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Advancements in Server Architecture
Cross posted from the latest Newspost.
We've been making a lot of changes lately, quietly behind-the-scenes and without shipping any normal "patches".
These changes have been primarily on the server, rather than the game client. As we discussed in the October newsletter, we've made a lot of recent changes to the game client that have really enhanced performance and efficiency, and some of these changes also make sense to apply to the server itself.
You see, the performance of a given sector is a limiting factor on what kind of content can take place there. How many bots can be flying around, or what they can be doing. The number of asteroids and debris floating to and fro, the complexity of station or mission mechanics; all these things are controlled by the Sector Daemon, that process that maintains authority over a particular area of geographical space.
Vendetta Online's server has always been fairly efficient, but in the interest of adding a lot of complex new gameplay, and giving us more opportunities and options to really scale-up some intriguing new scenarios, we wanted to work on enhancing the performance.
Thus far, we've managed to see some big gains. The measured increase in performance depends on what kind of work-load is being run, but so far we've seen improvements between 2x and 10x. This is thanks to a couple of major developments: big efficiency changes in our own code, based on profiling and testing; as well as moving the Sector Daemon's internal Lua programming language from standard "interpreted" Lua 5.1, to LuaJIT, a high-performance just-in-time compiled version.
Although there have been some differences and issues we've had to track down as a result of these changes (which made for some quirky problems last weekend), the final upshot is that we can now handle a LOT more activity within a given sector, on the same amount of Server CPU, while actually using less Server RAM. Similarly, Sector Daemons can now more-efficiently utilize large numbers of CPU cores, if necessary. All of that is a good thing for everyone, and particularly for next-generation gameplay.
Have you ever wondered what it might look like if every Collector Drone in a sector decided to attack you at once? Drop into Latos F-12 and see 300 Artemis Collectors that will all attack you on-sight. This unique, static test-sector exists just to see how things work with larger numbers of enemies, and what problems or ramifications emerge for players. The sector could handle more than 300, but this is a reasonable test-case for now.
This simplistic test-case does NOT mean we're aiming to have huge clouds of Collector Drones roaming around for no reason. But it does mean that we can make more reactive and interesting gameplay under some circumstances, and aim for much larger space battles, complex station-city environments, more complex AI, and the like. Ever seen a movie with thousands of ships in a massive real-time battle, and wonder what it might be like to fly through that? We'd like to see that too.
Vendetta Online has a lot of inherent capability in its custom, tightly-compressed network protocol, which dates from an earlier era when bandwidth was in far shorter supply. As a result, we've had some success with testing of "very large scale" situations, with only relatively modest bandwidth requirements for the players and server. There's still a lot more testing to be done, particularly with players in "the wild", but thus far we're pretty optimistic about our results.
With some luck, we may be able to build something that no one has ever seen in an MMO before..
(No, this is not the "something" I was referring to above, but interesting test-case video - Teradon vs 500 Drones):
We've been making a lot of changes lately, quietly behind-the-scenes and without shipping any normal "patches".
These changes have been primarily on the server, rather than the game client. As we discussed in the October newsletter, we've made a lot of recent changes to the game client that have really enhanced performance and efficiency, and some of these changes also make sense to apply to the server itself.
You see, the performance of a given sector is a limiting factor on what kind of content can take place there. How many bots can be flying around, or what they can be doing. The number of asteroids and debris floating to and fro, the complexity of station or mission mechanics; all these things are controlled by the Sector Daemon, that process that maintains authority over a particular area of geographical space.
Vendetta Online's server has always been fairly efficient, but in the interest of adding a lot of complex new gameplay, and giving us more opportunities and options to really scale-up some intriguing new scenarios, we wanted to work on enhancing the performance.
Thus far, we've managed to see some big gains. The measured increase in performance depends on what kind of work-load is being run, but so far we've seen improvements between 2x and 10x. This is thanks to a couple of major developments: big efficiency changes in our own code, based on profiling and testing; as well as moving the Sector Daemon's internal Lua programming language from standard "interpreted" Lua 5.1, to LuaJIT, a high-performance just-in-time compiled version.
Although there have been some differences and issues we've had to track down as a result of these changes (which made for some quirky problems last weekend), the final upshot is that we can now handle a LOT more activity within a given sector, on the same amount of Server CPU, while actually using less Server RAM. Similarly, Sector Daemons can now more-efficiently utilize large numbers of CPU cores, if necessary. All of that is a good thing for everyone, and particularly for next-generation gameplay.
Have you ever wondered what it might look like if every Collector Drone in a sector decided to attack you at once? Drop into Latos F-12 and see 300 Artemis Collectors that will all attack you on-sight. This unique, static test-sector exists just to see how things work with larger numbers of enemies, and what problems or ramifications emerge for players. The sector could handle more than 300, but this is a reasonable test-case for now.
This simplistic test-case does NOT mean we're aiming to have huge clouds of Collector Drones roaming around for no reason. But it does mean that we can make more reactive and interesting gameplay under some circumstances, and aim for much larger space battles, complex station-city environments, more complex AI, and the like. Ever seen a movie with thousands of ships in a massive real-time battle, and wonder what it might be like to fly through that? We'd like to see that too.
Vendetta Online has a lot of inherent capability in its custom, tightly-compressed network protocol, which dates from an earlier era when bandwidth was in far shorter supply. As a result, we've had some success with testing of "very large scale" situations, with only relatively modest bandwidth requirements for the players and server. There's still a lot more testing to be done, particularly with players in "the wild", but thus far we're pretty optimistic about our results.
With some luck, we may be able to build something that no one has ever seen in an MMO before..
(No, this is not the "something" I was referring to above, but interesting test-case video - Teradon vs 500 Drones):
Drop into Latos F-12 and see 300 Artemis Collectors that will all attack you on-sight.
Do they drop SSS? ;)
Do they drop SSS? ;)
You and your team have already completed the last statement, no one has done anything remotely close with a MMO. I love the ideas and ill be sure to interact with these sectors, thanks for keepin us fresh with updates man.
Keep up the great work you are doing.
Fantastic!
I agree, quite awesome.
Hey Inc & Ray is it possible there could be a cool developer game event in relation to the new cool stuff involvin the hulk debris and arties?
F12 is alot of fun, I managed to actually clear the sector of bots temporarily with energy weapons. It seems however once you pull that off, they take a good 5 minutes or so to return. Is that intended behavior?
Yeah, they currently have a 5 minute respawn time.
I am evaluating a possible event based around some of this new tech.
I am evaluating a possible event based around some of this new tech.
That sounds great, we should use F-12 as a deathmatch sector :)
Perhaps more realistic behaviour might be as they start to incur losses, they summon guardian and assault bots to boost their numbers.
Great work guys, I'm really looking forward to VO becoming a more dangerous and interesting place.
Perhaps more realistic behaviour might be as they start to incur losses, they summon guardian and assault bots to boost their numbers.
Great work guys, I'm really looking forward to VO becoming a more dangerous and interesting place.
Zerg rush!
I can see a possible event. Go in with XYZ loadout, and see how many bots you can take out before being killed. Would need to find some way to track the sympathetic detonations though.