Hi guys,
Quote: "@Agent, pretty much anything made with DBPro consumes all the power of a core. It's just the way it works by default. That's not to say it couldn't run on a single core system, but it's going to eat all of the CPU time, where a dual core system would allocate Windows tasks and other background stuff to the second core."
Yes, I'm aware. I'm trying to explain that to others
Not only will Solodor not run properly on a single core machine, neither will almost any other DBPro program.
Your solution on separating the mainloop from the display function is interesting; I'm using a frameskip technique to keep the frames at 30. I still call SYNC to keep the internal FPS method working but I'm not calling any of the routines that update what's drawn unless then FPS is > 30. It's not perfect, but it works and I don't imagine many target systems are singlecores anyway. I don't have any interest in giving cycles back to the system - I'm running a high performance game here, I want all the juice I can get
Quote: "This technique, or one similar at least, is going to be critical in getting the performance you need for an MMO. There's a TON of network processing going on constantly, and this will help with the lag."
I'm not getting much lag. The latency in my netcode is almost entirely decided by physical distance between the client and the server. I find pretty smooth movement between two clients in the same city, but I've not tested it with people further away - I'm hoping to get some feedback on that from this release. The biggest communication problem I'm having (and I don't know yet if it's a problem, testing is needed) is when a new client connects to the server and a dumb of all entity data (ie, gamestate) has to be sent. In an RPG there is a lot of information per entity, so this is a lot of information. There can be lag spikes for all clients when a new one connects, while he receives the gamestate. During a local connection this isn't an issue, but I'd like to get some feedback on this from others, too - how bad is it during a remote connection?
Quote: "If you need any help or suggestions on networking or improving performance just let me know. What networking library are you using?"
Thanks for the offer. I'm doing pretty well with my netcode at the moment. After I get some feedback from the testing community we'll see if there is anything major I need to work out. I really want to see if the server is capable of handling a large number of connections. Of course, it'll have to be running on a network with powerful bandwidth (just like any game server) and I don't have access to one, so hopefully someone can help out in that regard.
I'm using Benjamin's "MultiSync" for my communications. Seems to do the job very nicely.
Quote: "Alright, in my case it should be the latency because I got a 3.2ghz quad core CPU so, that should be plenty "
That's a plenty strong CPU to run Solodor. If you're running the server locally you shouldn't have latency issues either, but it also needs to be remembered that you're now running two DBPro programs on the one system - the server, and the client.
You could try running the game across a LAN: Server on one machine and the client on another. That will eliminate co-processing the server and the client simultaneously. If you're running remotely, what sort of physical distance lies between you and the server? I'm curious about the relationship between distance and latency in my particular netcode. I need to know if I've got it right or if it requires optimisation.
