Using a bat file, in a way very similar to minecraft, we should be able to host our own servers.

Entered the IP of a server
Then enter a username for that game.

That's about the way it's going to be - I don't have the resources to host global games . When the online mode is released, you get to make your current game online by enabling the server, where you give the server port and your username. Your buddies can then join your game using your IP/domain name and the port you just set, and setting their usernames and any other setting.

So are dedicated servers official?
Please be yes, oh please be yes.

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Oasis. Less Running, more rifle.

If by dedicated server you mean that you put the game running on a server and it doesn't need to display any graphics or anything and no one will sit by the server machine itself and play on it, then no, that kind of dedicated server will not be possible in the first stage. I'd like to see it in the future though, as it would enable a lot bigger player count as the graphics wouldn't slow down everything and it would allow bigger areas to run without simulation in the game.

Is that what you meant?

Yeah pasik,

Dedicated servers are basically just .bat files or server clients that don't have any graphics so it can basically be hosted on a VPS or Dedi server 24/7.

It's an essential asset for a game like this and I doubt it'll pick up in popularity if we don't get a dedicated server client.

It is essential for massive PvP, but I'm not sure yet PvP is even fun with this type of game. We'll have to try it first with the "un-dedicated" mode with a reasonable player count like 8 or 16 (in fact, strictly PvP without AI could perhaps handle over 50 players given proper connections, if my estimations are valid), to see if there's any point in striving to get a dedicated server mode implemented. If it seems that it is something that people still want at that point, then it's something that needs to be done

For cooperative purposes the "un-dedicated" server is well enough and that's my top priority.

All in all, it could mean that 0.4 version would have this server mode suitable for cooperative gaming and smaller scale PvP. Maybe 0.8 version closer to December might have a dedicated server mode, who knows.

You think 30 vs 30 on a medium sized map wouldn't be fun?! Are you crazy?

I set the soldiers count to 1000 the other day and had like 20-40 soldiers on the screen fighting at once. It was amazing and my heart was pumping adrenaline.

Also, zombie mod is a must. Seriously man.

10ish players co-op walking around town scavenging for stuff while popping zombies left and right. Man the possibilities are endless!

Either way, I can hardly wait for Multiplayer.

well what is the server for this website like?

I doubt a game like RWR would need a ton of space. I mean, minecraft with its GIANT memory leaks can support 50 players with a couple gigs of ram. And thats got so much more to it aswell.

I could see 200 on a game easily.

The bottleneck isn't about RAM or space in this game. One bottleneck is that the 200 or more active players and their 2000 or more bullets generate a lot of physics calculation, and the server needs to have everything correctly set up in the whole game area where the human players are located, so playing with a huge number of players is more intense on CPU than it is in a single player game, where most of the 1000 of AI soldiers are just pretending they exist and simulating battles somewhere far away.

If there would be a dedicated server mode, so that the CPU wouldn't need to wait for the GPU to finish rendering most of the time, the 200 active players would be a piece of cake to process for any OK processor. If the game would be optimized to use multiple cores/processors, 200 active players would be achievable even with rendering.

The other, more important, bottleneck is the network traffic. There are countless ways to optimize the required bandwidth, each of which increases the complexity of the solution and makes it more difficult to debug, usually.

If the server needs to keep 200 players in sync, it might mean that the 200 players send data about their inputs to the server constantly, lets say it generates 0.5kb/s/player, in total it then makes 200*0.5kb/s=100kb/s inflow on the server, that's rather easy still. Then the server needs to send the input data of all those soldiers that are close by to each client player to the client in question, so for simplicity's sake it might momentarily mean in total that input data of about 30 soldiers need to be send to each 200 clients, 30*200*0.5kb/s = 3mb(not mbit!)/s on server outflow, and that's not just anyone's connection anymore. Each client would receive 30*0.5kb/s = 15kb/s, which is again nothing really.

The 3mb/s isn't even the worst case that could happen. You could have all 200 players in a single group very close to each other, so with this logic it would mean that all inputs need to be send to all players, 200*200*0.5kb/s = 20mb/s server outflow and 100kb inflow on each client, yeah right. Naturally that's not likely to happen, but it's possible nevertheless.

Now, like I said, there are ways to deal with this kind of things. The amount of well-synced soldiers could be capped for each client, possibly by the factor of closeness, like that only 10 closest soldiers would be well in sync, while the soldiers beyond that wouldn't be positioned that up-to-date on the client and it would reduce the server outflow to max 1mb/s. This of course might make some things worse, as the 10 closest soldiers are probably your team members and it's not them you're trying to shoot, it's the guys at the far end of the view and you're not likely to hit them if you see them in incorrect position.

Etc.. you get my point I'm sure. Getting to 200 players isn't without its problems.

Yep, as far as I have understood network traffic is precisely the reason why most online shooters have a player cap of 16-32 at most. Some games have more, like 64+, but they are an exception. PlanetSide, MAG and so on use more MMO-kind of network code, and that's quite the different ballgame, I reckon.

Mind you, a lot of the console (PS3, Xbox 360) games use a p2p-setup, where one of the players hosts the game, but those tend to have even lower player counts (12-16 is quite typical I think). If any parables can be drawn, I would assume dedicated servers are only really needed with larger player counts. And, of course, with player counts like that, the server bandwith steps in to the picture in a big way. Oh the days of finding a sponsor to host clan servers for training...