5 ms·

> 200 in one place 200 players in one map instance. But not 200 visible player with interactions refreshing on real time. Most likely you see diminishing leve

> 200 in one place 200 players in one map instance. But not 200 visible player with interactions refreshing on real time. Most likely you see diminishing level of details, if anything besides complete fabrication or no data at all after a certain visibility range threshold.

throwaway316943 5y ago
The spiffing Brit managed to get 500 people into a single Factorio game, not all visible at the same time but all interacting with the environment. It was an interesting video, the performance was fairly good.
- swiley 5y ago
  I saw that video, the game definitely struggled. It's certainly doable though.
- imtringued 5y ago
  Buildings are more CPU intensive than players unless those players are all busy fighting. If they just mine or place buildings they simply don't matter.
p1necone 5y ago
This doesn't really matter though, after a certain point there isn't much difference to players between 50 people and 200 people within visible distance. You can just stop showing others past some cap, or throttle position updates to like 1 every 20 seconds or so and fill in the gaps with AI.
- weird-eye-issue 5y ago
  Actually it makes a huge difference. You haven't played WoW have you?
  - weird-eye-issue 5y ago
    To the people downvoting me, I only said that because his response was directly about somebody mentioning World of Warcraft. In WoW, if they only limited you to seeing 50 people the game would feel completely different when you go into cities and do open world PVP and such. It would literally break the game. In fact when they released WoW Classic they had a new technology they called layering where even if you were in the same realm as somebody you could be on a different layer and therefore not see them. People absolutely hated it and went crazy. So that is why I asked him if he had played it since he said "at a certain point there isn't much difference to players between 50 people and 200 people within visible distance" which is just wrong.
    - drak0n1c 5y ago
      On HN to uphold civil discussion it’s best to avoid dismissive references and assumptions directed at “you”. Best to address the idea alone with your example/argument, rather than the imagined speaker. Otherwise it can be interpreted as needlessly antagonistic and will be downvoted.
      - weird-eye-issue 5y ago
        That's fair
angrais 5y ago
It's an open world game, but let's assume you mean local map. In that case, let's assume that each player waves (/wave). I've done this before with >50 players and took a screenshot and we were all in sync. It's also possible to have 50 players in the same area fighting in real time, e.g., in a battleground. This was back in 2010 when I played ... So I am not sure if it's any fabrication at all, otherwise everyone would die, etc? Given players have health, take damage, get healed, etc.
- randallsquared 5y ago
  This is one of the reasons it's been so believable. Lots of people think they've already seen it, apparently. The gap between what MMO players already think they're seeing and what these founders are promising seems trivial, but actually implies a lot about network latency and bandwidth, software complexity, etc.
- philliphaydon 5y ago
  Ultima Online could do 100+ visible people back in 1997. But I don't believe WoW could do it now, the last time I played WoW, early last year, in a large raid, there would be spells cast from invisible people because the characters wouldn't even load.
  - codycraven 5y ago
    The lag around the Britain bank when busy (even sometimes Moonglow bank) made it nearly unplayable though, and the game was only 2D.
    - philliphaydon 5y ago
      I remember on a player run server (Novus Opiate) we had a random battle one day of red vs blue and we had about 80-100 people in Britain run through a portal into Buccaneer's Den, slaughtering all the reds, and all the reds banded together to kill the blues. It was well over 100 people with minimal lag, with most people on 56k modems. But Britain bank with lots of people was always laggy. Especially if there wasn’t a server reboot in over a week.

throwaway316943 5y ago

The spiffing Brit managed to get 500 people into a single Factorio game, not all visible at the same time but all interacting with the environment. It was an interesting video, the performance was fairly good.

swiley 5y ago
I saw that video, the game definitely struggled. It's certainly doable though.
imtringued 5y ago
Buildings are more CPU intensive than players unless those players are all busy fighting. If they just mine or place buildings they simply don't matter.

p1necone 5y ago

This doesn't really matter though, after a certain point there isn't much difference to players between 50 people and 200 people within visible distance. You can just stop showing others past some cap, or throttle position updates to like 1 every 20 seconds or so and fill in the gaps with AI.

weird-eye-issue 5y ago
Actually it makes a huge difference. You haven't played WoW have you?
- weird-eye-issue 5y ago
  To the people downvoting me, I only said that because his response was directly about somebody mentioning World of Warcraft. In WoW, if they only limited you to seeing 50 people the game would feel completely different when you go into cities and do open world PVP and such. It would literally break the game. In fact when they released WoW Classic they had a new technology they called layering where even if you were in the same realm as somebody you could be on a different layer and therefore not see them. People absolutely hated it and went crazy. So that is why I asked him if he had played it since he said "at a certain point there isn't much difference to players between 50 people and 200 people within visible distance" which is just wrong.
  - drak0n1c 5y ago
    On HN to uphold civil discussion it’s best to avoid dismissive references and assumptions directed at “you”. Best to address the idea alone with your example/argument, rather than the imagined speaker. Otherwise it can be interpreted as needlessly antagonistic and will be downvoted.
    - weird-eye-issue 5y ago
      That's fair

angrais 5y ago

It's an open world game, but let's assume you mean local map. In that case, let's assume that each player waves (/wave). I've done this before with >50 players and took a screenshot and we were all in sync. It's also possible to have 50 players in the same area fighting in real time, e.g., in a battleground. This was back in 2010 when I played ... So I am not sure if it's any fabrication at all, otherwise everyone would die, etc? Given players have health, take damage, get healed, etc.

randallsquared 5y ago
This is one of the reasons it's been so believable. Lots of people think they've already seen it, apparently. The gap between what MMO players already think they're seeing and what these founders are promising seems trivial, but actually implies a lot about network latency and bandwidth, software complexity, etc.
philliphaydon 5y ago
Ultima Online could do 100+ visible people back in 1997. But I don't believe WoW could do it now, the last time I played WoW, early last year, in a large raid, there would be spells cast from invisible people because the characters wouldn't even load.
- codycraven 5y ago
  The lag around the Britain bank when busy (even sometimes Moonglow bank) made it nearly unplayable though, and the game was only 2D.
  - philliphaydon 5y ago
    I remember on a player run server (Novus Opiate) we had a random battle one day of red vs blue and we had about 80-100 people in Britain run through a portal into Buccaneer's Den, slaughtering all the reds, and all the reds banded together to kill the blues. It was well over 100 people with minimal lag, with most people on 56k modems. But Britain bank with lots of people was always laggy. Especially if there wasn’t a server reboot in over a week.