ACK~!
Interesting read over at Voodoo Extreme with some emails posted from Digital Extreme employees.
http://www.ve3d.com/comments.taf?postID=30790
Basically, it seems that not all games are run off of the XBL server farm. Infact, most are going to be user hosted, which is fine for football games and the like, but terrible for FPSs (RTCW-Xbox will be 8 players max).
Here's the e-mail exchange between the VE guy and Digital Extremes regarding Unreal Championship and XBL.
And the reply:
More questions:
Final reply:
Can't say I'm too thrilled. Alot of people have their upstream capped at verily shitty levels, like 64-128k. I think many of us were under the impression that all of our games would be hosted from the $2billion MS server farm. If thats only for MMORPGs (with a premium), I think it'd be wise to find some space for FPSs in there, because 4-8 player DM is not going to win any hardened PC gamers over.
And kind of OT: Supposedly PSO is going to cost $8.95 a month to play it on GC. Think MS will be smart and swallow the cost for that? It's not like we're talking Everquest-style hosting requirements, more like Diablo.
zurich
Interesting read over at Voodoo Extreme with some emails posted from Digital Extreme employees.
http://www.ve3d.com/comments.taf?postID=30790
Basically, it seems that not all games are run off of the XBL server farm. Infact, most are going to be user hosted, which is fine for football games and the like, but terrible for FPSs (RTCW-Xbox will be 8 players max).
Here's the e-mail exchange between the VE guy and Digital Extremes regarding Unreal Championship and XBL.
-----Original Message-----
From: BadMsgQ@digitalextremes.com [mailto:BadMsgQ@digitalextremes.com] On Behalf Of Aaron
Sent: Friday, September 27, 2002 6:21 PM
To: info@digitalextremes.com
Subject: [info] Question about UC, are we serving? {01}
have a question for you... It has come to my recent attention that most Xbox games
are NOT going to be actually "served" on MS's servers. I've read that only MMORPGs
are going to be actually hosted by MS, and that other games are going to be left to
be hosted by Xbox users.
My question is: Is that how UC is going to work? My guess is .. yes..
Now.. What I want to know is.. isn't the AVERAGE cable or DSL connection
only going to support a 4-8 player game?
Currently an FPS game requires at least 5000bytes/player to truly be a good
broadband FPS game... so a 16 player game needs AT LEAST a 640kbit
connection to host smoothly... realistically most users Upstream bandwidth
is around 256kbits.. enough for MAYBE an 8 player game.
SO.. Is MS going to be providing the servers or are MOST UC servers going
to be hosted on 256kbit or lower connections.. meaning that MOST games
are going to be 4-8 player MAX?
Or.. or you guys lowering the bytes-per player requirement? Doesn't that
compromise the quality of the game? XBL is supposed to be about a broadband
gaming service, and to truly take advantage of this an Unreal based game
needs to have AT LEAST 5000 bytes/sec as the player data rate. Am I off
base here or am I correct?
Also, is it a dedicated server? How is it that a UT2k3 server for instance running
16 players DEDICATED can hog over 100mb of RAM but an XBox server
is going to run when people are PLAYING the game on the server?
PLEASE answer my question, this has been part of an ongoing debate about
XBL and I think gamers deserve the answer. If MS is hosting the servers,
than this point is moot.. but I am under the impression (despite preview
reports) that XBox users will be left to host games.
Thanks,
Aaron
And the reply:
We use around 3500 bytes per player and there will be some UC servers at higher bandwidths. The majority of the servers will be user created though.
You will be able to run the game in dedicated server mode. We have done tons of memory optimizations on UC so it runs well within 64 megs.
James
More questions:
Interesting, only 3500 bytes per player? So despite the fact that XBL is supposed to be a broadband only service you have lowerd the player's bytes/sec. to more of a 56k-like experience? I'm assuming that UC's netcode isn't any more or less efficient than UT2k3 for instance, which, according to Epic is ideally set AT LEAST at a 5000bytes/sec. per player setting. What about voice data? Is that included in the 3500 bytes/player?
Even at 3500 bytes/player that STILL means someone is going to need at least a 448kbit upstream bandwidth to support 16 players (if each player is alone on their XBox). That is IF the voice data is included in that 3500 bytes/sec. If voice data is more, than we are back at square one. Considering a LOT of people out there are capped at 128kbits/sec that could pose a problem.
One more question: If 4 players are on the same XBox, does this lighten the load for the server machine? Basically, when people are playing from the same XBox don't they only cause 1 players worth of load on the servers upstream bandwidth? That would make it much easier to host a game if more people are sharing XBox's... BUT.. this might also cause aggrivation for those who don't happen to have freinds with them.... I'm forseeing a lot of "get kicked unless you bring 3 or 4" servers...
Thanks for yout time,
Aaron
Final reply:
-------------------------
It's not optimized for a 56k experience. We need it optimized for the very reason you pointed out... that we need a maximum number of players on a DSL server.
Voice data is peer to peer so it does not necessarily take up server bandwidth.
Yes certainly someone trying to host a 16 player game with a 128kbit/s upload stream will notice significant performance slowdown.
Yes, I believe when multiple people are playing from a single Xbox, the datastream is more optimized.
Overall, hopefully there will be a significant number of higher bandwidth servers available.
James
Can't say I'm too thrilled. Alot of people have their upstream capped at verily shitty levels, like 64-128k. I think many of us were under the impression that all of our games would be hosted from the $2billion MS server farm. If thats only for MMORPGs (with a premium), I think it'd be wise to find some space for FPSs in there, because 4-8 player DM is not going to win any hardened PC gamers over.
And kind of OT: Supposedly PSO is going to cost $8.95 a month to play it on GC. Think MS will be smart and swallow the cost for that? It's not like we're talking Everquest-style hosting requirements, more like Diablo.
zurich