Major Announcement today!

Savij

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/loadNews/28335/Major-Announcement-Incoming

just for all who did not found this!

keep your eyes open, share if you find something!

 

 

Hienzwar

Very interesting! 

gamekid2k

Open beta!  What else could be major?

mintyc

Originally posted by gamekid2k
Open beta!  What else could be major?

its hopfully the launch of the forums, open beta is a long way off.

Savij

Originally posted by mintyc

Originally posted by gamekid2k
Open beta!  What else could be major?

its hopfully the launch of the forums, open beta is a long way off.

closed beta may start at early 2014

Hienzwar

Forums would be great news! Altho I think beta is a few months away at the very least we can still pray to the dark gods! 

Dagda

Forums would be great, but maybe it is a race announcemet or pushing the release date closer. There are so many things for announcement this early on it the development cycle.

If you want a forum to tout about eternal crusade you can head to the one I am working on now. Eternalcrusader.com if your just wanting to talk about the game.

Dagda

News just posted. Server Info! 

http://eternalcrusader.com/threads/eternal-crusade-tm-to-run-on-pikkoserver.34/

Ar-Aamon

Is this good or bad!?!

patrickbalthazar

Originally posted by Ar-Aamon
Is this good or bad!?!

why would this be bad? (if you don't mind me asking)

Ar-Aamon

Originally posted by patrickbalthazar

Originally posted by Ar-Aamon
Is this good or bad!?!

why would this be bad? (if you don't mind me asking)

 

Well I don't know PikkoServer nor MuchDifferent so I'm asking the hive mind if it was a good choice to pick them.

Hienzwar

Feel that as long as measures are in place to limit a "zerg" mentality this will work really well as a solid server in past games.

silent0siris

Originally posted by Ar-Aamon
Is this good or bad!?!

Oh, I think it's quite good.  

 

We're really excited about this tech, can't wait to really push it and see just how massive we can make our battles.

 

For more information, see:

http://vimeo.com/20338131#at=0

and

http://muchdifferent.com/?page=game-world-record

patrickbalthazar

here also a technical video on what pikkoserver does for us.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq1vDG-st1k

Ar-Aamon

I'm glad to hear this. Really looking for this game. It have to be awesome!

mintyc

Originally posted by patrickbalthazar

here also a technical video on what pikkoserver does for us.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq1vDG-st1k

ok wow...

 

let me get this right, this is a gateway layer that allows for the dynaminc allocation of conections to server nodes within a server. it is also capable of compressing those nodes together to "reinforce" sections of the game space so that more players can be grouped in a single area?

 

a few questions.

 

1. is all this done on the fly or is some interaction needed on your end to do things like adding new nodes for a heavy battle?

 

2. dose it actualy work?

 

3. how big are you planning for battles to get!? :O

Dagda

This should be a great thing as long as it works in the way it was put out. With the nodes working in the way described it should maximize game play and hopefully minimize server side lag. Also they SHOULD be able to really have large battles with out  breaking the software (hardware could be another issue). I would really like to see the numbers crunched talking 250-500 people per side in the same battle? Truly, with where we stand in most other games, this would be epic.

irpugboss

This is pretty great, I cant imagine how largescale things can get from the overview of PikkoServer. I have little expert knowledge on server space magic/technology and what have you, so I will rattle off my layman interpretation of some quotes that caught my eye...maybe Patrick can confirm, deny, or elaborate on my layman assumptions.

"Overview"

"PikkoServer is a load-balancer and distributor for online games, used for building MMOs capable of handling thousands of simultaneous players in the same area."

"PikkoServer makes it possible to use several servers for governing a single region in a game. It dynamically distributes the servers over the region so that they each cover their own section of it along with the objects in that section."

"Clients do not see the underlying distribution of the region onto different servers - to them it will look like a single region." 

About traditional MMO servers and zones: "The maximum number of players that can interact with each other in a zone is still limited by how many players the server handling that zone can cope with. No matter how many servers are added, the limit for each zone will stay the same. "

Source:  http://developer.muchdifferent.com/unitypark/uLink/PikkoServerMMO

So it balances players across areas for MMOs specifically to host 1000s of players? It does this by flipping on and off servers to share the workload/distribute players into a single zone, or at least what appears to be a single zone. As for seeing the servers goin up to increase the zone load, we (the clients) cannot see it, aka loading bar, instancing, or other noticeable server transitions?

