Eclipse networking capacity

[Ruins of Hell]

I would first worry about getting 200 users online at one time. That would be the best way to check, seeing as it mainly depends on bandwidth, location of players, and other factors which determine it. As with any online game you're going to get some lag if the server is on the other side of the Earth. Try using Eclipse for a while, and if you begin to see speed decreases as your userbase increases, you should start coding your own engine.

[Tivoilos]

As Stephen said don't hand in the faster programming types for VB6 dude, it's worthless VB6 is outdated and I am sure it's not even really supported anymore. Go with C++ or C use Irrlicht or Ogre3D hell even SDL would work depends what you want to do then add some winsock into it multithread it or use select if your not that good with threads an then go from there. EO is a good engine for people that don't want to reinvent the wheel but I like reinventing xD

[Torraske]

Soul:
Is your info about the 100 players ingame fresh? Or is it for some years ago? Because since it is near to what I need, maybe the actual computers can handle it better.

Tivoilos:
Irrlicht an Ogre3D, as far as I know are 3D oriented, and I need a 2D. I think SDL is my best choice if I do it from scratch

No ofence, but I was wondering, if a lot of guys in this community suggest me to write a new engine, for an old 2D game. Why are you supporting it? Is it only for learning?

I thought Eclipse was fine for a simple 2D game with 200 players online

Thanks for the replies at the momment guys

[damian666]

there is a difference between supporting a engine, and hyping it past its capacities ya know…

yes we support EO, but we arent going to state its the best out there, compared with C and whatnot.

it will work fine for small games, but anything bigger is just not doable, period.

Dami

[Torraske]

@Damian666:

> there is a difference between supporting a engine, and hyping it past its capacities ya know…
>
> yes we support EO, but we arent going to state its the best out there, compared with C and whatnot.
>
> it will work fine for small games, but anything bigger is just not doable, period.
>
> Dami

I see, but I think my project is "small".

A 2D game with 200 users ingame

Do you think Eclipse is for an smaller project than it?

[damian666]

well, on here we dont call that small, almost no eclipse game has ever reached 200 online players…

Dami

[Torraske]

Oh, ok

I understand now why it was so confuse for several guys.

Anyway, when I say 200 users online, I am thinking it as a maximun number, or a peak.
I guess it will have about 100 players ingame as average

[Ruins of Hell]

@Torraske:

> No ofence, but I was wondering, if a lot of guys in this community suggest me to write a new engine, for an old 2D game. Why are you supporting it? Is it only for learning?
>
> I thought Eclipse was fine for a simple 2D game with 200 players online

If you really have the skills needed to make your own engine, go for it. We aren't bashing Eclipse, but we are suggesting that making your own engine is better in every aspect of programming. If you have been using C++ for so long, it shouldn't be a hard task. The Eclipse Engine is intended for people either a) willing to rewrite the engine for their needs or b) younger people who wish to use Eclipse for fun.

Anyway, 200 players online is "small" compared to some of the other stuff you see, but here, we are indie-developers, without much funds or money. 200 players is not small. You're managing 200 TCP connections at once and it's going to get messy, no matter what you do. The key is having good server software able to hold 200 TCP connections, or to use UDP + ACKs to decrease load.

As for the 200 players, like I said, we're indie. We're not telling you that Eclipse is for learning purposes, we're telling you getting 200 players online without funding, marketing, etc. is hard. If you have a dedicated server, good marketing, I'm sure you'll do fine.

That being said, although Eclipse games have had more than 200 users registered, (I think Crystalshire had 800 or so within the first month, not much advertising involved), but nobody has ever really managed to test how many Eclipse can handle exactly. It will be an interesting experience if I ever manage to get the time to organize it.

tl;dr: Indie Game Makers aren't heavily funded, never had that high amount of players.

[Mikekan13]

> The key is having good server software able to hold 200 TCP connections, or to use UDP + ACKs to decrease load.

To be fair. Wow and several other mmos don't use UDP

[Tivoilos]

Torraske: Ogre, and Irrlicht are 3D but you can create a 2D game with 3D graphics with them. Then you'll have much more features for your graphics engine of your game. Also Eclipse is great if you want to use something that is limited. If your willing to learn VB then go for it, It wont hurt you can do anything you want with the engine as long as you dont say you built the whole thing.

[Ruins of Hell]

@Mikekan13:

> To be fair. Wow and several other mmos don't use UDP

WoW and other MMOs are allowed to not use UDP, they have immense amount of resources and power. For them it's easier just to use TCP. The reason I suggested UDP is it's faster.

[Tivoilos]

@Soul:

> WoW and other MMOs are allowed to not use UDP, they have immense amount of resources and power. For them it's easier just to use TCP. The reason I suggested UDP is it's faster.

