Live data from Hacker News

Serious Sam handled massive amounts of enemies on 56k modem connections

staniks.github.io

41–50 of 172 posts

Re: Serious Sam handled massive amounts of enemies on 56k modem connections

#41
post #16
post #5

Isn't this exactly how Doom worked, long before Serious Sam? But Quake went a different direction, sending the client updates about every entity they could see. Which had some benefits (players don't have to be perfectly synchronized) but also drawbacks (bandwidth proportional to scene complexity).

Quake is vastly superior because the server actually run the simulation, for Serious Sam the server is basically a dumb relay.

The server still runs the simulation for serious Sam and would kick any client getting out of sync (e.g. because they're cheating).

Re: Serious Sam handled massive amounts of enemies on 56k modem connections

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Both are “deterministic lockstep” systems. Many many games have used such a system over the years. Although it’s probably less common these days for a variety of reasons.

Is this due to the heterogeneity of client hardware?

Wasn't that even worse before? Games like Warcraft and Doom played across Intel x86, Motorola 680x0 and PowerPC

Re: Serious Sam handled massive amounts of enemies on 56k modem connections

#43
post #37
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s important to learn history instead of just making things up in your head. I agree. Which traditional societies burnt scientists (plural) for suggesting earth revolves around the sun?

Indeed! Giordano Bruno comes closest and is perhaps what peppertree has in mind. But have a look at his Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno for some more nuance. See also the Wikipedia article on Galileo.

Let's assume, just for laughs, that I know a little history.

Many people have been burnt alive, Bruno included, Galileo excluded.

Bruno was a singular immolation for multiple heresy's, the Cathari were immolated en masse along with non heretics (for God to sort out) .. but none for claiming the earth traveled about the sun, Bruno (IIRC) made waves for denying actual core beliefs.

( Wikipedia cites Bruno not accepting the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, transubstantiation, et al as the main items on the docket .. more than enough for the church of the time )

Galileo wasn't burnt at the stake and many would hold that despite popular opinion his trial had less (almost nothing) to do with his support of heliocentrism nor even his "mocking" of an old friend and now Pope as "Simplicio" and was instead rooted in the worst kind of corporate infighting - he had savagely insulted people that ascended to power within the church who seized their chance for revenge when it came.

You can always find a hook to hang people upon if you look hard enough, the actual reasons for wanting them hung are often orthogonal to any claimed in performative public trials.

Re: Serious Sam handled massive amounts of enemies on 56k modem connections

#44
post #43
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed! Giordano Bruno comes closest and is perhaps what peppertree has in mind. But have a look at his Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno for some more nuance. See also the Wikipedia article on Galileo.

Let's assume, just for laughs, that I know a little history. Many people have been burnt alive, Bruno included, Galileo excluded. Bruno was a singular immolation for multiple heresy's, the Cathari were immolated en masse along with non heretics (for God to sort out) .. but none for claiming the earth traveled about the sun, Bruno (IIRC) made waves for denying actual core beliefs. ( Wikipedia cites Bruno not accepting…

Yes, I agree with you (and disagree with what peppertree seems to have in mind.)

Re: Serious Sam handled massive amounts of enemies on 56k modem connections

#45
post #43
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed! Giordano Bruno comes closest and is perhaps what peppertree has in mind. But have a look at his Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno for some more nuance. See also the Wikipedia article on Galileo.

Let's assume, just for laughs, that I know a little history. Many people have been burnt alive, Bruno included, Galileo excluded. Bruno was a singular immolation for multiple heresy's, the Cathari were immolated en masse along with non heretics (for God to sort out) .. but none for claiming the earth traveled about the sun, Bruno (IIRC) made waves for denying actual core beliefs. ( Wikipedia cites Bruno not accepting…

You somehow missed it was the highly educated, clerical class not some illiterate peasants, who burned him at the stake.

Re: Serious Sam handled massive amounts of enemies on 56k modem connections

#46

Croteam is such a talented team of game developers. I really enjoyed the Talos Principle (1 and 2) and they were some of the early pioneers of a completely custom Vulkan game engine for the first game.

I found devastating that in The Talos Principle 2 they had dropped their own engine and used Unreal Engine instead.

Me too. I think the main reason is that the lead render developer left, and switched to google to work on Stadia.

Re: Serious Sam handled massive amounts of enemies on 56k modem connections

#48
I was one the developers responsible for implementing the netcode on Serious Sam. We often slept under the desks in the offices at croteam after lurking usenet. One post in particular described the QuakeWorld prediction system which inspired us. That night we coded a simplistic mvp as a colleague (hi dan) tested it over an old 486 nix machine acting as a router that we could simulate lag with. This was well before the actual game was built around it

Re: Serious Sam handled massive amounts of enemies on 56k modem connections

#49
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I think that is untrue. It was harder (but not impossible) to push propaganda to uniformist societies because: 1. they were already brainwashed to some degree. In the sense that someone made them believe things that were objectively either not true or arbitrary ("our rabbit god against their duck god") 2. these societies did have no mass media. Reaching many people of the society was only possible through elaborate s…

This is why I meantioned Everett, who got rejected by the natives. It took centuries of organized effort, that often involved a total reorganization of the society, to christianize Europe.

Re: Serious Sam handled massive amounts of enemies on 56k modem connections

#50
post #7

Is this the same idea as "1500 archers on a 28.8" for Age of Empires? https://www.gamedeveloper.com/programming/1500-archers-on-a-...

[flagged]

What? You're forgetting that those traditional societies had a class with a literal cheat code to push anything into the minds of people: religion. All that "thinking for themselves" didn't happen there - historically, people have always been more than happy to outsource the spiritual to a small group of specialists.

Then again, traditional societies had little to do other than farming and breeding ad infinitum, so there was limited value to any propaganda.

Post reply on HN