5 ms·

Interesting, so I guess this still limits the number of entities that can interact with each other on one server but allows for much more non-interacting entiti

by jcfrei 9y ago

Interesting, so I guess this still limits the number of entities that can interact with each other on one server but allows for much more non-interacting entities spread out over a large world. But couldn't then lots of players (maybe by accident) meet in one spot and then slow that server down?

bane 9y ago
I honestly have no idea. Clearly given the number of smart people and amount of money being thrown at the problem (without being able to produce a real seamless massive persistent on-line world without compromises) this is very hard. I also wonder how it handles very large entities that might span across clusters (say a large spaceship with thousands of entities spread across multiple decks and in different area). Since all of those things are entities in a sense, and there might be many ships, how does it handle this? No idea, but the fact that this can be asked at all is pretty interesting.
- a_t48 9y ago
  Yeah, the secret sauce seems to be in how they handle interactions split across clusters. It's not a simple problem.
- dxhdr 9y ago
  > Clearly given the number of smart people and amount of money being thrown at the problem (without being able to produce a real seamless massive persistent on-line world without compromises) this is very hard. It's just not worth it. The technical back-end challenge isn't the hard part here, it's the game design. WoW with 10,000 players idling in Orgrimmar isn't fun. WoW with 100 players in a single dungeon isn't fun either, for that matter.
  - spuz 9y ago
    The real value is not in games. It's in simulations of real world systems. The kind of thing governments are happy to spend a lot of dollars on. http://www.wired.co.uk/article/improbable-spatialos-simulated-cities http://www.wired.co.uk/article/improbable-spatialos-simulate...
    - Banderly 9y ago
      Do those simulations need to be real time and massively multiplayer? I don't see the need for this tech in the high fidelity city simulation cited in the linked article: that would much easier to implement as an offline simulation. Training seems like the most likely usage: eg. disaster response or large scale military scenarios. I have to agree with the earlier poster that tech is not the limiting factor for massively multiplayer games.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - spuz 9y ago
        No the simulations don't have to be real time or massively multiplayer. A simulation has no players at all so I'm not sure how it could be massively multiplayer. It would most likely be used to test infrastructure or policy decisions. For example, what happens to your traffic in your city if you add this bus route, or how would a contagious bioweapon spread under certain conditions.
        Banderly 9y ago
        If you don't need real time then why use improbable? If you want to simulate a new bus route then run an offline simulation using whatever tools you like with as much complexity as you like. In fact you'd likely want to run your simulation much faster than real time to answer specific questions quickly, like finding traffic or passenger hotspots. I doubt you'd want to sit there watching virtual buses driving around a 3d city, but rather quickly see heat maps change as you play with parameters.
        Boothroid 9y ago
        It might be easier to set up a massive simulation in SpatialOS? And perhaps it's not limited to realtime.
dvanamst 9y ago
Hey! Improbable dev here. We deal with such a situation through the fact that SpatialOS dynamically scales the zones that each game engine is responsible for. So if you have many players gathering in the same reduced area then there will actually be multiple game engines allocated to that specific zone and extra engines might even be started if the load requires it. This also works in reverse so that if your player density falls drastically and a single game engine would suffice for your entire world you will only have one running, so you always have the right amount of resources at your disposal. Such game engines are what is referred to as workers in SpatialOS (https://spatialos.improbable.io/docs/reference/10.3/getting-started/concepts/spatialos https://spatialos.improbable.io/docs/reference/10.3/getting-...) and workers can be of many types: game engines like Unreal or Unity to manage the physics of the simulation, custom workers based on one of the language SDKs that implement AI-like functions, or any other behaviour you want to put in your world: it's entirely up to you to take this as far as you like.
- sergiotapia 9y ago
  This sounds exciting for large multiplayer games. Are there any games coming out soon that you can share with us that use your technology? (Please be Destiny 2!)
  - dvanamst 9y ago
    Yes, there sure are (not Destiny 2 though ;) ). Actually Worlds Adrift (https://www.worldsadrift.com/ https://www.worldsadrift.com/) is already in Beta and Lazarus (http://www.playlazarus.com/ http://www.playlazarus.com/) is in open-development and you can start playing right now. And more are already in development.
- eximius 9y ago
  How does this handle a load too large for a single server in an extremely small area? Say, the Halloween War in Eve or just a bunch of morons - say 10k people - gather within a single small valley in a game? Sure, you can subdivide it as small as you want, but that just increases the overhead by requiring the servers to communicate more. But even if the servers can figure it out, what the client sees seems like a hard problem too.

