Q & A

[Olreich]

I don't know the average footprint of a region offhand, but it's pretty small because we keep most of the "interior data" (the dungeon map stuff, chunk metadata) on disk unless something needs it.  It used to be that a server running by itself after just loading a world only held about 50MB, and it didn't grow much as regions were added.  Right now the numbers are different but there's been some changes that might have the server loading more than it needs to.   Anyway: how many regions?  A whole lot.  One of the old alpha worlds has like 12000 regions, and the single-player was able to hold that, and I think that's even before we split out the interior data.

All of those were in managed memory? Does that mean we could have players in thousands of different regions with the current memory allotment?

Anyway, the bottleneck to many-players-servers that you're most likely to A) hit and B) be-able-to-control is the server's upload connection.

I definitely understand that. I'm definitely not planning on trying to get everyone to play on the same world, but the idea that you could have a second box in your house (or a high-end computer) and be able to run a server with hundreds of people on at any one time is... tempting, to say the least.

In the future, could it be possible to remove the need to have the server have a key, and/or have it implemented such that a specific MAC address (or some other identifiable info) could have authority to connect despite having the same key as the server? It would simplify life for anyone wanting to run a server on a separate machine (or in a data center for the crazies).

[keith.lamothe]

All of those were in managed memory? Does that mean we could have players in thousands of different regions with the current memory allotment?

Sorry, I meant the regions, not with any chunks loaded (well, 1 or 2 for wherever the singleplayer entity was).

I definitely understand that. I'm definitely not planning on trying to get everyone to play on the same world, but the idea that you could have a second box in your house (or a high-end computer) and be able to run a server with hundreds of people on at any one time is... tempting, to say the least.

Yea, that idea has really appealed to me too.  Kind of going the "modestly multiplayer online game" route   But in practice I don't think it's going to get all that high.  And the game design really can't accomodate the kind of singleplayer and tight-knit-group co-op gameplay that we're aiming at and also deliver a compelling experience to 100 people all doing their own thing on the same server at once.  That doesn't mean they couldn't have fun, but the game's not designed for that kind of usage.

In the future, could it be possible to remove the need to have the server have a key, and/or have it implemented such that a specific MAC address (or some other identifiable info) could have authority to connect despite having the same key as the server? It would simplify life for anyone wanting to run a server on a separate machine (or in a data center for the crazies).

You're quite welcome to run the server with the same key as you run one of your clients at the same time, and have that client connect to the server (or another server, or run singleplayer), it should work just fine   I was just doing that a minute ago, actually, with a normal copy of the game.

But yea, perhaps later we'll remove the need for the server to have a key at all, I don't think we really thought about it.

[freeformschooler]

I've got a question. What are these?



I cleared out a stash room and now they're bobbing up and down in the air. I can't seem to interact with them at all.

EDIT: Nevermind. Hehehe

I've got another question. How do you skip the intro mission?

[Coppermantis]

You can't skip the intro mission, but I recall X4000 saying that it can be done in 3 minutes including fighting the bosses.

[x4000]

You can't skip the intro mission, but I recall X4000 saying that it can be done in 3 minutes including fighting the bosses.

Yep, for the moment it can be speed-ran really easily, but in the future we'll have a way for skipping it.

[Toll]

So... I got really really really bored and started going through Mantis issues and found a whole bunch of them that are either A) already solved, or B) irrelevant at the moment. Should I comment on each of them to prompt their closing, or send a list to someone, or just post them in a separate thread?

[x4000]

Commenting on them would be great, and would bump them up to our attention -- I'm not surprised there's a lot of cruft in there, what with all the recent changes, but I've not had time to go back through.

[Toll]

I hope y'all are prepared for a heapin' helpin' o'updates then!

[x4000]

Thanks!

[Toll]

Oh, and... uh... reporters, you might want to use "Hide status" and set it to "Resolved" *ahem*

[Coppermantis]

Any advice for taking down an overlord? I'm level 21 (Got the full version in the giveway on Indiedb! Yay!) and the overlord is 20, however even with my most powerful spells (Mk. III Ball lightning, which the skelebot overlord has weakness to) I can barely chip his armor. Getting Mk. IV spells is jsut about out of the question-going to level 30 regions is suicide. I've already got two ghosts floating in the room with him, which doesn't help.

[x4000]

I'd suggest over-leveling him, given all of the above, at the moment.  You'll gain power, he'll lose health, and you'll outmatch the ghosts as well and be able to take him on more easily.  Balance on the overlords is a work in progress at the moment to be sure, but over-leveling is currently one main way around it.