Chiming in late in the game here but I'll see if I can help

I think that your not really up to date on the cost of a vps or dedicated server. For your needs you don't need a self managed dedicated server and a T3 line running to your house. A managed dedicated server, such as the ones fromdedicated box start off at around $50 usd. You can fined ones that are a little cheaper then that if you search around but I like and have used dedicated box as well as others for dedicated servers.

As for VPS solutions they are even cheaper, domain.com vps start at around $35.00 usd. Again you might be able to find cheaper plans but from my own experience domain.coms' vps are quite stable and they don't over sell.

Now on to the other self hosting option. I run team speak and ventrillo as well as a full web server with php, pearl, ruby on rails, mysql and mail support off of an old AthlonXP system sitting in my closet.

I have had more then 300 people combined on ts and ventrillo at one time as well at times had more then 2000 people browsing a site I was hosting for a friend. All this was running off of my simple comcast home internet service.

Now in contrast I have also run game servers off of this same system and it bogged down at around 15 - 50 players depending on the type of game it was.

My point is that for testing purposes a simple home box is usually more then enough to get you going. But if you really want to go with a managed solution you can usually find a solution for around $25 - $50 a month.

If you look around on the net you can find numerous sites that list coupon codes for all the major hosts & dedicated/vps providers I have found coupon codes in the past that allowed me to run a nice dedicated box for $10 usd a month for six months the normal price of the box was $85 usd.

Look around and you will be sure to find the option that fits you best.

Quote:Original post by DobleSena...

That's why someone said it's highly specific to your implementation. In our project we don't relay chat on the game server because it's on a seperate server. We thought it was easier to scale with more users that way. There's no labeling going on either.

Of course a basic webhost won't allow you to use too much resources, but this isn't somewhere you'd put your game anyway. We use a Colocation solution ($90 per month) but the chat server is in a private residence.

Until we got more cash to throw at the project, we're not going to put any more colocation servers up. It isn't cost-effective this early in the process. Maybe you should keep one at home until you *really* need more power? Indies have to cut costs, remember. :)

Edit: Boooooh I'm slow. The poster before me said pretty much what I wanted to say. If you don't need the power, don't buy it before you need it. ;-)

Quote:Original post by Feralrath
My point is that for testing purposes a simple home box is usually more then enough to get you going. But if you really want to go with a managed solution you can usually find a solution for around $25 - $50 a month.

Ok, so my never-ending quest is over. There are no cheap solutions for beginners and it is all chat's fault.

I'll go with Dreamhost $25 / 250 RAM to see how it goes and from there depending on growth.

Sad everybody can have a webpage for $5 a month but not a web page with sandboxed chat for say $9 a month or even $15 but life's a beach.

Thank all you guys for the valuable feedback.

Quote:That's why someone said it's highly specific to your implementation.

And every other browser based social game.

Quote:In our project we don't relay chat on the game server because it's on a seperate server. We thought it was easier to scale with more users that way.

I'll take that into consideration for scaling purposes.

Quote:Maybe you should keep one at home until you *really* need more power?

My ISP would bring it down in no time.

Quote:Indies have to cut costs, remember. :)

I always have it in mind, nobody has used the word "cheap" more than me in this forum ;-)


Thanks for your advice.

Quote:Original post by DobleSena

Quote:Maybe you should keep one at home until you *really* need more power?

My ISP would bring it down in no time.

That's unlikely given the amount of people that host dedicated servers on their DSL line.

I would recommend getting a Virtual Private Server like the Linode 360 plan: http://www.linode.com. It costs $19.99 a month for 360MB of ram, 16GB storage, 200GB transfer. You get full root access to the linux flavor of your choice that they offer. You can delete your image and restart from scratch whenever you want. It's a great testing ground.

Quote:Original post by hplus0603

I think a stripped-down Linux will run just fine in 200 MB. You only really need cron, sshd, some kernel processes, plus your own game.

For testing I still use Debian net install version. I put it on flash drive, then boot off that using one of too many old motherboards lying around.

After logging in (the stuff mentioned above), used memory shows at 70Mb. I've also been running a full Ubuntu distribution (CD install) with X and everything else on a 256Mb machine as file server (Samba, remote X, SSHD, all the default cruft).

All of the above are stock kernels, no rebuilds or other hackery, so it would be possible to trim that down a bit.

I even managed to boot XP inside virtual box using 64MB total RAM. Of course, every other application failed due to insufficient resources, but still.

One thing you can do which gets around places like godaddy and 1&1 not hosting your chat server...

write the server portion of your chat system in PHP with a mysql database, and talk to the server via HTTP requests (check out LibCURL to do http requests from C++).

About a year ago I wrote a system that worked just like this for a commercial game that was released for the Wii, PC and DS so it deffinately works.

(And no, on the commercial game we didn't use a cheap hosting service haha)

If you do this on a web host, you just have to watch how much bandwidth you use, and what their policies are for using bandwidth.

Another alternative is to make a serverless (or nearly serverless) network, but that is a more sophisticated peice of software :P