What exactly is the deal with this? Is there a trick they are doing to get that many people online or can anyone really do it? I only ask because every PS3 developer has the same hardware (a PS3), and I haven't read anything about an insane PS3 network speed or something along those lines. Why is this the only game that can support that many players? Maybe it was just that nobody designed a game to support that many, but even Halo 3 could support 64 instead of 32 without a real design decision.

I don't do a lot of network programming, but I'm guessing it has to do with the amount of data being sent per player being smaller. Either some sort of compression or just limiting the amount of data being sent versus other games.

That's a lot harder to do than worrying about the hardware itself imo.

The use dedicated hardware so the limit is kind of arbitrary. You can run the numbers if you want. Also if you've seen the game or played it you know the maps are designed in such a way that you never really see too many players. I assume they're using a trivial server side culling technique. Big maps make this easy.

Also in 2003 Planetside had 300 players so it's not that big of a deal. If your server has the bandwidth anything is possible really.

Also you mentioned the hardware. You're not going to saturate most network cards very easily.

Quote:
The use dedicated hardware so the limit is kind of arbitrary. You can run the numbers if you want. Also if you've seen the game or played it you know the maps are designed in such a way that you never really see too many players. I assume they're using a trivial server side culling technique. Big maps make this easy.

I'm pretty sure they can support visibility of all 256. You can see videos on YouTube of people getting 128 players together -- 256 is harder in practice because it would require coordination with the opposing team, which is probably very difficult to arrange with 256 random idiots online.

[Edited by - jpetrie on February 12, 2010 4:25:10 PM]

I've played it, and here's a couple of things that make this easier:

1: The graphics (especially the explosions) are not up to the current generation, they are only passable

2: As mentioned earlier, you don't really see all 256 players at once, so that really makes a huge difference

3: It's all in the new networking system the developers created for MAG. Basically, they reengineered their networking from scratch. Like if an enemy doesn't need to be drawn up on another PS3, it won't be.

I also remember some indie developer recently getting one hundred players together on a computer, so yeah, it's not impossible, just tough......

If you have a server/client system, the player update is 32 bytes on average, the server tick is 16 fps.

That's 256 * 32 * 16 bytes / sec = 1 Mbits/sec.

So that's feasable. Plus, add some extra compression on packets, ect... You need good server though, but between one game with 256 players, and 4 games with 32 players, you still win.

Note: 16 fps can be considered low, but if you have adaptive updates (sort players by distance, update far away or occluded players less often), that would be an average.

If you have peer to peer, you would hit serious limitations on the upstream, since a bog-standard home broadband is very asymmetrical (around 380kbps).

Im sure their netcode is very optimized, but I dont think thats the real issue. Im pretty sure that to scale a multiplayer game from 32 players up to 256 and beyond, the only real change you need to make is add more horsepower to the dedicated server. Wether there are 32 players or 256, each client machine (the PS3) is still doing basically the same work. Maybe a little more graphical power is needed to be able to display 255 players on the screen at once, but almost all of the extra work done due to the extra players is the responsibility of the server.

Can't say I've played it, but from the youtube videos there was alot of apparent missing at close range combat. People would dance around each other firing full auto and no one dies or someone would randomly die. But they did move smoothly without any skipping so the perception of lag isn't as bad.

I think they are just doing standard server client model with highly optimized packet scheme and culling. Graphically both consoles can draw 256 characters on screen with proper instancing techniques, if your utilizing the multi-cores right and doing proper LODs. In a GDC presentation, Epic was showing 100s of locust on screen on the 360 and that was a few years ago.

Though I think they could have spent more time on the animation engine, it's just not on par with games like MW2 or Battlefield bad company.

-ddn

Quote: Can't say I've played it, but from the youtube videos there was alot of apparent missing at close range combat. People would dance around each other firing full auto and no one dies or someone would randomly die. But they did move smoothly without any skipping so the perception of lag isn't as bad.

This is a pretty important point. PC players never had the same level of tolerance for lag that console players do. If you spray bullets into someone and they don't die in an online PC game, people start flipping the hell out and your game is a disaster. Most console games work like that, though. The less tech-savvy audience doesn't really notice or care.

The inherently slower speed of play because of the joysticks helps mitigate it as well. If you can't aim precisely to begin with, and have your cursor partly controlled by the sticky-aim, lag can be masked very effectively.

Looking at the video, the game looks phenominal to me. But, I haven't really been playing many games lately...

But, yeah, just wanted to say that I thought most MMOs have that people on at one time. Why would having 200+ people around cause any kind of problem?