Net code

I think that pretty much everyone can agree that, besides storyline, GPG's biggest failing is in the net code of their games. Demigod got great reviews...but only if you can manage to play it. Supreme Commander required a very nice connection for large games, due to the p2p nature of it. Continuing with a p2p game, in Supcom2, it invites problems like one person lagging everyone, and a single person slowing down sim speed. I dont know whats wrong with the lobbys tonight, but it shows just another problem with GPGs net coding, or their interaction with Steam's. I have been thinking, and have come up with a possible solution: Use a (dedicated) server based system.
This would solve the largest problem with Supreme Commander, and many other RTSs. The lag. In supcom2, whenever someone has a bad ping, they force everyone else to share the ping. They also lower the speed of the simulation to that of the slowest computer. This is entirely due to the P2P system of connections. By using a server system, this could be eliminated, by the simulation always running at full speed, and whomever cant run it gets a FPS hit. This is how it works in FPS's. If someone is lagging, then they get studdering, not everyone else. It would allow big games to be played late into the lategame at a respectable speed.
There are two problems that I see with this see with this system: First, is getting GPG to host enough servers, so we dont get the problem like in Demigod, with noone being able to play. The other issue is keeping these servers. It would give GPG the power to shut off the game, or god forbid, they go out of business, then everyone is screwed.

Finally, something that would be amazing, and really help a game with a MASSIVE premise would be to have a ranked 3v3, or 4v4 mode.|||Dedicated servers won't happen because of the massive amount of data that would have to be sent. It's not like an FPS with 32 players tops in most cases, you've got to transmit the data for hundreds of different units. It would be laggy as hell.|||The only sort of dedicated server that would be of any use in an RTS game is a proxy to pass data about the place instead of the clients passing data to each other directly. IIRC, Impulse Reactor had plans to do that at some point (could someone tell me if that came to fruit, or not). A proxy should, in theory, use less CPU time than a FPS dedicated server would.
Mind you, it won't protect against desyncs from dodgy mods, or failing hardware.
[PS:] Proxy servers could let the game ramp up to more than eight players. XD|||BulletMagnet|||Entirely true, but we see people playing with increased unit-cap without too much concern.|||Quote:|||This has been discussed many many times before, and I believe the conclusion has always been reached that it is simply not a viable solution.|||If its not viable, then that may be true.
Fun fact: The source engine in a server based environment can handle 4096 dynamic entites. These are defined as players, grenades, ragdolls, dynamic lighting, etc...
In other words, a TF2 server can keep track of 4096 different things at once, and send them out to players, with no lag.

In any case, my point of one person slowing down the Simulation still stands. They should get an FPS hit, not force everyone to the common denominator.|||DeadMG|||Grim Tuesday|||Yeah- and besides, a Source Server with it's entities maxed out will lag like ******* crazy. The number of entities is usually never near the max.|||Mooilo|||It is possible but you need to work within certain restrictions, and I doubt the restrictions would suit the requirements of K&C.
However they do need to work on their lobby and better messages as to why you were disconnected among other things.|||Grim Tuesday|||Actually DeadMG, there's one way low-sim player would take an FPS hit - if they rendered in software mode.|||Grim Tuesday|||BulletMagnet|||Doesn’t a server-client model provide a distinct advantage to whomever has the lowest ping? Ie their orders are carried out faster than their opponent’s? I found FA’s network to be truly awesome, 99% of the games I played on GPGnet felt just like a LAN game.|||pkc