The
server game has shown what can be achieved in respect of online games with very large maps: generally, as long as the connecting clients have reasonably decent computers, even very large maps indeed (with trees, as long as the woods are not too dense) with a great number of cities (675, in this case) are perfectly playable. It is also apparent from profiling results and monitoring memory usage that:
(1) the most important restrictions on performance are CPU usage and memory bandwidth, not memory footprint;
(2) the memory footprint is well within tolerances for modern computers;
(3) CPU usage and memory bandwidth scales with the level of player activity (and, to a lesser extent, the number of cities) on a map rather than its absolute size;
(4) memory usage also scales mainly with the level of player activity and number of cities, although is more substantially affected by the absolute size of the map than CPU usage or memory bandwidth.
The server map as it is seems quite crowded, with little spaces between cities and not as much space as one might like for intricate networks, especially local rail networks. Pak128.Britain has recently incorporated some lovely Underground trains which I am hoping to bring to an Experimental release of the pakset soon. The next major release of Experimental will have physical braking, which works better at larger scales.
All this has caused me to consider substantially changing the scale on the next release of Pak128.Britain-Ex. It is currently 250m/tile, meaning that each kilometre takes four tiles in the game. I had considered increasing it to 200m/tile (each kilometre taking 5 tiles), but, in light of the above, I am now considering increasing it to
125m/tile, meaning that each kilometre will take eight tiles.
The idea would be for maps to be twice as big in tile dimensions, but to have the same number of cities as formerly (or perhaps slightly fewer, at least, for the server game - say 600 rather than 675), and for the "city isolation factor" to increase accordingly, meaning that cities are more spaced out. City clustering is likely to work better in this model, too, with more identifiable clusters of towns, and more sparsely spaced towns outside those clusters. One might also consider increasing the default town starting size and growth rate and reducing the passenger factor (and also modifying the growth thresholds accordingly). Consideration will further need to be given about how Richard Smith's parato distribution system of generating towns will work in this model.
I should be very interested in feedback on this suggestion, especially from those who have played the server game (although feedback from anyone is more than welcome).
