Hello, I just wanted to know if anyone could tell me that max ammount of players anyone has been able to have at the same time with 3dgamestudios.

See I had a good idea the other day but I haven't really been able to test it. I don't want to waste time trying it if someone else has already done so. What I was thinking of doing is making an MMORPG using a similar meathod that guild wars did. Now for those of you who have never played guild wars, this is how it works:
When ever you leave a town, the game creates your own private world for you and your party to play in. I'm guessing this is how a session works with 3dgamestudio. Is there anyway to simulate a session without having PRO ed? I only have commercial right now. When you re-enter a town everyone joins back up with the rest of the community/people in the game. I was thinking for my game, towns would do almost nothing towards achieving any real goals other then uptaining quests and things like that. My game would handle movement locally while in town, I'm curious to know if someone could give me a basic idea how many more players I could get in with this method.

Also I have never played World Of Warcraft, I was wondering if someone could explain to me how that works and if it's possible to simulate something remotely like it in 3dgamestudio.

Going back to my origenal question, I would love to hear how many players people have been able to have at the same time with 3dgamestudio, in different games like shooters, RPGs, MMORPGs and so on. Are there any MMORPGS that have already been made with 3dgs? Also what kind of specifications should my server have? I would like to know what the min requirements for a server would be and what would help the server more memory or processing power (I know both would be best but I'm just curious, which would you rather have for an MMORPG if you could only afford 1 or the other). Let's assume for now my game only holds 8 players at a time. or even 16.

Sorry for all the questions, but I have 1 last and final question. Is there a way to simulate internet play below pro edition? Mabe limit how much info the server/clients could send at a time? Thanks in advance for any questions anyone could answer.

pro edition unlimited Player
com edition up to 4 player

but you have to send the right information to the right computer, otherwise you send to much information for a normal LAN-Network and it collapses ...

Its clearly possible to simulate something like WOW
(don't ask me how... but its possible)

there are no limits about sending at one time. The Action are just running at the server and he sends the position etc. to each client.

The german Omega
(sry for the mistakes)

I ment for really more for an internet based game. I know pro has no limitations that doesn't mean the game can handle 100000000000 ppl.

well i guess that will be hardware limitations then. maybe the engine can handle more connections then the server can or there are just so many entity's that the computer can not handle it (so it depends on how good your hardware is)

I know it depends on the hardware as well thats why I asked those hardware questions as well

Pardon me Doug but I dont feel that answer was a very fair response to the question. For years people have been trying to accomplish varying degrees of MMO type 3D interaction with 3DGS and no one has been succesful with more than 2-4 players online.. That is using the most basic data objects with a simple shape for the player and no terrain or models to clutter up the rendering pipeline..

3DGS uses DX net code for their network layer which has been proven unstable in the past and is no longer supported by Microsoft. Every player who has attempted any kind of multiplayer connectivity with 3DGS beyond 4 players has been forced to go to a third party network layer. This fact, and the fact that trying to get support on the native network code was so difficult in these forums are the reasons my project had to switch to a more flexible engine. This after we had invested over $3000 in commercial team licensing and personal Pro editions as needed.

@Prence: You can continue making your game with 3DGS, only you can decide if it meets your criteria or not, but try some searches in the forums here for populace and Raknet.. I know nothing about this Populace plugin but supposedly it has realistic and useable 3d many player support.. Raknet is a very viable third party network app written by a very competant network GURU who has integrated into many commercial systems. The down side to Raknet is you will have to get into the C++ stuff in order to tailor it to your needs.

Truth be told Fastlane claims to have been working on getting a many player "demo" of what 3DGS can do for over 3 years now. I believe in one of his more recent posts he claims his university is funding his "analysis" of the 3DGS connectivity and he has 2 full time interns working on it.. To my knowledge, after 3 years of solid work, including professional funding and interns all he has been able to do is run a 3DGS app in "server" mode that allows approx a couple hundreds "connected" clients but without the necessary 3D objects required for an MMO. (EI: In plain english the client software "connects" to the server software but does nothing with the connection as in there is no 3D object handling, movement or any kind of interaction other than the initial connect between the clients and the servers.)

Other testing that has been done (most noteably by Locoweed) allowed 3-4 players to connect and actually move around in a very simplistic zone but they got such terrible lag even after months and months of "tweaking" it was often less than 1 frame per second. I know this because I took part in some of locoweeds testing and even after I abandoned 3DGS for a more flexible solution for MMO development I continued to follow his testing as I am always curious if anyone will ever get it to work.

