to find a server thats "close to you", because people are spread out around the world. Take ct at the moment, its practically impossible to find ANY US server at all for me, so I have to play on euro servers. A lot of them have bad connections and I end up getting 250 ping with insane warping skipping etc even though I'm conveniently located on the east coast and my normal ping to euro servers in games which have dedicated servers is around 100-150 ms. If someone has a bad connection and hosts a listen server no matter how good the game's netcode is, it WILL lag. The only problem with dedicated servers is money.

That's why I said part of PS's goal should be to expand the player base.

In most cases, I would rather play on a US listen server than a European dedicated server.

[LennardF1989]

You are wrong. Dedicated servers is the best option no matter what. 4 players per game doesn't mean that you have to have one dedicated server per game. You can run multiple games on one server. I don't know exactly how many, but I'm sure one dedicated server will be able to host AT LEAST 4-5 games meaning 16-20 players. In a small community its even harder to find a server thats "close to you", because people are spread out around the world. Take ct at the moment, its practically impossible to find ANY US server at all for me, so I have to play on euro servers. A lot of them have bad connections and I end up getting 250 ping with insane warping skipping etc even though I'm conveniently located on the east coast and my normal ping to euro servers in games which have dedicated servers is around 100-150 ms. If someone has a bad connection and hosts a listen server no matter how good the game's netcode is, it WILL lag. The only problem with dedicated servers is money.

That's why I said part of PS's goal should be to expand the player base.

In most cases, I would rather play on a US listen server than a European dedicated server.

We did some playtests with the current build (nothing special) and we didn't experienced any bad pings at all. So, perhaps PS will bring Euro's and USy's closer (and other parts of the world as well ofcourse ;))...

[Ion.67]

You are wrong. Dedicated servers is the best option no matter what. 4 players per game doesn't mean that you have to have one dedicated server per game. You can run multiple games on one server. I don't know exactly how many, but I'm sure one dedicated server will be able to host AT LEAST 4-5 games meaning 16-20 players. In a small community its even harder to find a server thats "close to you", because people are spread out around the world. Take ct at the moment, its practically impossible to find ANY US server at all for me, so I have to play on euro servers. A lot of them have bad connections and I end up getting 250 ping with insane warping skipping etc even though I'm conveniently located on the east coast and my normal ping to euro servers in games which have dedicated servers is around 100-150 ms. If someone has a bad connection and hosts a listen server no matter how good the game's netcode is, it WILL lag. The only problem with dedicated servers is money.

That's why I said part of PS's goal should be to expand the player base.

In most cases, I would rather play on a US listen server than a European dedicated server.

We did some playtests with the current build (nothing special) and we didn't experienced any bad pings at all. So, perhaps PS will bring Euro's and USy's closer (and other parts of the world as well ofcourse ;))...

Was it a dedicated or a listen server.

What is wrong with listen servers, as they are now? In any other game, they work fine. In CT, they don't work because of bad coding.

A listen server in CSS may not be as good as a dedicated one, but in CSS, you have 50 people on your listen server. 3 others isn't going to make a dedicated server greatly exceed a listen one.

[LennardF1989]

dedicated... but a listen (you mean one you create ingame and immediatly join right?) will likely be the same.

[frvge]

Generally a listen server needs to:
1- keep up with the networking
2- keep up with your game's rendering etc

2 takes generally a few hundred megs of RAM and a lot of CPU. Which is bad if you have to maintain a lot of connections. (or run a lot of smaller servers).