Yep, if the vendors switch to using dedicated servers, then we don't really need to jump over NAT since the servers will have public addresses.
Server based game augmentations. The transition to cloud. Really possible?
- Thread starter Shifty Geezer
- Start date
Yep, if the vendors switch to using dedicated servers, then we don't really need to jump over NAT since the servers will have public addresses.
itsmydamnation
Veteran
Anything said about IPv6 support? every networking having atleast its own /64 would make the problem go away.
Microsoft are investing 700 million USD in an Xbox Live server farm situated in the estate of Iowa.
It will power Xbox One's online cloud features and Office 365.
http://spong.com/article/29893/Microsoft-Investing-USD700m-in-Xbox-Live-Server-Farm
It will power Xbox One's online cloud features and Office 365.
http://spong.com/article/29893/Microsoft-Investing-USD700m-in-Xbox-Live-Server-Farm
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Some talk from Respawn
http://www.respawn.com/news/lets-talk-about-the-xbox-live-cloud/
http://www.respawn.com/news/lets-talk-about-the-xbox-live-cloud/
hesido
Regular
To sum it up, TitanFall uses cloud for dedicated servers. Quite honest talk, that doesn't talk around the subject like "moving AI to the cloud". But basically, what he said was they no longer had to set up a worldwide network of dedicated servers, MS will handle the scope for them, and that it was quite cheap. A dedicated server structure available cheap to developers is a good thing indeed.
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Yeah, they're not really doing anything that hasn't been done before with AI bots and dedicated servers. Your mech (when you aren't in it) and some other AIs will be on the dedicated server. There isn't any AI run on the local machine.
Some things about the titanfall article
"“And they’ll host our game servers for other platforms, too! Titanfall uses the Xbox Live Cloud to run dedicated servers for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox 360. " - Er yay
"Most importantly to us, Microsoft priced it so that it’s far more affordable than other hosting options – their goal here is to get more awesome games, not to nickel-and-dime developers.” - Looks like its going to be devs paying for it not publishers, there is some good there as devs care more and are less likely to be about the bottom line than publishers, so i would hope they would fund the servers longer. The bad : devs have less money than publishers and they have a tendancy to disappear a lot quicker than publishers.
Finally there is the question of how long ms will run the servers (if a game has no more than 5 active players at a time is it worth their while dedicating resources to it?) also am i correct in thinking ms shut down the servers for the original xbox after 8 years ?
"“And they’ll host our game servers for other platforms, too! Titanfall uses the Xbox Live Cloud to run dedicated servers for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox 360. " - Er yay
"Most importantly to us, Microsoft priced it so that it’s far more affordable than other hosting options – their goal here is to get more awesome games, not to nickel-and-dime developers.” - Looks like its going to be devs paying for it not publishers, there is some good there as devs care more and are less likely to be about the bottom line than publishers, so i would hope they would fund the servers longer. The bad : devs have less money than publishers and they have a tendancy to disappear a lot quicker than publishers.
Finally there is the question of how long ms will run the servers (if a game has no more than 5 active players at a time is it worth their while dedicating resources to it?) also am i correct in thinking ms shut down the servers for the original xbox after 8 years ?
hesido
Regular
I don't think he meant developers paying for servers in its true sense, I don't see how you can make such a distinction. I think it is publishers responsibility to keep the infrastructure, and I don't think there's a policy of Microsoft to let devs pay for online money instead of publishers, they wouldn't care where that money came from.
As for not-so popular games shutting down servers, that has always been a problem in the console world, and some games' servers are shut down not because they are no longer popular, but to make way for the next game in publisher's line, suddenly you'll have to buy the next installment of John Madden for example. So that's a valid concern. However, since MS can virtualize servers, that should lessen the cost of having to keep those servers. And they are all being subsidized by the Xbox Live subscribers, but they'll still shutdown servers for old games despite this, and I don't think they have been ethical before, and they won't be ethical in future.
If they were so ethical, they'd let people hire their own servers, but they don't. There could be a period like 2-3 years where the publishers guarantee dedicated servers, and after that, there should be a guarantee that gamers can rent their own servers at subsidized prices for their games. It could be an industry standard.
