Data Mining

craigp · Post by **craigp** » Wed May 16, 2007 8:52 pm

Raveen wrote:QUOTE (Raveen @ May 16 2007, 12:46 PM) Get the admins on side and provide a low lag server, that should be a big help for you.

Sure. What kind of power (connection, RAM, etc) are you guys using for your servers? I think we can handle it without an upgrade, but I'd hate to be wrong right when I need to be right.

-Craig

Post by **Raveen** » Wed May 16, 2007 8:59 pm

As far as the machine goes, Alleg likely won't stretch it, it's a 7 year old game after all. Connection wise you shouldn't have too many problems, most of the lag issues are latency and location based as far as I can tell.

craigp · Post by **craigp** » Wed May 16, 2007 9:26 pm

Raveen wrote:QUOTE (Raveen @ May 16 2007, 12:59 PM) location based as far as I can tell.

Hope nobody has a problem with Boston...

-Craig

Dogbones · Post by **Dogbones** » Wed May 16, 2007 11:05 pm

We'd like to look at the code, or at least have the option to, I don't think we are talking about a full blown code review...

As far as anything proprietary, I'd take a good look at Microsoft's release agreement. I don't have access to the code from my office (my policy) but the verbiage is either in the README or a License file, should be a .txt file in any event.

It basically says any modifications you add are theirs IF they want it. AFAIK there is no requirement that your mods be made public (shared with us for instance) but if THEY want it, they can take it.

You are going to have to dangle a pretty nice carrot to get people to get to your server through the beta lobby. In the past it has taken a good bit of begging/pleading to get more than a small core group of dedicated players to use the beta lobby.

The server code is fairly non-cpu intensive and has a pretty low memory foot print (less than 100MB). The key is your ISP's back bone and low latency.

Dog

Post by **TheBored** » Wed May 16, 2007 11:13 pm

When I say 'look at the code' I mean 'review the code'.

As for the easy fix, no one knows about it. In a stickied poll in the general forum, we are lucky to get 20% of the active community to vote. The fix is posted in the helpline, where most don't read (because the problems don't deal with them).

As for incentive, you better offer one crazy server to get people to move. I wasn't present at all R# beta tests, but even that didn't attract a ton of people... and that was Alleg's future

Not trying to get in your way though. Just trying to make the point clear that if you want real results (not 5v5 crap games), you need to get the code checked and distributed to the main servers.

TB

Adaven · Post by **Adaven** » Thu May 17, 2007 2:12 am

We'll never know what will happen until they try it. Maybe everyone will flock to the beta server for this, maybe they won't. Even If there isn't a gangbuster response out of the gate, so what? they spend a little more time and try something else (like putting it on main servers).

If you build it they will come... eventually. Good luck craig, I look forward to seeing what you guys turn out.

edit: Oh and if you want a possible further lure, talk with Avalanche (I think) about the server updates fix he was working on. Basically there is an old "fudge factor" in the code that cuts the number of updates sent to the clients in half. Undoing this should help big games not get really laggy when lots of people are in the same sector. Any sort of "lag-reducing change" would probably attract a lot of people to play on it.

madpeople · Post by **madpeople** » Thu May 17, 2007 1:33 pm

people seem to like looking at their stats (i think).

make sure you have a way to display the stats when you want people to play so its a "play the game and look at your stats after) instead of "play the game, and in a few months time you can see your stats when we've written the webpage to display them"

then you will get people talking about the stats which will tell other people about then (viral marketing?)

apathos · Post by **apathos** » Thu May 17, 2007 2:14 pm

I tend to agree--if there was a good way to get the word out, I think a lot of people would go for this. But it'd have to be a good way, like a news item on the front page, or a MOTD, or even an ASGS broadcast. But all those decisions are left to the admins.

I also am admiring your daring, bold, and courageous endeavor to accomplish such a difficult task. But I assume you know what you're doing more than I do, and as long as everything is planned for appropriately, this could be a great thing. I look forward to seeing how it goes!

craigp · Post by **craigp** » Thu May 17, 2007 2:48 pm

Well, we're actually getting data now. Now it's just a matter of defining what exactly events to track. So, whatever the outcome, the server works. /mrgreen.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="mrgreen.gif" />

There will be a way to browse the data. We're not entirely sure which approach we're taking, but you'll be able to see the data in some way.

What's this "easy fix" stuff? I really don't want to make any changes to the source that aren't directly related to collecting data. Are you saying I have to?

-Craig

madpeople · Post by **madpeople** » Thu May 17, 2007 2:52 pm

there was a quick hack by ms that halves how much data is sent per second or something like that to reduce bandwidth needs of players - when 56k was king.

basically if you remove it it will make your server more attractive as you will have additional stats and your server will be able to support bigger games with less lag.

you don't have to, but it may make people want to use your server