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.

[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.

[Black_Knyght]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

I once offered back at the birth of PBW.
I will gladly host for free an SEIV site. Full web, email, ftp, etc. An admin for the site (someone known here) can have an account. My systems have been available 24/7 for over 5 years now (for as long as Ive had this house, and will remain available for as long as I keep this house). I host online worlds and multiplayer games. A pbem server would be negligible load.
Some "references":
www.Dom3Minions.com
www.ShazzyShard.org
www.SDmud.org

Or it could always be a backup site kept up to date and quickly switched to in case of a problem with the primary site.

Gandalf Parker

That sounds like a DAMN FINE idea.

SE-PBW may be dead, but the sadness of it's loss doesn't have to remain. If we can do this, if we can rebuild a new site, then I say let's do so. there's surely enough interest still.

I'm in, and will do whatever I can to help!

[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.

[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]

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..