4 ms·

It's a ludicrous amount of bandwidth even for a 1,000 player game, and a strong indicator that this developer is doing something very wrong.

by mvdtnz 4mo ago

avaer 4mo ago
It's like someone saying their project repo has 10-20GB of source. (btw game server network data is usually trivially and insanely compressible, far more than text)
- gafferongames 4mo ago
  Have you considered the O(n x m) issue with player counts? For example, if you have n=1000 players, and m=2000 objects, the total number of object state updates that need to be sent out is n x m. So a 1000 player space game with 1000 players, and 2000 objects (say, 1000 other players and 1000 AI ships...), and you have O(1000 x 2000) = 2,000,000 Compare this with a more typical FPS, let's say, n=32 and m=1000 (let's be generous...). The amount of bandwidth for that game would be O(32 x 1000) = O(32000). Given this, it's pretty easy to see how a 1000 player space game would send more bandwidth than a regular 32 player FPS, even if it did use all the standard tricks from first person shooters, eg. snapshots, delta encoding and all that. There's just more state to send, and in total, roughly O(n^2) bandwidth as player count n increases.
  - frollogaston 4mo ago
    There are already plenty of 1000-player games with 2000 objects that use a lot less bandwidth than this, usually because a lot of the object tracking is left to the clients while the server shares some form of player input. I'm not saying there's no possible reason to use 20mbps, just asking what it's for. Is the space game avoiding sending player inputs for anticheat reasons? How is the server updating the client on the objects' state? I will say though, 20mbps of game bandwidth is different from video bandwidth. I'm guessing you require low latency too. And it'd be a lot for the clients to deal with, even the deserialization by itself.
    - gafferongames 4mo ago
      Yes, but how many games truly support 1000 players at the same quality level and fidelity of a AAA FPS? I can't think of any, even Eve: Online has time dilation and starts to chug when the action gets too intense. What if you could have a 1000 player FPS, and it was networked at the same fidelity of a AAA FPS? It would certainly use more bandwidth, but what if?
      - frollogaston 4mo ago
        The largest player count FPSes I can think of are Battlefield and Fortnite. I don't think the bandwidth is the constraint on those, even if you really wanted to have 1000 people shooting at each other in the same spot.
        gafferongames 4mo ago
        The number of players per-Fortnite server is 100 players. The number of players per-Battlefield server is 64 players.
        gafferongames 4mo ago
        Furthermore, Fortnite "Cannot support more than 100 players" according to Tim Sweeney. https://www.gamespot.com/articles/fortnite-cannot-support-more-than-100-players-epic-says/1100-6512850/ https://www.gamespot.com/articles/fortnite-cannot-support-mo...
10000truths 4mo ago
It's not as ludicrous as you think, for two reasons: 1. Bandwidth requirements scale quadratically with player count, since the state of each player needs to be broadcast to every player. You can optimize this with clever tricks like server-side occlusion culling, but that's heavily dependent on your specific game's mechanics, and it still doesn't address the worst case scenario of lots of players clustering in a small visible area. 2. Players are not the only entity that need to be synced. Every server-side entity affecting a client needs to have its state broadcast to that client. A dynamically destructible environment that physically interacts with players is a perfect example of this - launch a rocket at a building, compute the Voronoi fractures server-side based on impact location, sync thousands of pieces of flying concrete debris (each with its own rigid body) across all players.
- xboxnolifes 4mo ago
  It does not scale quadratically per client though, and the number given is per client.
  - gafferongames 4mo ago
    Let's say typical games send 1-2 megabits per-second for first person shooters with 100 players or less (in some cases it's more, some cases it's less, but let's assume this is at least reasonable to do in 2026) Now you have a game with 1000 players. That's 10 times the number of objects in the world (players have to be sent to other players, assuming you can see all the other players because they are right near you.) Now this game sends 10-20megabits per-second. It's just math. More players --> more bandwidth.
    - xboxnolifes 4mo ago
      Again, this games claims to send 10-20mbps per client. The quadratic part would be the full outgoing from the server, those numbers are not the full outgoing. The full outgoing is claimed to be 10-20 *gigabits* per second. Having 10 times the data from 10 times the players is not quadratic.