by jcfrei 9y ago

bane 9y ago

I honestly have no idea. Clearly given the number of smart people and amount of money being thrown at the problem (without being able to produce a real seamless massive persistent on-line world without compromises) this is very hard. I also wonder how it handles very large entities that might span across clusters (say a large spaceship with thousands of entities spread across multiple decks and in different area). Since all of those things are entities in a sense, and there might be many ships, how does it handle this? No idea, but the fact that this can be asked at all is pretty interesting.

a_t48 9y ago
Yeah, the secret sauce seems to be in how they handle interactions split across clusters. It's not a simple problem.
dxhdr 9y ago
> Clearly given the number of smart people and amount of money being thrown at the problem (without being able to produce a real seamless massive persistent on-line world without compromises) this is very hard. It's just not worth it. The technical back-end challenge isn't the hard part here, it's the game design. WoW with 10,000 players idling in Orgrimmar isn't fun. WoW with 100 players in a single dungeon isn't fun either, for that matter.
- spuz 9y ago
  The real value is not in games. It's in simulations of real world systems. The kind of thing governments are happy to spend a lot of dollars on. http://www.wired.co.uk/article/improbable-spatialos-simulated-cities http://www.wired.co.uk/article/improbable-spatialos-simulate...
  - Banderly 9y ago
    Do those simulations need to be real time and massively multiplayer? I don't see the need for this tech in the high fidelity city simulation cited in the linked article: that would much easier to implement as an offline simulation. Training seems like the most likely usage: eg. disaster response or large scale military scenarios. I have to agree with the earlier poster that tech is not the limiting factor for massively multiplayer games.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - spuz 9y ago
      No the simulations don't have to be real time or massively multiplayer. A simulation has no players at all so I'm not sure how it could be massively multiplayer. It would most likely be used to test infrastructure or policy decisions. For example, what happens to your traffic in your city if you add this bus route, or how would a contagious bioweapon spread under certain conditions.
      - Banderly 9y ago
        If you don't need real time then why use improbable? If you want to simulate a new bus route then run an offline simulation using whatever tools you like with as much complexity as you like. In fact you'd likely want to run your simulation much faster than real time to answer specific questions quickly, like finding traffic or passenger hotspots. I doubt you'd want to sit there watching virtual buses driving around a 3d city, but rather quickly see heat maps change as you play with parameters.
        Boothroid 9y ago
        It might be easier to set up a massive simulation in SpatialOS? And perhaps it's not limited to realtime.

dvanamst 9y ago

Hey! Improbable dev here. We deal with such a situation through the fact that SpatialOS dynamically scales the zones that each game engine is responsible for. So if you have many players gathering in the same reduced area then there will actually be multiple game engines allocated to that specific zone and extra engines might even be started if the load requires it. This also works in reverse so that if your player density falls drastically and a single game engine would suffice for your entire world you will only have one running, so you always have the right amount of resources at your disposal. Such game engines are what is referred to as workers in SpatialOS (https://spatialos.improbable.io/docs/reference/10.3/getting-started/concepts/spatialos https://spatialos.improbable.io/docs/reference/10.3/getting-...) and workers can be of many types: game engines like Unreal or Unity to manage the physics of the simulation, custom workers based on one of the language SDKs that implement AI-like functions, or any other behaviour you want to put in your world: it's entirely up to you to take this as far as you like.

sergiotapia 9y ago
This sounds exciting for large multiplayer games. Are there any games coming out soon that you can share with us that use your technology? (Please be Destiny 2!)
- dvanamst 9y ago
  Yes, there sure are (not Destiny 2 though ;) ). Actually Worlds Adrift (https://www.worldsadrift.com/ https://www.worldsadrift.com/) is already in Beta and Lazarus (http://www.playlazarus.com/ http://www.playlazarus.com/) is in open-development and you can start playing right now. And more are already in development.
eximius 9y ago
How does this handle a load too large for a single server in an extremely small area? Say, the Halloween War in Eve or just a bunch of morons - say 10k people - gather within a single small valley in a game? Sure, you can subdivide it as small as you want, but that just increases the overhead by requiring the servers to communicate more. But even if the servers can figure it out, what the client sees seems like a hard problem too.