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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?

#91

Post by axus »

gafferongames wrote: post #80
axus wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are all 1000 players visible to each other at once? The numbers I quoted were worst case, not a baseline. Streaming sounds and FX every single time and never caching is a choice that will lead to 10Mbps, but completely unnecessary. All you "really need" is initial state, the timestamps / inputs of the other players, and reproducible physics.

I really want to just stop here and ask you what you expect will happen if you take a multiplayer game with n players and increase it to have 10 times the player count (10n). Do you expect bandwidth sent per-player will: a) stay the same b) decrease c) increase ? > Streaming sounds and FX every single time and never caching is a choice that will lead to 10Mbps Nobody is suggesting streaming sounds and FX like this. I…

My naive perspective is that bandwidth will increase linearly with the number of visible players.

I get that the people doing the work know better than people who haven't, I'm open to learning more and can't make any ironclad statements.

Eve Online could do large-scale player battles before 10Mbps connections were available to gamers. And somehow much more efficiently per/player than Q3: Arena. What were they doing that you are not?

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

#92

Post by xboxnolifes »

gafferongames wrote: post #67
xboxnolifes wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Again, this games claims to send 10-20mbps per client. The quadratic part would be the full outgoing from the server, those numbers are not the full outgoing. The full outgoing is claimed to be 10-20 *gigabits* per second.

Having 10 times the data from 10 times the players is not quadratic.

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

#93

Post by gafferongames »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #92
gafferongames wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Again, this games claims to send 10-20mbps per client . The quadratic part would be the full outgoing from the server, those numbers are not the full outgoing. The full outgoing is claimed to be 10-20 * gigabits * per second. Having 10 times the data from 10 times the players is not quadratic.

> Again, this games claims to send 10-20mbps per client. The quadratic part would be the full outgoing from the server, those numbers are not the full outgoing. The full outgoing is claimed to be 10-20 gigabits per second.

Per-client bandwidth -> O(n), where n is the number of players. 10 - 20mbps for this game per-client. Let's say n=1000. O(n) because each client needs to receive state for n other players (yes, each client also receives state for its own local player too)

Total bandwidth sent from server -> O(n*n), where n is the number of players. Since the server sends 10-20mbps per-client, and there are 1000 clients the total bandwidth sent from the server is 1000 * 10-20mbps -> 10-20gbps.

Where the quadratic comes in: When you increase from n=100 to n=1000, per-client bandwidth increases by only 10X, but total bandwidth increases by 10*10=100X O(n*n), because packets are now being sent to 10X the clients, but ALSO and the bandwidth sent per-client is 10X (because each client now has 10X players it needs to receive state for).

Thus quadratic. FIN.

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

#94

Post by gafferongames »

gafferongames wrote: post #93
xboxnolifes wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, this games claims to send 10-20mbps per client . The quadratic part would be the full outgoing from the server, those numbers are not the full outgoing. The full outgoing is claimed to be 10-20 * gigabits * per second. Having 10 times the data from 10 times the players is not quadratic.

> Again, this games claims to send 10-20mbps per client. The quadratic part would be the full outgoing from the server, those numbers are not the full outgoing. The full outgoing is claimed to be 10-20 gigabits per second. Per-client bandwidth -> O(n), where n is the number of players. 10 - 20mbps for this game per-client. Let's say n=1000. O(n) because each client needs to receive state for n other players (yes, eac…

Also:

It should have read like this:

Let's say typical games send 1-2 megabits per-second *per-client* 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)"

It's correct elsewhere. Sorry it did not include the per-client in the mention above in this thread. I can see this is what threw you off.

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

#95

Post by gafferongames »

axus wrote: post #91
gafferongames wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really want to just stop here and ask you what you expect will happen if you take a multiplayer game with n players and increase it to have 10 times the player count (10n). Do you expect bandwidth sent per-player will: a) stay the same b) decrease c) increase ? > Streaming sounds and FX every single time and never caching is a choice that will lead to 10Mbps Nobody is suggesting streaming sounds and FX like this. I…

My naive perspective is that bandwidth will increase linearly with the number of visible players. I get that the people doing the work know better than people who haven't, I'm open to learning more and can't make any ironclad statements. Eve Online could do large-scale player battles before 10Mbps connections were available to gamers. And somehow much more efficiently per/player than Q3: Arena. What were they doing t…

Eve Online has a much larger world and ships are scattered around much more in this space, so they only need to network ships that are close to you, so they can make their effective n smaller, eg. per-client bandwidth is now O(n), where n is the number ships close to you only, instead of n being the total number of players in the Eve Online system at any time.

