Multiplayer Campaign Issues
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So to say it’s not supported isn’t true!
In all fairness, it’s still true running a server in 2d is “not supported”. While it might work (and you’re providing excellent proof that it does at least for short-.lived TEs), I don’t think we can count on help (or support, for that matter ;)) from the devs once things go pear shaped.
All the best, Uwe
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I refrain from posting REALLY helpful answers here. Tried it several times but i feel some advise-resistance here, always was told i don’t know about Falcon/BMS Multiplayer. Looks like the estimate 1500 online hrs. and hundreds of hosted sessions since 2000 mean shit …
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In all fairness, it’s still true running a server in 2d is “not supported”. While it might work (and you’re providing excellent proof that it does at least for short-.lived TEs), I don’t think we can count on help (or support, for that matter ;)) from the devs once things go pear shaped.
All the best, Uwe
These aren’t TE’s. Although the sessions are comparatively short, it’s a full campaign played at normal speed. As a result, it can take months to play through a campaign.
I’m not looking for ‘official support’ if things go wrong, I’m just looking for the devs to perhaps explain what will help and won’t in terms of hosting a multiplayer campaign. However it seems that some member of this community are more interested in being right than adopting new practices or listening to feedback that’s counter to their experience.
Let me make one final point: Given how different the new net code is, why are we making assumptions on what we can/cannot do with MP that are based on experience drawn from what is different code and different performance ( the new BW requirements and features clearly show this)?
Can’t we just pick apart some things that work and things that don’t in a polite and scientific matter instead of turning to tradition? I’m sure all this data will help the devs too! -
I refrain from posting REALLY helpful answers here. Tried it several times but i feel some advise-resistance here, always was told i don’t know about Falcon/BMS Multiplayer. Looks like the estimate 1500 online hrs. and hundreds of hosted sessions since 2000 mean shit …
If anything, I value your experience and would really like an in depth explanation of what you think will work. However, the resistance you feel is down to your attitude/tone I detect when you type. Simply telling someone to use the search function is quite rude, and when you are able to refer to numerous posts that no-one can find, it would be great if you could show them.
But I would hastily point out as per my above post that we all have the same level of experience with 4.33, of which the devs themself have said is almost completely revised. This means our collective experience on MP doesn’t mean a thing in diagnosing issues with 4.33. Of course, if you’ve helped engineer the code or have tried a few ‘do’s and dont’s’ to see if they still cause breakage, id appreciate that information…
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… of which the devs themself have said is almost completely revised …
That may be the problem, because that is wrong: it was already stated from DEV side that in 4.33 the MP code has’nt changed (see post #64 & #65) The thing what has changed are the raised network traffic for seeing moving control surfaces, Pilot head movements and better close-formation flying.
May be that my attitude/tone is not the friendliest one, but i’m not Ghandi: when i try to share my experience with someone, do that over and over again sounding like a broken record and i am still said i’m wrong then there comes the time i’m just getting fed up.
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Reaper, I never once said you were wrong. I don’t doubt what your saying; merely the way your saying it
Also its incongruous to say the code is the same when the requirements and tweaks to control surfaces and formation flying are obvious to see. If the changes are only in terms of BW requirements, then there is no change in requirement to go in 3D/2D while hosting MP on a dedicated server. In that case I’d want to advise anyone worried about short - term stability that supported or not you can host a session whilst in 2d. Of course if the game breaks then you know what has to be done to fix it, but given we are about to fly out 213th weekly event using the same processes as outlined, either:
A) ‘the server must be in 3D’ is a myth, at least for shorter term sessions,
Or B) we have had over 4 years of absurdly good luck -
2D server mode is not supported in BMS 4.33.
Please tell what ISSUES there will be?
Or it works but is not suported?
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@ ghostdog it might work for you in the short run for a TE that last’s like 1 hour or less. But let me again stress on this that i run 2 24/7 server’s over @ Falcon Online & in the long run after like 30 mins either the server crashes or everything in the 3d is messed up. There are lot of people who fly over at FO server’s and they can’t have a server crash every hour while they are about to have a 10 ship flight.
