Sundren's amazing growth

[Morganna de Flay]

Sundren,

Is is just me or has the community base for Sundren expanded twice fold in a few weeks which is great. The bad side is the lag is getting so bad at times its almost impossible to play.

I can't remember a successful pr world on nwn that didn't suffer from this problem when the player base online extended beyond 30+ on a regular basis. The only successful pw world that I have seen to handle a growing community base is Neversummer on the nwn platform.

They where smart enough to keep the max number of players limited to a server and open up reflection servers to give players a choice between west coast and east coast. This way players will migrate to the best latency.

I don't have the details of their server configuration but certainly the concept worked well.

Is there chance Sundren would take the same approach to a growing community base?

Morganna de Flay

[undeadsteak]

I dont think nwn 2 lets them host 2 servers that are linked to each other yet...

[Saulus]

Sundren,

Is is just me or has the community base for Sundren expanded twice fold in a few weeks which is great. The bad side is the lag is getting so bad at times its almost impossible to play.

I can't remember a successful pr world on nwn that didn't suffer from this problem when the player base online extended beyond 30+ on a regular basis. The only successful pw world that I have seen to handle a growing community base is Neversummer on the nwn platform.

They where smart enough to keep the max number of players limited to a server and open up reflection servers to give players a choice between west coast and east coast. This way players will migrate to the best latency.

I don't have the details of their server configuration but certainly the concept worked well.

Is there chance Sundren would take the same approach to a growing community base?

Morganna de Flay

Donate 2 grand.

That's payable to the Sundren Team.

Thanks.

But seriously, doing this already costs us money. We also have a lot of work just administering the server. If we had cash thrown at us like candy it would be easy. The issue right now isn't our server's performance, in all reality if NWN2's MP flooding bugs and other issues were fixed by Obsidian we could hold a lot more people without lag.

[ipsissimus]

(opens the first annual Sundren cookie bake sale)
we have:
- Mossclaw gingerbread gnolls
- Hadavi shaped fangs cookies
- Helmite ginger bites

This is how we can raise some fun-dage.

...seriously I'm having a blast (though it is taking some time getting used to the Sundren way).

Separating east/west sounds good on paper and in a RP aspect but don't you think would thin out our numbers not to menton having to split the Devs between to worlds.

[GodBeastX]

Let me explain the issue as the player count increases.

At any given time, a player may crash or have system issues. That means, the more players that connect the greater the chance of these issues. Sundren also pushes area quality to the max, which means there actually is an increased chance of client crash on Sundren for lower end machines than on other PWs.

Now, when a crash happens, there is a chance the server will start flooding that client's IP thinking they are still connected. Due to no ACKs or whatever in the protocol, it maxes the outbound bandwidth to that IP. This flood lags the network horribly for everyone. Then what happens, another client may crash from this lag, now the server is flooding two people, even worse lag. Last night, for example, I saw 1 flood turn into 8 floods in a matter of... 3 minutes.

So, what can we do about this?

This is a bug Obsidian says they will work on (In the future of course). So that doesn't help us today. Today, however, we have two things we can do to try to help.

1) Players, keeping their systems in a state where their crash chances are lower HELPS IMMENSELY. If you, for example, have 512 megs of ram and a GeForce 5600, your chance of crashing will be higher than someone with 2 gigs of ram and a 8800 geforce. Or if you have 30 programs running in the background, your chance is higher than someone just running NWN2. Or if you have torrents going while you're playing, your crash rate is higher than someone only using network to player NWN2, see what I'm saying?

2) I'm working on a Winsock Hook specifically for NWN2, that will detect flooding IPs before they become a problem and block all data to and from that IP to stop the flood from ever happening. It would then, once some time passes, allow data from that IP again. This would be a bandaid on top of Obsidian's buggy code, until they finally fix it. This also takes alot of time to code.

What this means is, if you find yourself crashed, you might not be able to log back in for 10 minutes or so in some cases. However, you might have to take one for the team in this case.



Honestly, NWN2 is a very low bandwidth game. VERY low bandwidth. With 30 people on, and no flooding, it seriously only uses like 100kbit upstream. That's really nothing. We could easily handle 60 people if it wasn't for the flood bug. However, as things stands, this is what we have to deal with.

[Morganna de Flay]

donate 2 grand

Sundren,

Well I can't donate 2 grand but I can wrestle up another dedicated server on one of the fastest networks in North America. I work for a managed hosting company that specializes in high availability hosting so the performance of the network has to be top notch.

I don't disagree with you that nwn2 has its fair share of bugs that could improve performance but at the same time I would not hold my breath waiting for Obsidian to fix them any time soon.

If nwn servers struggles with 35+ plus people no doubt nwn2 servers will struggle even more so. (For the reasons mentioned above)

Hopefully in the long term the bug you mentioned is fixed but if you need a short term fix another server would go a long ways. I enjoy the community and appreciate the work everyone buts in so I offer my support in any way I can.

Morganna de Flay.

[GodBeastX]

Actually, I just did some research and found an even faster way to hook the winsock functions, which I might be able to put in today.

And trust me, NWN2 CAN max a T3 line even with this bug. People have reported it hitting massive MBits. I'm sure a hosting company does not want that load on their network.

[ThePaganKing]

I am probably one of those with a lower end computer; however, as soon as I think I am crashing, I usually hit alt/ctrl/delete and end the game, because it usually locks up my computer if I don't do it quickly enough and I have to do a hard reboot.

Good news, I am building a new computer and should have it in about 5 to 7 days; therefore, I shouldn't have that problem anymore, or at least not as bad.

By the way, I think you guys are doing a great job keeping all this going and if people forget, NWN1 online had massive problems at times also!

[Saulus]

Sundren,

Well I can't donate 2 grand but I can wrestle up another dedicated server on one of the fastest networks in North America. I work for a managed hosting company that specializes in high availability hosting so the performance of the network has to be top notch.

I don't disagree with you that nwn2 has its fair share of bugs that could improve performance but at the same time I would not hold my breath waiting for Obsidian to fix them any time soon.

If nwn servers struggles with 35+ plus people no doubt nwn2 servers will struggle even more so. (For the reasons mentioned above)

Hopefully in the long term the bug you mentioned is fixed but if you need a short term fix another server would go a long ways. I enjoy the community and appreciate the work everyone buts in so I offer my support in any way I can.

Morganna de Flay.

Unfortunately due to reoccuring problems with hosts we will only be doing it privately from our current operations.

[nutranurse]

Is there another way to donate that is not through Paypal? Cause I would like to donate some money to you lot when I get a chance to.

[Saulus]

Paypal is the only easy way really.

[Rhazeal]

We *could* publish Saulus address

But the risk that someone would send him something undead is simply too great.

[Echelon13]

For clarification, neither Saulus nor any other members of the staff would like Undeadsteak to be shipped to our homes.

[Satoshi]

But those infomercials say that little kids like him around the world NEED OUR HELP! HAVE YOU NO HEART? ...wait, you don't. Ah, well.

[Echelon13]

But those infomercials say that little kids like him around the world NEED OUR HELP! HAVE YOU NO HEART? ...wait, you don't. Ah, well.

Yes, but there's just no hope for some of them.