I dunno how new the tech is, but it seems like a logical move for how servers should work in a more dynamic way, rather than population caps on a single server that will poop itself if all players logged in and go to the same zone.

So looking at existing server tech compared to Pikkoserver tech it seems Eternal Crusade may be an actual MASSIVE Online Multiplayer game...can't wait to see an alpha tech demo for 40kEC with this.

 

 

freakishbean

Eternal Crusade website got a bit of an update - a news section that leads to the behavior main page

patrickbalthazar

Originally posted by mintyc

1. is all this done on the fly or is some interaction needed on your end to do things like adding new nodes for a heavy battle?

2. dose it actualy work?

3. how big are you planning for battles to get!? :O

1) its all on the fly - the technology assigns automatically the 'cells' to where the action is.

2) there is videos from much different on the web - showing the 1000 player world record gameplay

3) bigger than anyone ever before

patrickbalthazar

Originally posted by krage

...

So it balances players across areas for MMOs specifically to host 1000s of players? It does this by flipping on and off servers to share the workload/distribute players into a single zone, or at least what appears to be a single zone. As for seeing the servers goin up to increase the zone load, we (the clients) cannot see it, aka loading bar, instancing, or other noticeable server transitions?

I dunno how new the tech is, but it seems like a logical move for how servers should work in a more dynamic way, rather than population caps on a single server that will poop itself if all players logged in and go to the same zone.

So looking at existing server tech compared to Pikkoserver tech it seems Eternal Crusade may be an actual MASSIVE Online Multiplayer game...can't wait to see an alpha tech demo for 40kEC with this.

It seems you understood it pretty well - not sure i can add more info there

You can look at some videos about the world record much different did with the pikko tech - the tech exists for quite some time and as the demo shows it works. Ofc once we have something ready to show we will do that !

dinams

Hey miguel why dont you invite people to stress test this technology while in alpha

Like a Man vs Machine (the 1000 player game/test MuchDifferent made) but your own version

 

It would be good, experience-wise and market wise

dwarfhunter

2) there is videos from much different on the web - showing the 1000 player world record gameplay

It was actually only 999 players good sir :P

they couldn't seem to get one last person to join, but hey the still broke a world recorded and i'm looking forward to fighting in a battle as large as that. 

Savij

Originally posted by dinams

Hey miguel why dont you invite people to stress test this technology while in alpha

Like a Man vs Machine (the 1000 player game/test MuchDifferent made) but your own version

 

It would be good, experience-wise and market wise

nice try ;D

but i think we will need to wait for closed beta ^^

freakishbean

I volunteer as tribute.

irpugboss

Originally posted by patrickbalthazar

Originally posted by krage

...

So it balances players across areas for MMOs specifically to host 1000s of players? It does this by flipping on and off servers to share the workload/distribute players into a single zone, or at least what appears to be a single zone. As for seeing the servers goin up to increase the zone load, we (the clients) cannot see it, aka loading bar, instancing, or other noticeable server transitions?

I dunno how new the tech is, but it seems like a logical move for how servers should work in a more dynamic way, rather than population caps on a single server that will poop itself if all players logged in and go to the same zone.

So looking at existing server tech compared to Pikkoserver tech it seems Eternal Crusade may be an actual MASSIVE Online Multiplayer game...can't wait to see an alpha tech demo for 40kEC with this.

It seems you understood it pretty well - not sure i can add more info there

You can look at some videos about the world record much different did with the pikko tech - the tech exists for quite some time and as the demo shows it works. Ofc once we have something ready to show we will do that !

Awesome Patrick, can't wait to see what you guys have in store!

I must say seeing the Man vs Machine recording, running over a browser game, using Pikkoserver makes me envision all the 40k battle art coming to life through Eternal Crusade running massive battles. Such as the below image

For those who havent seen it, and are curious to see Pikkoserver hosting a massive player battle (Roughly 500 vs 500) check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECp7FPwV1nc