The bottom line is this. 3DGS has a working network layer.. If you are designing a card game or word game or perhaps even a turn based application that does not require real time updating to many concurrently connected clients it works quite well. As soon as you attempt to introduce real time 3D object manipulation across multiple clients you get bottlenecked by the network code and since 3DGS does not allow owners to modify the source you are very limited in how you can handle these hurdles..

Beyond all of that, the very nature of how 3DGS connects clients makes it virtually impossible for linked servers to hand off client objects to each other.

I think if people were more open about the current potential and limitations of the 3DGS networking code instead of being so defensive it might foster a better community effort to make it better. After being ridiculed by both the admins here and some of the "preferred" users over my finding regarding the network layer of 3DGS I came to my own conclusions and found a product that works much better for my application with a much more supportive community and customer support options. If you have any further questions about my work with 3DGS and you are serious in your efforts (I dont have much in the way of free time but I am always glad to help someone avoid the pitfalls that I've already been through) please feel free to contact me on my project forums. http://www.aakrana.com/community

I wish you all the best.

Mark

Quote:

---

I believe in one of his more recent posts he claims his university is funding his "analysis" of the 3DGS connectivity and he has 2 full time interns working on it..

---

Yeaup... still trucking along though it's the governemnt, the state, and private investors, not my university since I'm not affiliated with any one university.

Quote:

---

Every player who has attempted any kind of multiplayer connectivity with 3DGS beyond 4 players has been forced to go to a third party network layer.

---

Not true. We acheive tens of simulatnous clients every day with 3DGS' native layer.

Quote:

---

In plain english the client software "connects" to the server software but does nothing with the connection as in there is no 3D object handling, movement or any kind of interaction other than the initial connect between the clients and the servers.)

---

Not true. We do plenty of interactons every day.

Quote:

---

Beyond all of that, the very nature of how 3DGS connects clients makes it virtually impossible for linked servers to hand off client objects to each other.

---

Not true. We do this every day hundreds of times a day.

Quote:

---

In plain english the client software "connects" to the server software but does nothing with the connection as in there is no 3D object handling, movement or any kind of interaction other than the initial connect between the clients and the servers

---

As you can see above, not true. We have acheived that and more.

Once 3DGS fails us, you'll know it... we wont' be shy about it... but so far it hasn't and your assertions about the 3DGS network layers capabilities are just plain wrong and misleading.

Really fastlane? What kinds of interactions? I haven't seen anything other than your server accepting client connect requests?

Prence's request was regarding using 3DGS's native network layer for an MMO. I figure you have the most experience and time invested in 3DGS so would you say you have a 3DGS server and client that can interact with the level of reliability and performance required in an MMO? And if so congratulations I wouldve thought there wouldve been more hooplah about it if you had since you would be the first person in the history of 3DGS to do it.

So my question to you is quite simply. Can you show a screen shot of a simple area with 20 people walking around and interacting in it?

Mark: Fstlane has posted a video some time ago about his project. A learning simulation, multiplayer, the way many students can interact with the world and study physics, etc. It has proven to work and even physics and all the things worked on all the clients, seamless and without any bigger lag.

Just because YOU can't do something, it doesnt mean that others can't. I have been working on a multiplayer shooter project called Prototype some time ago. Basically I didn't quit doing it because of 3DGS' incapability, but more because there wasnt much more than code. My so-called partners left me alone, and they were responsible for modelling and levelling. Code-wise everything works, and even an internal test proved that we do not have much lag. It works just as fine as any professional engine(as Unreal for example). IF you actually KNOW how to use it right and how to do things right. YOu have to understand the matter you are working in before you can really claim if it is good or not.

Yes, there were many prorotypes of Prototye(strange sentence huh?) and I had big problems getting the lag away(even in LAN!) but with every time i did understand it better and better, the lag has gone away and my multiplayer moevemtn code(even shooting using trace, which does mean the you could use a MG ingame without wasting bandwidth for transmitting the position of a dummy model that moves along) proved well working, stable and lag-free even withmutliple players over INTERNET.

You have to know what you are doing.

Oh in case you dont belive me, you can download the full source(code, levels, models, anything) in the USer ocntributions forum, as i providided it to the community to continue working on it or just using the code i have done.

Yes it is dirty, but this was simply a project to learn about 3DGS' multiplayer capabilities as many people were claiming that it is just *crap*, just like you did. But it did result in that it is capable of MANY things, using the native provided 3 basic functions: send_var, send_string and send_skill. YOu do not need anything more, besides od knowledge, and time to learn the functionality of 3DGS.

As for, try to run the source of my game, try it over internet with your friends. And then tell me again if it is possible or not