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Star Citizen has now raised over $800m, with still no release in sight (www.eurogamer.net)

submitted 3 days ago by inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca

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[–] Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world 19 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Server meshing being "unmatched" is mostly marketing BS.

You have examples of MMO games leveraging server meshing (with Pentium CPUs) from 20+ years ago.

[–] QuadratureSurfer@lemmy.world 17 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I mean, that really depends on how you define server meshing.

Star Citizen is the only MMO I've seen where you can be standing in one server, look at players/objects in a different server (a few feet away) and actually shoot/interact with those objects without noticing any difference.

The only way you can even tell they're in a different server is by keeping an eye on a server identifier using some console commands, and walking/flying over the boundary.

In every other MMO the servers are either completely separate, or there's some sort of loading screen between areas.

[–] Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

This is from an article on Dark Age of Camelot from 2003:

The heart of Camelot, it turns out, isn't in the English countryside but in Fairfax, Virginia. There Mythic keeps 120 dual-processor Pentium servers running linux. Each group of six servers runs what mythic calls a gamespace—a virtual world inhabited by thousands of players. The idea is to create different gamespaces for different types of players.

Design decisions also reflect the need to keep players happy. While each gamespace could conceivably handle 20,000 simultaneous players, Mythic limits them to about 4,000 players each, adding new gamespaces when necessary instead of increasing the load on the ones already up. "If you have too many people, the worlds get too crowded," says Denton. "The last thing you want is to be bumping into thousands of people."

We also have multiple example of CIG trying to market common tech (serialized variable!) as some of milestone.

[–] QuadratureSurfer@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That doesn't sound like server meshing, that just sounds like 6 servers sharing the work load for one area. Most likely a case where one server handles all AI/NPC logic, another handles trading/transactions, another handles health/damage/combat, another handles chat, etc.

Using your Dark Age of Camelot example, server meshing would be expanding the map using 2 different "gamespaces" and allowing players the ability to transition between those gamespaces seamlessly without any loading screens and without realizing that they even crossed a boundary at some point. It let's you massively expand the area in which you can travel without loading screens.

[–] Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I stand by what I say. It is clear that CIG are being dishonest in terms of what they have achieved.

Server meshing is mostly a marketing project to maintain confidence in cash shop spend. Not saying people haven't worked on it, but the main aim is to keep selling JPEGs.

Using your Dark Age of Camelot example, server meshing would be expanding the map using 2 different “gamespaces” and allowing players the ability to transition between those gamespaces seamlessly without any loading screens and without realizing that they even crossed a boundary at some point. It let’s you massively expand the area in which you can travel without loading screens.

So a single dual core Pentium Pro CPU handles a shard of 4K players, with a comparable server CPU being limited exclusively to trading/transactions and another high end Pentium Pro being limited to (as per your description) a high traffic IRC server?

Do you have any sources on this? I am genuinely curious. I am happy to learn more about Dark Age of Camelot's architecture (even if I am wrong), but I also won't take CIG marketing/propaganda at face value.

[–] QuadratureSurfer@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Do you have any sources on this? I am genuinely curious.

I'd ask the same of you. I tried looking into it a bit more, but I couldn't find much information on how they actually split up resources among those 6 servers. I was just listing out some examples of how they could separate the workload between them.

I'm not familiar with Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC) beyond what I can find scanning through some twitch streams. The maps seem tiny (big for its time, but tiny compared to Star Citizen). I am much more familiar with other games that are more comparable to Star Citizen's scale (like No Man's Sky, Eve Online, or Elite Dangerous).

In DAoC, I see that there are 4 different "Realms" that make up a gamespace. https://camelotinsider.github.io/albion.html

I'm not sure what's required to go from realm to realm. Looking at the map from that link it looks like there is some sort of separation between them.

I see loading screens for players jumping into caves:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt5lbZIdt50&t=70s
Which means that those are most likely handled by a different server.

I also see players being teleported when going into/out of some sort of fort:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOPy3WAlNFk&t=600s

For instance, the player walks up to the door and they can't see any of the players that are outside of the door/fort. Once they teleport outside of the fort, they look back and can't see any players that were inside (player tags/names). I'm certain that if anyone tried to peak in through the windows of the fort they wouldn't see players either.

Server meshing overcomes limitations like that.

So, it seems more likely that some of these 6 servers are dedicated to running different parts of the world and any interaction between those parts are handled with teleporting/loading screens. And then maybe 1 or 2 servers are dedicated to some universal backend database/services that brings everything together.

Most games work hard to disguise loading screens and these separation of boundaries. That's why we're seeing a lot more quick cutscenes between areas, or even animations where you crawl through a tight space and conveniently can't see what was on the other side before doing so. It's the easy way to handle things and that's totally fine.

It's something that Star Citizen doesn't do, which is why you can be inside a space station and look out the window at players flying around, or be inside a massive ship locked in FPS combat while the pilot is taking you through the wormhole that connects one solar system to another.