I am new to GameOping using TWGS. I had a board some years ago on a local BBS, was partners with someone and I didn't do most of the Tech stuff except for stringing together the 64 modems through the multiplexer. Instead I was on the creativity end, designing ANSI screens, menu systems, and game ideas. Also played a lot from the Local screen. So, everyone bear with me if I have a lot of questions. This one is simple, I have a new server coming soon, but couldn't wait till then to start TWGS, just had to dive in and see what I will be facing. Below is my current system, and the new one coming, I want to know what performance I can expect from them as far as game speed, lagging, and max no of players on at once before the system burns up!

Currently:
PIII 800Mghz
192 MB ram
Cable Modem (roadrunner) thru my USB port (oh what a mess)
Win 98 & Win2000 but running on Win98 Partition
4 games running (2 gold)
5 Gold alien races active (total individual aliens will max at 400)
1 sec processing interval
4 commands max per cycle

now if this system is sufficient then the new one will be for me![:D]

New one:
P4 1.5+
512 MB ram
Still cable modem but through network card (all 4 machines networked)
(other 2 machines, not worth talking about)
I only ask because I only had 4 people on and my system seemed to slow down Significantly and all I was doing was word processing. When the new system comes, I won't be doing anything on the one dedicated to TWGS.

There's no real formula for judging how many nodes you'll be able to support on a given machine or connection. It's really going to depend on what types of players you have and what types of games you're hosting.

i.e., a Pentium 90 w/40 mb RAM can handle about 8 user sessions simultaneously if the players are playing by hand. But a single player running a buydown script or a single player running a WorldTrade or WorldSSM script in an unlimited turn game would bring that same machine to its knees.

Obviously, the faster a machine the more flexible it'll be over a wide variety of player types and game settings.

The only problem I can see MAYBE is the Aliens. I have seen that the more you have the more problems that can occur. Just my own experience.

Elric

Your 800 Mhz machine should be sufficient for a lot of things, I wouldn't recommend more than about 3 alien races/40 aliens though, if you expect any sort of heavy traffic at all.

Also, dump that USB peice and get a real 10/100 netcard. Your only real limitation on roadrunner is your upload speed, but you're only sending text, so you should be ok unless you get a LOT of users.

Other than that, I'd start a few games with limited turns at first, see how that performs, then do some speed testing with some buydown scripts and the like. If you connect to your external connection from another box (even if it's in the same room), you should be able to get a good idea of how fast your machine will move.

Good luck, and welcome to the community!

Thanks for the feedback, the USB will be gone in a few days. Just didn't want to take down the system yet to do it. I was monitoring one day and saw when someone (the only player on at the time) ran an experience builder script, buy planets, Gtorp, land, zdy, port sd, buy again, and they ran this with ANSI animations on, my transmit meter spiked to 5 Kbps. That was the highest I had seen from one user so far. So with my supposed 128K upload, I should be ok. Worse come to worse, I move to Buisness class, with a higher upload, or better yet, I would love a T1. DSL is bad in this area. Don't know what kind of expense that would be though. As far as speed testing, I ran 3 instances of SWATH using my actual IP, (not the 127.0.0.1) And had 2 of them port trading 1 unit at a time, and the last doing a CIM for sector and port reports. my CIM seemed to stagger once in a while, but I see this on other systems so I'm not too concerned. I just heard a lot of bad talk about using RR for Twars servers, and I just wanted others opinions on it. Hopefully from other SysOp's that also use RR. Again thanks for the feedback.

Taz's Underground