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The best thing that's ever happened for multiplayer games?

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Re: The best thing that's ever happened for multiplayer games?

#61

Post by gafferongames »

Stevvo wrote: post #46
dwroberts wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although I agree it’s more like subsidising than democratising (and the price will just go back up eventually), the “just let players host it” is overly simplistic. There are tons of reasons to not do that - for example, companies and games that have not embraced modding do not want to be competing with modified/unofficial versions of their own games’ servers (as well as the cheating issue that can bring with it)

I don't know if any of those "tons of reasons" are actually valid; checking the top 10 multiplayer games on Steam by player count all of them allow player hosted servers.

Well, I can give several reasons why player hosted servers (like on their own machines) can be a bad idea:

* If the server player quits, the game is over, or the game developer has to implement host migration, which generally sucks. Game developers would prefer to spend this money and time making the game more fun instead.

* If the server player cooks a burrito in the microwave and is playing over wifi, maybe everybody's connection gets really bad for 60 seconds.

* At least in the USA, internet connections are highly asymmetric. It's getting better now, but 10-20 years ago, the vast majority of players would only have enough bandwidth to send and receive one client's worth of bandwidth, and would not be able to upload bandwidth for all players, especially as player counts increased.

* Cheating. The player hosting the server on their machine (if a PC) could modify code and/or memory to cheat.

* Lag switching / network shaping. The player hosting the server could time out, lag out or ruin the experience for a player they don't like.

* Host advantage. The final one is that the player hosting the server has zero lag, so has a huge advantage over other players.

For a competitive game at least, it's much better in 2026 to host your servers somewhere secure, or to have player hosted servers in a secure provider that doesn't let players do any of the things above.

Re: The best thing that's ever happened for multiplayer games?

#62

Post by gafferongames »

gafferongames wrote: post #61
Stevvo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if any of those "tons of reasons" are actually valid; checking the top 10 multiplayer games on Steam by player count all of them allow player hosted servers.

Well, I can give several reasons why player hosted servers (like on their own machines) can be a bad idea: * If the server player quits, the game is over, or the game developer has to implement host migration, which generally sucks. Game developers would prefer to spend this money and time making the game more fun instead. * If the server player cooks a burrito in the microwave and is playing over wifi, maybe everybo…

Oh shit and I forgot NAT issues. Depending on NAT, some players simply cannot host a game (without a relay server), no matter what they do.

Re: The best thing that's ever happened for multiplayer games?

#63

Post by gafferongames »

frollogaston wrote: post #57
dieselgate wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do know that you cannot trust Amazon.

I can trust Amazon in general. Just not going to assume that something that costs them a lot will remain free for me to use.

Maybe it doesn't cost them a lot, actually.

Re: The best thing that's ever happened for multiplayer games?

#64

Post by gafferongames »

thunderfork wrote: post #13
frollogaston wrote: post #7

"This is because my space game sends a lot of bandwidth. 10-20 megabits per-second per-client" What is this game doing that uses so much bandwidth? Pretty sure most games use something like 2mbps.

Yeah, this strikes me as strange. If you're sending that much data constantly, you're either syncing too much stuff too often, or you're not using compression when you should be (shout-out to Oodle) Something that this article doesn't mention that's going to be a big constraint: each of your clients parsing 20mbps of updates is going to have a performance impact on those clients. At the end of the day, you can only "…

> Something that this article doesn't mention that's going to be a big constraint: each of your clients parsing 20mbps of updates is going to have a performance impact on those clients.

I can assure you that parsing 20 megabits per-second worth of packets on a client is not a significant CPU cost.

Re: The best thing that's ever happened for multiplayer games?