Is there a need for Microsoft to shut servers down? Azure does load-balancing, so it'll create and delete dedicated servers based on the number of people playing or requesting to play with matchmaking. You could have the application in the cloud and not have it instantiated until people jump online to play. More likely at some point the publisher/developer will decide to shut it down because they no longer wish to pay for it, which is pretty much the same in any online hosted environment. At some point every game that relies on online resources will be shut down unless they allow players to pay for, or implement, their own dedicated servers.
In my opinion, server based game augmentation with rendering still handled on the client side is mostly a red herring offered by MS.
The fact that MS didn't little to enlighten us of the benefits of cloud computing should give anyone pause. You don't invest practically a billion dollar into servers unless you have a clear ideal of how that investment will positively impact consumers encouraging them to give you more money.
Im guessing alot of us if not all have seen the 9-24 document that outlines a transition to stream based gaming within 3-4 years of launch of the XB1. Whats the point of developing solutions for server based client side rendering augmentation when it will be ursurped in such a short period of time? Some of you may point that the time frame might not be accurate but that is a time frame estimated by MS. So how motivated will MS be to come up or encourage augmentations when they believe their stream based solution is around the corner? How encouraged will devs be when MS provides an ETA for their streaming solution?
Anything applicable to a MMO is possible on MS's cloud but I highly doubt we going to see server based client side rendering augmentation mature to the point of producing a significant impact other than different levels of merging of SP and MMO game mechanics. We probably won't see what MS's cloud is capable of until a streaming solution is presented to developers and they have had time to work with it.
Once MS transitions to a cloud based streaming solution then potential for a XB1 gamer's experience goes sky high.
The fact that MS didn't little to enlighten us of the benefits of cloud computing should give anyone pause. You don't invest practically a billion dollar into servers unless you have a clear ideal of how that investment will positively impact consumers encouraging them to give you more money.
Im guessing alot of us if not all have seen the 9-24 document that outlines a transition to stream based gaming within 3-4 years of launch of the XB1. Whats the point of developing solutions for server based client side rendering augmentation when it will be ursurped in such a short period of time? Some of you may point that the time frame might not be accurate but that is a time frame estimated by MS. So how motivated will MS be to come up or encourage augmentations when they believe their stream based solution is around the corner? How encouraged will devs be when MS provides an ETA for their streaming solution?
Anything applicable to a MMO is possible on MS's cloud but I highly doubt we going to see server based client side rendering augmentation mature to the point of producing a significant impact other than different levels of merging of SP and MMO game mechanics. We probably won't see what MS's cloud is capable of until a streaming solution is presented to developers and they have had time to work with it.
Once MS transitions to a cloud based streaming solution then potential for a XB1 gamer's experience goes sky high.
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More than just dedicated servers
here are a few posts form some Respawn devs on GAF
here are a few posts form some Respawn devs on GAF
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=66274466&postcount=581
Could you point where we (we being Respawn) have said anything different? I myself did probably 60 interviews during the course of E3, and a lot of it ended up being about DA CLOWDS. I honestly couldn't tell you a single thing I said, as it was such a brain-melting whirlwind three days - but if there's something being reported that is misleading or inaccurate I'd want to set the record straight.
The real deal is that Jon Shiring posted an article describing how we're Microsofts cloud for Titanfall, and then a bunch of other people from other companies have said a bunch of other stuff. What Microsoft's cloud is actually capable of is much broader than what we're currently doing, so its not our place to talk about what anyone is doing or will theoretically be able to do in the future. There's also the gotcha that we're still a long ways off from finishing the game, and so there's a lot of stuff still "up in the air" that when we're asked we have to just not comment on, or be vague about. Just the nature of an unfinished game.
The reality, though, is that we wouldn't have attempted to make this game in the way we're doing without that infrastructure in place. When Jon wrote that the costs related to creating and maintaining dedicated server farms across the globe is "oh my god we can't afford that", he isn't joking. Could cost more than the actual development costs - especially considering our studio size.
