An Open Letter to the PBW Community

[Suicide Junkie]

GP:
Are you aware of the scale of the processing work?

Mid to late game SE4 turns can chew through more than 1000 Mhz-hours of CPU time for processing.
SE5 is generally a heavier load than SE4, due to the vision radii and combat mechanics.

[DarkAnt]

Hey Geo, thanks for hosting pbw for so long. Almost a decade is a quite long time to be hosting such a demanding site out of charity. I feel very old for being part of an online community for 9 years. I'm 22 now, which means I must have been playing SE4 since I was 14. I'd feel even older if it weren't for mac. Hi mac! *waves*. Thanks to your efforts I've made quite a few long term friendships which have grown past just playing video games. You did more than just host a server.

Take care Geo,
-darkant

[Gandalf Parker]

Really? I didnt think it would be worse than other games I host with far many more players and larger maps such as Dominions 3. I have 64 copies of it running at the same time. Not to mention online worlds.
Come to think of it I should have asked first if it is willing to run on a linux server.

[Captain Kwok]

I highly doubt that SE5 will run on a Linux system, even with command prompt turn processing.

[Fyron]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Really? I didnt think it would be worse than other games I host with far many more players and larger maps such as Dominions 3.

The map of Dominions 3 is much smaller than SE4, in terms of asset tracking. Even its largest maps have what, 60 locations? 100? SE4 has 13x13 locations per system, times up to 255. SEIV stock has about 9 planets per system, compared to 1 per territory in a game like Dominions, leading to many more resource/production objects to track and manage. Granted, its code probably isn't very efficient, but a system-based game is a bit more resource-intensive than a territory-based game.

[Gandalf Parker]

Well I suppose the linux could handle the web stuff, and then trasfer the files to my desktop machine for processing, then transfer them back. Not too hairy a notion if I setup samba for shared directories.

[Gandalf Parker]

Ahh I can see the load in that.

But actually the biggest maps of Dominions 3 (which Im famous for liking) is 1500 provinces. And on each turn-hosting they can all be active even if its still owned by independents unvisited by a player (since even indepts are susceptable to events which cause attacks or changes to their settings). It can support up to 91 players in a game.

The mud I host is 60000 rooms.

And a UO shard is pretty intensive.

But its moot. Unless it runs on linux, at least with a wine command, there would be a massive load running it.

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Ahh I can see the load in that.

But actually the biggest maps of Dominions 3 (which Im famous for liking) is 1500 provinces. And on each turn-hosting they can all be active even if its still owned by independents unvisited by a player (since even indepts are susceptable to events which cause attacks or changes to their settings). It can support up to 91 players in a game.

The mud I host is 60000 rooms.

And a UO shard is pretty intensive.

But its moot. Unless it runs on linux, at least with a wine command, there would be a massive load running it.

How about a virtualized copy of Windows 2000? You can virtualize Windows under Linux now. And Win 2000 is much lighter than XP but still compatible. The visual stuff requiring DirectX is not going to be needed on the turn processing machine, of course. It would be slower than a 'native' install but not by much. And the additional load would disappear when the task completed.

[Gandalf Parker]

Slow doesnt tend to matter in games that have a hosting once every 24 hours. I guess it might work depending on the load and how long it took.

[Fyron]

You've also got to consider SE5..