About the server architecture of PlanetSide
by Kyrah Abattoir · in Game Design and Creative Issues · 09/05/2010 (8:04 pm) · 10 replies
To this date, PlanetSide and World war 2 online are the only true MMOFPS games out there, they both have a server architecture able to handle tousands of players in a single environement, without loading screens or perceptible server to server "handoff".
Now i'm going to focuse on PlanetSide because well you take a glance at this game and get a feel for it and it smells, a lot like Torque/Dynamix. And it's no surprise considering Planetside was made by the guys who made tribes 2. You can literally see, Interiors, DTS shapes, terrains, etc...
Now i've been playing a lot of FPS games in the past and hosted a variety of servers. An FPS game server that's pretty power hungry honestly, a 24-32 slot Team fortress 2 server require a pretty decent computer to run smoothly.
Planetside can be pretty intense at times and handle game worlds that are much larger and with a marger player concentration than most modern FPS handle. Granted the size of the world is something torque has no trouble to handle, i guess it just can't be a single server behind each of the Planetside "planets" there is just no way a single server can handle the load of 300+ players.
So here is my question (after this looong introduction) has any of you an insight on the server structure employed by planetside to have the ability to soak this many players simulatenously?
Obviously there is some unit fragmentation done, the Sanctuary , the training area and each "continents" are obviously running on separate systems. But it still makes each of those systems fairly large! any ideas how they might be proceeding?
Now i'm going to focuse on PlanetSide because well you take a glance at this game and get a feel for it and it smells, a lot like Torque/Dynamix. And it's no surprise considering Planetside was made by the guys who made tribes 2. You can literally see, Interiors, DTS shapes, terrains, etc...
Now i've been playing a lot of FPS games in the past and hosted a variety of servers. An FPS game server that's pretty power hungry honestly, a 24-32 slot Team fortress 2 server require a pretty decent computer to run smoothly.
Planetside can be pretty intense at times and handle game worlds that are much larger and with a marger player concentration than most modern FPS handle. Granted the size of the world is something torque has no trouble to handle, i guess it just can't be a single server behind each of the Planetside "planets" there is just no way a single server can handle the load of 300+ players.
So here is my question (after this looong introduction) has any of you an insight on the server structure employed by planetside to have the ability to soak this many players simulatenously?
Obviously there is some unit fragmentation done, the Sanctuary , the training area and each "continents" are obviously running on separate systems. But it still makes each of those systems fairly large! any ideas how they might be proceeding?
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#2
I'm actually tempted to run a network analyser during my next game and see how many machines it's connecting me to, and if i can see some kind of server handoff behavior as i move around in the game world.
As i said i haven't noticed anything that felt like a server handoff mechanic, either it's very well made and very discrete, or they have something else, and i would be very interested to know what.
09/05/2010 (9:26 pm)
Well the maps are not dynamically generated or anything, i mean they are nothing i haven't seen before, it's simply the server player capacity that is waaay higher than what a normal dedicated server could do.I'm actually tempted to run a network analyser during my next game and see how many machines it's connecting me to, and if i can see some kind of server handoff behavior as i move around in the game world.
As i said i haven't noticed anything that felt like a server handoff mechanic, either it's very well made and very discrete, or they have something else, and i would be very interested to know what.
#3
09/05/2010 (9:59 pm)
300? I have zone servers with 4500 or more AIPlayers and a number of real test players running flawless.
#4
09/05/2010 (10:00 pm)
PlanetSide was by far the best game ever. I've still never found anything that can compete with it. However, I think that they only allow 330 players on each continent, which was a seperate server.
#6
09/05/2010 (10:03 pm)
These are servers with AIPlayers using AStar to navigate, wander, hunt, attack, etc from my test environment.
#7
With a normal tickrate? Do you think it could handle the same number of real players?
Jeramy, well the whole idea was that those zones would support a high number of players, even if each continent was it's own zone, greatly cutting down the amount of players per zone, i have been searching for SOE's actual population caps per continent but i haven't found it.
There was several server merges in the life of this game from 6 "worlds" (2 europe, and 4 usa world servers) to only one now.
All I know is that at SOME point, the player cap was(and maybe still is) of 111 players per faction, per continent, aka 333 players max, but i suspect that in the golden age of PlanetSide it was much higher.
I want to figure out if on the backend they handle this through a single server software per continent, or if they use a more complex system. Basically, if an indy game that would use a simmilar layout could pull it off without having to rewrite the server architecture entirely.
09/05/2010 (10:10 pm)
Chris, 4500 AI instances on a single zone server? nice! With a normal tickrate? Do you think it could handle the same number of real players?
Jeramy, well the whole idea was that those zones would support a high number of players, even if each continent was it's own zone, greatly cutting down the amount of players per zone, i have been searching for SOE's actual population caps per continent but i haven't found it.
There was several server merges in the life of this game from 6 "worlds" (2 europe, and 4 usa world servers) to only one now.
All I know is that at SOME point, the player cap was(and maybe still is) of 111 players per faction, per continent, aka 333 players max, but i suspect that in the golden age of PlanetSide it was much higher.
I want to figure out if on the backend they handle this through a single server software per continent, or if they use a more complex system. Basically, if an indy game that would use a simmilar layout could pull it off without having to rewrite the server architecture entirely.
#8
09/05/2010 (10:15 pm)
I'll spare you the details, but there is a lot of work into it. Also our average number of units per instance is much lower.
#9
09/05/2010 (10:24 pm)
I actually wouldn't mind a few pointers :) I'm really interested in those things and any word from peoples more experienced than me is welcome :) 
#10
Edit: I'd imagine that the Team fortress giving 24+ slots depends on the hardware, but there must be a massive amount of artwork in there, and most of it would probably be billboarded to reduce overhead. Could be wrong tho.
09/06/2010 (7:25 am)
Once you start on real players with network traffic then you'll probably see the numbers reduce per server instance, AI players take up task schedules as far as I am aware could slow down how long it takes for the server to respond. This week I'm setting up some BETA 1.1B2 servers on a dynamic cloud server for everyone to see how many people I can get in one MAP without AI and also with AI - so if you want to take part let me know via my website as to not derail this thread, it will be good to find out. Planetside is mostly client side from what I've heard so they can get more bang in there, that could leave it open to hacks?Edit: I'd imagine that the Team fortress giving 24+ slots depends on the hardware, but there must be a massive amount of artwork in there, and most of it would probably be billboarded to reduce overhead. Could be wrong tho.
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