We really want to be as transparent as possible with our fans and customers (well, as far as PR and marketing lets us). If there's anyone feeling like we're misleading them, I'd love to know where the confusion is and talk about it. Thats the whole reason Jon wrote this article, there was a lot of internet speculation and confusion as to what we're doing - and we wanted to make it clear.
I must say that I respect Respawn developers of their openness and transparency. Their thinking about cloud matches mine. Cloud infrastructure brings lots of new interesting possibilities. Offloading (semi) static lighting calculations could be one possible way to use cloud (as spherical harmonic probes are bandwidth effective to stream). This wouldn't be a big gain for games without dynamic (large scale destructible) environments, but (when combined with other technologies) would allow much more dynamic game worlds that we have now. Static baked lighting (lightmaps and probes stored to disc) is one of the big reasons why game worlds are mainly static in current generation games. We just do not have enough computational power to calculate full global illumination in real time yet (it must be baked).
But won't next-gen machines have enough power for GI solutions? Certainly on PC it's possible now, although Epic dropped their SVOGI approach. How should CryEngine's light propagation volumes fair on next-gen consoles, or are they not up to snuff?
Fair play to Respawn for communicating so openly. They do seem to be 'just' doing the scalable dedicated server thing though, they're also doing server side bots (hey Q1 how are ya?) and 'physics' (presumably for said bots). Great stuff and it helps even the field a bit for MP but it's not exactly paradigm changing (unless you've only ever played p2p MP).
The lighting stuff and other such potential benefits are still only pipe dreams and as the dev pays for these resources rather than the player (via XBL) how likely are we to see these benefits outside of MP games? Titanfall is an MP game with SP elements from the coverage I've seen and will likely include micro-transactions and DLC galore to maintain a constant revenue stream to pay for the cloud.
Could an SP developer utilise the cloud without that recurring revenue stream from MP? How long would a dev afford the annual cost for what would be very frontloaded revenue stream (release=$$$$, year 2=$, year 3=?)? I had hoped that XBL covered the cost of the cloud then it would be something every dev could utilise without worrying about chaining themselves to a multi-year cost to MS/Amazon/whomsoever. It's a shame it's a dev contract as I highly doubt we'll see many of the potential benefits of cloud in SP games now. And if we do how do we play these games when the cloud contract between MS and whoever ends?
The lighting stuff and other such potential benefits are still only pipe dreams and as the dev pays for these resources rather than the player (via XBL) how likely are we to see these benefits outside of MP games? Titanfall is an MP game with SP elements from the coverage I've seen and will likely include micro-transactions and DLC galore to maintain a constant revenue stream to pay for the cloud.
Could an SP developer utilise the cloud without that recurring revenue stream from MP? How long would a dev afford the annual cost for what would be very frontloaded revenue stream (release=$$$$, year 2=$, year 3=?)? I had hoped that XBL covered the cost of the cloud then it would be something every dev could utilise without worrying about chaining themselves to a multi-year cost to MS/Amazon/whomsoever. It's a shame it's a dev contract as I highly doubt we'll see many of the potential benefits of cloud in SP games now. And if we do how do we play these games when the cloud contract between MS and whoever ends?
Isn't the idea that you push as much as you can to the cloud so that you can do more on the local box? So even if you could do the GI locally, you push it to the cloud if you can?
Yes, but cloud-based prebaked light probes are an inferior lighting solution to realtime GI. In terms of quality, a PC with a realtime GI solver should look better (won't need AO hacks and lighting and shadowing will be fully dynamic) than a cloud-based lighting engine on console. If you can't manage realtime GI, then prebaked lighting could be done locally, and in that case that could be farmed off to the cloud to release local resources, but it'll be a shame if we're still tied to faked lighting solutions and the cloud can't help with that.
Not if they drop the always online requirement. The developers will have to develop and test both offline and online modes for XB1/PS4/...
Even when you can use cloud, there are also more cost involved in wasting server resources vs the local resources. Some of the ideas may sound nice on paper but when you put on the business hat, you may shy away from them.
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