#65

Post by frollogaston »

gafferongames wrote: post #58
gafferongames wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody has answered my question, which is if you can use more bandwidth, and in doing so supports a larger, more detailed world, then why not? Why limit yourself to bandwidth usage designed around the turn of the century? It's 2026. We can do better :)

> Now if you're the author, can you tell me what the space game does? A larger more detailed world with a higher player count, networked using quake style netcode techniques ala. Counterstrike, Titanfall, Apex Legends with snapshots and delta compression, client side prediction and lag compensation. In short, FPS netcode scaled up to 1000 players, but applied to a space game, not an FPS, because the world doesn't nee…

My question and its followups have all been reasonable and non-assuming. I was interested in some more details, but not anymore, best of luck.

Re: The best thing that's ever happened for multiplayer games?

#66

Post by gafferongames »

frollogaston wrote: post #52
gafferongames wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but how many games truly support 1000 players at the same quality level and fidelity of a AAA FPS? I can't think of any, even Eve: Online has time dilation and starts to chug when the action gets too intense. What if you could have a 1000 player FPS, and it was networked at the same fidelity of a AAA FPS? It would certainly use more bandwidth, but what if?

The largest player count FPSes I can think of are Battlefield and Fortnite. I don't think the bandwidth is the constraint on those, even if you really wanted to have 1000 people shooting at each other in the same spot.

The number of players per-Fortnite server is 100 players.

The number of players per-Battlefield server is 64 players.

Re: The best thing that's ever happened for multiplayer games?

#67

Post by gafferongames »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #56
10000truths wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not as ludicrous as you think, for two reasons: 1. Bandwidth requirements scale quadratically with player count, since the state of each player needs to be broadcast to every player. You can optimize this with clever tricks like server-side occlusion culling, but that's heavily dependent on your specific game's mechanics, and it still doesn't address the worst case scenario of lots of players clustering in a sma…

It does not scale quadratically per client though, and the number given is per client.

Let's say typical games send 1-2 megabits per-second for first person shooters with 100 players or less (in some cases it's more, some cases it's less, but let's assume this is at least reasonable to do in 2026)

Now you have a game with 1000 players.

That's 10 times the number of objects in the world (players have to be sent to other players, assuming you can see all the other players because they are right near you.)

Now this game sends 10-20megabits per-second.

It's just math. More players --> more bandwidth.

Re: The best thing that's ever happened for multiplayer games?

#69

Post by gafferongames »

frollogaston wrote: post #65
gafferongames wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now if you're the author, can you tell me what the space game does? A larger more detailed world with a higher player count, networked using quake style netcode techniques ala. Counterstrike, Titanfall, Apex Legends with snapshots and delta compression, client side prediction and lag compensation. In short, FPS netcode scaled up to 1000 players, but applied to a space game, not an FPS, because the world doesn't nee…

My question and its followups have all been reasonable and non-assuming. I was interested in some more details, but not anymore, best of luck.

This thread absolutely has not been full of reasonable and non-assuming questions.

1. "I can't imagine a game that'd need that much data unless it involved a lot of streaming assets (audio, video, etc) or really, really naive netcode"

2. "If you're sending that much data constantly, you're either syncing too much stuff too often, or you're not using compression when you should be"

3. "overwhelming majority of people in this thread who think it's bananas."

Sorry folks, but if you want to have a positive discussion with me about game netcode this is not the way to do it.

Re: The best thing that's ever happened for multiplayer games?

#70

Post by gafferongames »

gafferongames wrote: post #64
thunderfork wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this strikes me as strange. If you're sending that much data constantly, you're either syncing too much stuff too often, or you're not using compression when you should be (shout-out to Oodle) Something that this article doesn't mention that's going to be a big constraint: each of your clients parsing 20mbps of updates is going to have a performance impact on those clients. At the end of the day, you can only "…

> Something that this article doesn't mention that's going to be a big constraint: each of your clients parsing 20mbps of updates is going to have a performance impact on those clients. I can assure you that parsing 20 megabits per-second worth of packets on a client is not a significant CPU cost.

20 megabits per-second is 2.5 megabytes per second.

Do you really think PCs have difficulty processing 2.5 megabytes of data per-second in 2026?

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