@ hukka81 please read my post on page 9 those are the issue that i have faced when i tried to keep the server in 2d. I have hosted CO-OP and Force on Force event in BMS then any other user here and i can tell you that it doesn’t work. We had on average 45 to 50+ players flying all day on and off for 5 days without any issues. The event might last for 25 days and on average we would get like 5 to 7 crashes some times more depending on the Campaign’s we were hosting.
Bottom line is If you can run a BMS server in a Campaign while keeping server in 2d for more then a day with lot of users flying please do post because i have yet to see that feat.
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Archer,
I have nowhere near that level of up-time or client base. Also, placing the server into 3D is problematic at best as its a VM with no 3D graphics card. If the server. The methods we use work well for us given our size and uptime, but of course if we ever got as big as FO then of course we would take your feedback on board.
The servers current record is hosting 20(ish) players stable for up to 2.5-3 hours with the server in 2d throughout. I don’t have exact access to the system spec (I am not the sysadmin for the community, nor do I speak for its running).
Just posting my 2 cents for small and medium sized hosts -
If you want dev advice, the first thing will be: Don’t use things that aren’t supported if you want the best results.
“It works” is different to “It’s supported”. The latter is where devs have focused time and energy to make sure that the code “just works” in as many scenarios of combinations of systems and connections. If you think we’re sitting on some magical settings that might make your personal situation work at all or better or optimally or…, well, think again. There’s a lot of bistro-math and voodoo in making connections work. I think we’re learning as much as the community is with the knowledge being gained of what works empirically and what doesn’t.
People like JP and Badboy and Scoob have more experience running 4.33 MP than more or less anyone else at this point since they’ve helped testing during development.
[Ya know it’s not so very long ago - 5 years maybe - that the BMS dev recommendation, based on our goal for MP stability, was to expect no more than 8-player TEs to be the limit of networking capability. I for one love the fact that 10’s of players can get together from around the world and enjoy the crown jewel of Falcon4, the dynamic campaign engine, in MP games. Clearly that’s possible. Figuring out the rules-of-thumb and the like which extract the most out of networking in 4.33 will of necessity be something of an experiment. That will be frustrating to some, I’m sure. The results will be worth it though so I hope everyone can pursue the experiments that will be needed to establish those rules of thumb in a constructive and collaborative fashion.]
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There’s so much trolling in this thread you can smell it…
Lucky it’s Friday, the mods must be in a good mood today!
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Thanks for pitching in there boxer. I’ll keep you all up to date with our experiments as to what we do and how it goes over the next few weeks as we will be trying a few different configurations out. Hopefully these results will help contribute to figuring out what works and what doesn’t and take some of the ‘voodoo’ out of 4.33!
Next event is tonight for our community. I’ll let you know how how it goes!
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I completely forgot to respond to This, so I’ll give you two weeks worth of feedback:
The server went up and was connected to with minimal trouble (some folk forgetting to input IVC servers etc), and we managed to fly both -16s and -18s for a combined dead/tar cap package. The week after we used the -16s as dead and oca over Seoul and the -18s to cover us out. There were no issues with the game we could conclusively pin down to Server issues. The host remained in 2d throughout, and there were no known glitches with performance or lag. There were one or two instances of f-18 wings showing as retracted in flight, although we regard a minor glitch in external animation position as non-critical provided the game works as intended. We all used a BW of 1024 and there were no phantom missiles (an ACMI was recorded from taxi to landing and though roughly scrutinised) -
Archer,
I have nowhere near that level of up-time or client base. Also, placing the server into 3D is problematic at best as its a VM with no 3D graphics card. If the server. The methods we use work well for us given our size and uptime, but of course if we ever got as big as FO then of course we would take your feedback on board.
The servers current record is hosting 20(ish) players stable for up to 2.5-3 hours with the server in 2d throughout. I don’t have exact access to the system spec (I am not the sysadmin for the community, nor do I speak for its running).
Just posting my 2 cents for small and medium sized hostsCheck out Shtalik’s custom DLL that will allow you to put the server into 3d even without a GPU being available. First results have been very promising for us:
Uwe
EDIT: And yes, I’m using it in a qemu / kvm environment on CentOS (win7 prof 64 bit guest OS)
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Good to know! I’ll pass it on to the sysadmin for eval!