When too many ships get close together, the action slows down in "time dilation" (they slow the game down because they cannot keep up in terms of CPU and probably bandwidth as well).

It's a smart design trick that made it possible for them to pull this game off much earlier than it should have been possible.

I'm not doing any of that time dilation and everything plays like an FPS game or action game, just with n=1000 players all the time because it's 2026 and I can send a lot of bandwidth.

Yes, I still have to work really hard to keep server CPU costs, client CPU costs and make all game code || and bandwidth down and optimize it, even to fit in this (seemingly high) bandwidth budget. But it's the right choice for an action game where time dilation is not an option, and all the action happens in one tight space, like in a Star Wars movie when there is a space battle.

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

#96

Post by gafferongames »

Stevvo wrote: post #90
gafferongames wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deterministic cross-platform networking with jolt is fine and good, but there are multiple ways to network a game, and even to do networked physics in 2026. I hope your game world is small, and your player count is low, otherwise: 1) your server will be waiting for inputs from the most lagged player, 2) you will become entirely CPU bound on the client performing all this rollback. Approaches that don't suffer from th…

Why would you wait for inputs on server? That's a stupid idea. You can rollback on the server when mis-predicted inputs arrive late.

You are correct. You can do that. Then the real cost becomes the extra CPU cost of the rollback. Better not be CPU bound with that physics simulation, because you might need to roll back a whole second worth of physics in less than 1/60th of a second of real-time.

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

#97

Post by xboxnolifes »

gafferongames wrote: post #93
xboxnolifes wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, this games claims to send 10-20mbps per client . The quadratic part would be the full outgoing from the server, those numbers are not the full outgoing. The full outgoing is claimed to be 10-20 * gigabits * per second. Having 10 times the data from 10 times the players is not quadratic.

> Again, this games claims to send 10-20mbps per client. The quadratic part would be the full outgoing from the server, those numbers are not the full outgoing. The full outgoing is claimed to be 10-20 gigabits per second. Per-client bandwidth -> O(n), where n is the number of players. 10 - 20mbps for this game per-client. Let's say n=1000. O(n) because each client needs to receive state for n other players (yes, eac…

This is getting tiring, so I'm only going to try to clarify one more time and I'm not going to bother replying again.

We agree that the total bandwidth is quadratic. However, that was NOT THE DISCUSSION. It is irrelevant to the discussion because it was NOT THE DISCUSSION.

I'm specifically, replying to the comment up thread that brought up the 10-20mbps number from your article, which then got replied to calling it quadratic. This 10-20mbps number is the PER CLIENT bandwidth. I am not talking about the 10-20gbps number. The PER CLIENT bandwidth is not quadratic, since it scales linearly per player.

Thus, the PER CLIENT bandwidth is not quadratic. FIN.

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

#98

Post by [deleted] »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #97
gafferongames wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Again, this games claims to send 10-20mbps per client. The quadratic part would be the full outgoing from the server, those numbers are not the full outgoing. The full outgoing is claimed to be 10-20 gigabits per second. Per-client bandwidth -> O(n), where n is the number of players. 10 - 20mbps for this game per-client. Let's say n=1000. O(n) because each client needs to receive state for n other players (yes, eac…

This is getting tiring, so I'm only going to try to clarify one more time and I'm not going to bother replying again. We agree that the total bandwidth is quadratic. However, that was NOT THE DISCUSSION. It is irrelevant to the discussion because it was NOT THE DISCUSSION. I'm specifically , replying to the comment up thread that brought up the 10-20mbps number from your article, which then got replied to calling it…

[deleted]

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

#99

Post by [deleted] »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #97
gafferongames wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Again, this games claims to send 10-20mbps per client. The quadratic part would be the full outgoing from the server, those numbers are not the full outgoing. The full outgoing is claimed to be 10-20 gigabits per second. Per-client bandwidth -> O(n), where n is the number of players. 10 - 20mbps for this game per-client. Let's say n=1000. O(n) because each client needs to receive state for n other players (yes, eac…

This is getting tiring, so I'm only going to try to clarify one more time and I'm not going to bother replying again. We agree that the total bandwidth is quadratic. However, that was NOT THE DISCUSSION. It is irrelevant to the discussion because it was NOT THE DISCUSSION. I'm specifically , replying to the comment up thread that brought up the 10-20mbps number from your article, which then got replied to calling it…

[deleted]

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

#100

Post by cykros »

The best thing that happened for multiplayer games is that kids came along that agreed that they didn't need developers to actually create games when all they really wanted was graphics and physics so they could be responsible both for buying the game and creating all of the "content" in it by interacting with each other.
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