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The unlikely story of Teardown Multiplayer

blog.voxagon.se

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Re: The unlikely story of Teardown Multiplayer

#61

Post by mrguyorama »

DimitriBouriez wrote: post #9

Wouldn't it have been simpler (even if technically heavy) to host the game on a single machine and just stream each player's camera? That way all the physics would be computed in real time on one computer, and each player would just receive a different video stream.

They targeted/ended up with a 1Mbit throughput requirement per player.

Please figure out a way to generate 1440p video at 90hz with pixel perfect rendering at 1Mbit per video stream.

Half the point of Teardown is that it looks really really good and crisp because it required a beefy GPU at the time it was released. I don't want blocky streamed video.

Re: The unlikely story of Teardown Multiplayer

#62

Post by 2postsperday »

kg wrote: post #19
DimitriBouriez wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, I'm not saying it comes without trade-offs. But in return you get a perfectly consistent and physically accurate simulation. It would mostly be expensive, I think, but it's technically feasible (services like Shadow or GeForce Now already demonstrate that).

Most consumer GPUs have a limit on the number of video streams their hardware encoder can handle at once, and in some cases the limit is as low as 2.

We should note, this is entirely a Nvidia software imposed limitation, as the hardware can easily handle more, the purpose is to upsell to non-gaming cards.

With that being said, its trivial to bypass with tools like: https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch

Regardless, this does throw a spanner in the works for a video based game streaming solution for P2P multiplayer.

Re: The unlikely story of Teardown Multiplayer

#63

Post by Aeolun »

vanderZwan wrote: post #32
Aeolun wrote: post #23

I really love Teardown, and I’m absolutely baffled at the bizarre performance that game manages to push on even very large worlds. I’ve tried to load teardown levels in a homegrown engine and I always end up stuttering like hell as soon as GI becomes involved (or even before that). I’m going to finally manage to replicate it, and then the new engine will be released and raise the bar again xD

Did you check out the "about" section and the timeline of his career on the main page of the linked blog? https://www.voxagon.se/ Because it looks like your opponent is a Swedish former demoscener who started programming at age 12 on the C64 and Amiga computers in 1990, quickly moving on to writing games and demos in assembly, then professionally developing physics engines since 2001, specializing in game performance…

It’s not that hard to do performance profiling even if it appears to be a lost art these days.

Re: The unlikely story of Teardown Multiplayer

#65

Post by vanderZwan »

Aeolun wrote: post #63
vanderZwan wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you check out the "about" section and the timeline of his career on the main page of the linked blog? https://www.voxagon.se/ Because it looks like your opponent is a Swedish former demoscener who started programming at age 12 on the C64 and Amiga computers in 1990, quickly moving on to writing games and demos in assembly, then professionally developing physics engines since 2001, specializing in game performance…

It’s not that hard to do performance profiling even if it appears to be a lost art these days.

I half-agree, but in general I'm always a bit weary of saying "x is easy" for anything programming, because it might appear easy in isolation, but often that depends on also having decent understanding of all interconnected parts of the computer, OS, and so on that relate to it.

And in turn each of those may also appear simple in isolation, but as a whole it can still be an overwhelming amount of knowledge to learn, integrate and connect the dots between (and then once you reach that level of mastery, there's meta-problem of applying outdated rules of thumb from a few decades ago to modern hardware). That's where the advantage of having the kind of lifelong experience like a former demoscener gamedev comes in.

Anyway, my earlier post might have been a bit tongue-in-cheek but I'm rooting for you to surpass this guy one day! :)

Re: The unlikely story of Teardown Multiplayer

#66

Post by dopesoap »

Herbstluft wrote: post #64
dopesoap wrote: post #53

If only they hadn't stolen the idea at revision and then not paid the person they stole it from. Douche bags.

Can you elaborate or provide some context?

I came up with the idea for a voxel based heist game at revision. People took it made it made profit and chose not to recuperate me because people hate conceptual art and artists. But this has been happening to me since I was 15, so I'm kind of used to it at this point.

Re: The unlikely story of Teardown Multiplayer

#67

Post by Vachyas »

jmgao wrote: post #14

> For the longest time (and for good reasons), floating point operations were considered unsafe for deterministic purposes. That is still true to some extent, but the picture is more nuanced than that. I have since learned a lot about floating point determinism, and these days I know it is mostly safe if you know how to navigate around the pitfalls. If you're only concerned about identical binaries on x86, it's not t…

There's a cool Youtube video on Intel vs AMD differences being an obstacle for LittleBigPlanet's multiplayer (on Playstation 3): https://youtu.be/hCuT_GXagz0

Re: The unlikely story of Teardown Multiplayer

#68

Post by boomlinde »

DimitriBouriez wrote: post #9

Wouldn't it have been simpler (even if technically heavy) to host the game on a single machine and just stream each player's camera? That way all the physics would be computed in real time on one computer, and each player would just receive a different video stream.

For me as a player that might have been a simpler solution to an entirely different problem. I don't imagine that playing a first person 3D game with free movement and platforming would be a pleasurable experience with the latency overhead of streaming video over the internet. That's part of the problem being solved here.

Re: The unlikely story of Teardown Multiplayer

#69

Post by boomlinde »

dopesoap wrote: post #66
Herbstluft wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate or provide some context?

I came up with the idea for a voxel based heist game at revision. People took it made it made profit and chose not to recuperate me because people hate conceptual art and artists. But this has been happening to me since I was 15, so I'm kind of used to it at this point.

What's your release called?
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