Unfortunatly there is no easy way to solve this, lockstep isn't suitable for actiongames or games with alot of players (as it has to pause if a player lags), remember though that its only the server than needs 90kb/s upload (allthough it will be more in the end, i'd guess closer to 200kb/s , clients won't have to send as much though and if the server sends a total of 200kb/s split between 10 players each player only has to recieve ~20kb/s. (You probably have to send updates for FPS controlled units/players a bit more frequently as they are less predictable)
This should be perfectly playable as long as the server has a decent connection and you don't feel the need to support players on dialup. (0.5Mbps DSL should be capable of recieving around 30-40kilobytes per second even on a bad day and these days few people have worse connections that that), you could also cut the playercount down to 8 and total units to 240 (still 30 units per player) which gives you a fairly big bandwidth reduction without, hopefully changing the gameplay too much. Maybe even let the server hosts choose how many players to support as broadband quality varies greatly between countries (in areas where 100/100 is common you could probably go as high as 32 players).
You can also avoid sending updates for units a player can't see to save a bit of bandwidth in the average case, It won't help for the worst case but it should improve performance in the average case. (Players can probably tolerate a little bit of lag in the rare event where all players decide to smash all their units together at the same time and place)
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#2SimonForsman
Posted 31 July 2012 - 08:41 AM
Unfortunatly there is no easy way to solve this, lockstep isn't suitable for actiongames or games with alot of players (as it has to pause if a player lags), remember though that its only the server than needs 90kb/s upload (allthough it will be more in the end, i'd guess closer to 200kb/s , clients won't have to send as much though and if the server sends a total of 200kb/s split between 10 players each player only has to recieve ~20kb/s.
This should be perfectly playable as long as the server has a decent connection and you don't feel the need to support players on dialup. (0.5Mbps DSL should be capable of recieving around 30-40kilobytes per second even on a bad day and these days few people have worse connections that that), you could also cut the playercount down to 8 and total units to 240 (still 30 units per player) which gives you a fairly big bandwidth reduction without, hopefully changing the gameplay too much. Maybe even let the server hosts choose how many players to support as broadband quality varies greatly between countries (in areas where 100/100 is common you could probably go as high as 32 players).
You can also avoid sending updates for units a player can't see to save a bit of bandwidth in the average case, It won't help for the worst case but it should improve performance in the average case. (Players can probably tolerate a little bit of lag in the rare event where all players decide to smash all their units together at the same time and place)
This should be perfectly playable as long as the server has a decent connection and you don't feel the need to support players on dialup. (0.5Mbps DSL should be capable of recieving around 30-40kilobytes per second even on a bad day and these days few people have worse connections that that), you could also cut the playercount down to 8 and total units to 240 (still 30 units per player) which gives you a fairly big bandwidth reduction without, hopefully changing the gameplay too much. Maybe even let the server hosts choose how many players to support as broadband quality varies greatly between countries (in areas where 100/100 is common you could probably go as high as 32 players).
You can also avoid sending updates for units a player can't see to save a bit of bandwidth in the average case, It won't help for the worst case but it should improve performance in the average case. (Players can probably tolerate a little bit of lag in the rare event where all players decide to smash all their units together at the same time and place)
#1SimonForsman
Posted 31 July 2012 - 08:36 AM
Unfortunatly there is no easy way to solve this, lockstep isn't suitable for actiongames or games with alot of players (as it has to pause if a player lags), remember though that its only the server than needs 90kb/s upload (allthough it will be more in the end, i'd guess closer to 200kb/s , clients won't have to send as much though and if the server sends a total of 200kb/s split between 10 players each player only has to recieve ~20kb/s.
This should be perfectly playable as long as the server has a decent connection and you don't feel the need to support players on dialup. (0.5Mbps DSL should be capable of recieving around 30-40kilobytes per second even on a bad day and these days few people have worse connections that that), you could also cut the playercount down to 8 and total units to 240 (still 30 units per player) which gives you a fairly big bandwidth reduction without, hopefully changing the gameplay too much. Maybe even let the server hosts choose how many players to support as broadband quality varies greatly between countries (in areas where 100/100 is common you could probably go as high as 32 players)
This should be perfectly playable as long as the server has a decent connection and you don't feel the need to support players on dialup. (0.5Mbps DSL should be capable of recieving around 30-40kilobytes per second even on a bad day and these days few people have worse connections that that), you could also cut the playercount down to 8 and total units to 240 (still 30 units per player) which gives you a fairly big bandwidth reduction without, hopefully changing the gameplay too much. Maybe even let the server hosts choose how many players to support as broadband quality varies greatly between countries (in areas where 100/100 is common you could probably go as high as 32 players)