I wouldn't use UDP it's faster but you may lose some data while sending, TCP is much more reliable

[Torraske]

Soul, I am from Argentina

I dont have enough founds to make the marketing and the other things as you said.

This project is for a community who has a very old game and want to make a clone for it. (Because their server is about to close and they want to keep playing)

Anyway, I restarted my search for some tool and I found this: (I put the link if someone is insterested, I am not sure if it is allowed in this forum, let me know)

http://arianne.sourceforge.net/engine/marauroa.html

I didnt study it very much, but it seems to be a MMO engine written in java. It seems to support hundred of connections so I guess it can works

[Ruins of Hell]

I personally think you should try Eclipse first, and then switch if it doesn't suit you nicely. Sure, you'll lose some work, but chances are you won't have as many players as you suggest.

[Mikekan13]

> WoW and other MMOs are allowed to not use UDP, they have immense amount of resources and power. For them it's easier just to use TCP. The reason I suggested UDP is it's faster.

Udp is great for a Shooter/Action game where you can have dropped packets. Faster isnt always better.  ;)

> I personally think you should try Eclipse first, and then switch if it doesn't suit you nicely. Sure, you'll lose some work, but chances are you won't have as many players as you suggest.

Once you have a completed game it is also a great form of pseudo code for a different language. All the logic done you just have to translate it.

[Torraske]

Yes, maybe. I will research a bit more about what can I do.

Thanks for your replies

[mrmiguu]

@Tivoilos:

> I wouldn't use UDP it's faster but you may lose some data while sending, TCP is much more reliable

You can set up your server to send back an "OK!" packet if it has received the datagram packet. This is one solution to counteract the unreliability of the user-datagram protocol.

[Robin]

The bottleneck is your internet connection's bandwidth. If you do find another system bottlenecking then you can easily improve it. There's plenty of ways you can optimise the engine's code. Hell, you can easily optimise the bandwidth usage if need be.

There is no way for us to tell you how many users the game can handle because of all the factors involved. If you're renting out a VPS with a solid connection then you shouldn't have any problems.

[Godlord]

@Tivoilos:

> I wouldn't use UDP it's faster but you may lose some data while sending, TCP is much more reliable

@Mikekan13:

> Udp is great for a Shooter/Action game where you can have dropped packets. Faster isnt always better.  ;)

UDP is great for _anything_, but it involves designing a protocol that's made to use UDP specifically. TCP is basically similar to a UDP-protocol that uses acknowledgement systems to make the data transfer reliable and in-order. Considering you hardly ever need the in-order byte arrival, UDP is most-likely to be better, that is, if you know how to actually design for UDP.

Let me get you a simple example: most people will think files have to be transfered as a stream of bytes, which obviously works, but is not the most optimal way, and TCP will **never allow the most optimal way** (no exceptions!). The best way to send a file is through UDP, you simply split the file into chunks, then you send those chunks and the client acknowledges you if it got them. You simply resend packets that haven't been acknowledged for a period of n milliseconds/seconds, and send new packets for every packet that has been acknowledged.

Considering TCP to be superior over UDP is a fool's move, but it's a good solution if you want the least work and are frightened of messing it up, since that's easy to do.

Regards,
  Stephan.

[Torraske]

I think TCP/UDP may be important, but the connection protocol and the way that game solves the client/server is also interesting.

For example, if the server sends a packet every time a player suffers a change of mana, or if takes every change in 500ms and send 1 packet instead 2 (or more).

And it do it for every change (not only mana), it can be considered an optimization, and it will directly avoid sending a lot of packets.

[Godlord]

@Torraske:

> I think TCP/UDP may be important, but the connection protocol and the way that game solves the client/server is also interesting.
>
> For example, if the server sends a packet every time a player suffers a change of mana, or if takes every change in 500ms and send 1 packet instead 2 (or more).
>
> And it do it for every change (not only mana), it can be considered an optimization, and it will directly avoid sending a lot of packets.

Of course you should do that where and when it is applicable, but that wasn't my point. My point was that people shouldn't think of UDP as being inferior to TCP because it isn't a fully implemented protocol and should therefore only ever use TCP. As I already stated, you can use TCP, but then please do it with the right reasons to do so.

Regards,
  Stephan.

[Torraske]

@S.J.R.:

> Of course you should do that where and when it is applicable, but that wasn't my point. My point was that people shouldn't think of UDP as being inferior to TCP because it isn't a fully implemented protocol and should therefore only ever use TCP. As I already stated, you can use TCP, but then please do it with the right reasons to do so.
>
> Regards,
>   Stephan.

Yes I agree.

But I tried to guide the thread to its topic "Ecplipse networking".

[Tivoilos]

TCP/UDP have there own uses.