It's a ludicrous amount of bandwidth even for a 1,000 player game, and a strong indicator that this developer is doing something very wrong.

by mvdtnz 4mo ago

It's a ludicrous amount of bandwidth even for a 1,000 player game, and a strong indicator that this developer is doing something very wrong.

avaer 4mo ago

It's like someone saying their project repo has 10-20GB of source. (btw game server network data is usually trivially and insanely compressible, far more than text)

gafferongames 4mo ago
Have you considered the O(n x m) issue with player counts? For example, if you have n=1000 players, and m=2000 objects, the total number of object state updates that need to be sent out is n x m. So a 1000 player space game with 1000 players, and 2000 objects (say, 1000 other players and 1000 AI ships...), and you have O(1000 x 2000) = 2,000,000 Compare this with a more typical FPS, let's say, n=32 and m=1000 (let's be generous...). The amount of bandwidth for that game would be O(32 x 1000) = O(32000). Given this, it's pretty easy to see how a 1000 player space game would send more bandwidth than a regular 32 player FPS, even if it did use all the standard tricks from first person shooters, eg. snapshots, delta encoding and all that. There's just more state to send, and in total, roughly O(n^2) bandwidth as player count n increases.
- frollogaston 4mo ago
  There are already plenty of 1000-player games with 2000 objects that use a lot less bandwidth than this, usually because a lot of the object tracking is left to the clients while the server shares some form of player input. I'm not saying there's no possible reason to use 20mbps, just asking what it's for. Is the space game avoiding sending player inputs for anticheat reasons? How is the server updating the client on the objects' state? I will say though, 20mbps of game bandwidth is different from video bandwidth. I'm guessing you require low latency too. And it'd be a lot for the clients to deal with, even the deserialization by itself.
  - gafferongames 4mo ago
    Yes, but how many games truly support 1000 players at the same quality level and fidelity of a AAA FPS? I can't think of any, even Eve: Online has time dilation and starts to chug when the action gets too intense. What if you could have a 1000 player FPS, and it was networked at the same fidelity of a AAA FPS? It would certainly use more bandwidth, but what if?
    - frollogaston 4mo ago
      The largest player count FPSes I can think of are Battlefield and Fortnite. I don't think the bandwidth is the constraint on those, even if you really wanted to have 1000 people shooting at each other in the same spot.
      - gafferongames 4mo ago
        The number of players per-Fortnite server is 100 players. The number of players per-Battlefield server is 64 players.
        gafferongames 4mo ago
        Furthermore, Fortnite "Cannot support more than 100 players" according to Tim Sweeney. https://www.gamespot.com/articles/fortnite-cannot-support-more-than-100-players-epic-says/1100-6512850/ https://www.gamespot.com/articles/fortnite-cannot-support-mo...

10000truths 4mo ago

It's not as ludicrous as you think, for two reasons: 1. Bandwidth requirements scale quadratically with player count, since the state of each player needs to be broadcast to every player. You can optimize this with clever tricks like server-side occlusion culling, but that's heavily dependent on your specific game's mechanics, and it still doesn't address the worst case scenario of lots of players clustering in a small visible area. 2. Players are not the only entity that need to be synced. Every server-side entity affecting a client needs to have its state broadcast to that client. A dynamically destructible environment that physically interacts with players is a perfect example of this - launch a rocket at a building, compute the Voronoi fractures server-side based on impact location, sync thousands of pieces of flying concrete debris (each with its own rigid body) across all players.

xboxnolifes 4mo ago
It does not scale quadratically per client though, and the number given is per client.
- gafferongames 4mo ago
  Let's say typical games send 1-2 megabits per-second for first person shooters with 100 players or less (in some cases it's more, some cases it's less, but let's assume this is at least reasonable to do in 2026) Now you have a game with 1000 players. That's 10 times the number of objects in the world (players have to be sent to other players, assuming you can see all the other players because they are right near you.) Now this game sends 10-20megabits per-second. It's just math. More players --> more bandwidth.
  - xboxnolifes 4mo ago
    Again, this games claims to send 10-20mbps per client. The quadratic part would be the full outgoing from the server, those numbers are not the full outgoing. The full outgoing is claimed to be 10-20 *gigabits* per second. Having 10 times the data from 10 times the players is not quadratic.