how to create a new server

[asaphxiix]

hello

I see that there are very very few multiplayer servers for simutrans - even less for simu-ex. I would like to contribute by starting a server. My question is - what computer resources would be needed, aside from a high speed connection? can a 16 player game be run (no graphics of course) 24x7 on a normal PC without making it too slow? what about playing on the server as well from a new computer?

if that would be too heavy, would a smaller game work?

I could even rent a virtual server, windows or linux based, it don't cost that much, if the resources needed are not too big.

so please, tell me about the resource utilization of the game in server mode with players online

[Dwachs]

Server needs same resources as if it would run offline. If your computer can manage a highly developed map, then it should also manage such a game as server. Of course, upload speed of your internet connection also matters.

[asaphxiix]

hi thanks!

that's a good answer
could you give some more specific details though?

what are the hardware recommendations for running, say, a 16 highly developed player map of 1000X3000 (big enough right?), with no graphics? and with graphics?

especially in the ram part?


****\

so far i've had trouble loading big maps... for some reason it creates a 500MB map... maybe without trees, I will try when I am home.

[An_dz]

It looks like you're saving as XML, I'm saving bzip2 compressed and a 1000x3000 game was saved with 6,64Mb

To check it, open your simuconf.tab on config folder inside Simutrans main folder. Search for saveformat

[asaphxiix]

thanks
what i mean is before saving
when starting a new game and defining the map
if it is too big, it says it's 500MB (in the 'new map' screen), and then when I try to start the game, it gets stuck on 'initializing map' - this is understandable to me - a very large process - but can it be compacted?

[Dwachs]

You should try sourself, which map sizes your computer can manage. Try connecting to the pak128 servers, there are pretty developed games online.

Imho you should start with smaller maps. Each time a client connects to the server, the complete savegame will be transfered. The large the map, the longer such a connection phase will be.

[Ashley]

I find I can easily run 4 maps (512x512, pak64 and pak128) on a virtual server with 8 virtual cores and 1GB of memory. I'd estimate with the new memory-reducing patch I could probably run up to 10 without any issues. You could easily run one game as a background task on your computer, the real issue is the upload speed of your internet connection. Then again, the maps I run (combined with everything else I use on my server) takes only about 1GB of bandwidth a day.

[prissi]

The server will save slightly smaller maps, since it does not save so many details for trees. But the key to keep mapsize down are trees. And of course smaller maps. I highly doubt so many client could handle 1000x3000 maps. Moreover, everytime somebody joins all clients have to save and reload. That will be also affected by map size. I think 1 million tiles (2000x500 or 1000x1000) are sensible limits.