MMORPG Server-Structure

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    • MMORPG Server-Structure

      I know a lot of people want to build MMORPG's and the like, but I've been programming for years, and I've developed MUDs, 2D games, 3D games, and plenty of proof of concepts. I think I can seriously pull off this concept, so please: no flames and "Do you know what it takes to run a MMORPG/etc?" (The answer is, yes, I do)

      Now, my question kind of rests here:

      What is the correct way to structure a server that's going to be handling a LOT of connections? And how many connections could I support?

      Right now, I'm developing the servers (the actual servers -- not the login server) with BSD sockets on Linux. To try to detect the latest changes, I'm doing a select() to grab the socket's that are showing activity. Assuming this is on a P4 in the very least (say like 3.0gHz), stripped down version of Linux, what amount of connections could it seriously handle, assuming that bandwidth was unlimited? And furthermore, what kind of bandwidth would be necessary to sport this kind of project? I know ideally, you'd need a T1 line at least; I think anything less than 3 mbps would probably not support more than 100-500 players at a time.

      Anyone have any ideas?
    • Wouldn't the bandwidth depend directly on the amount of data you wanted to push through ?

      You could do some monitoring of how big the average packet size for a single player/group during a session is, to get an idea of the bandwidth required for a certain amount of users. Also, i would think that you would first run out of memory before you would get a problem with connected sockets.

      So i'd pin it down by bandwidth/memory and allow for some padding, to get started.
      -- hoschi

      [size=small]The answer is 42[/size]