Author Topic: Exceeding 100 players (Read 3123 times)

Kalphiter · June 05, 2011, 09:59:33 PM

So as a fun experiment, I decided to spam the memory using the console. I simply built strings up using functions I made to multiply a string by 100000 fold and keep doing it. When Blockland reached 1,750,000 KB in memory, it crashed.

I kinda hinted onto Blockland having a memory limit before crashing, and it seems to be correct.
Formula (a): 70 players = 1.2 GB RAM
Formula (b): 100 players ?= 1.67 GB RAM (1,750,000 KB)

Formula (a) is derived from a real-time measurement I made on Cucumberdude's server
Formula (b) is a theory that Blockland has a hard memory limit, which is why my 100+ player servers crashed

Fortunately, these ratios are extremely close. I think I've cracked why over 100 players cannot be reached.

So, since I found this out, I'd like to see this "limit" raised in order to exceed 100 players. If not possible, it would be nice to have an explanation as to why it cannot be done.

Note: These formulas aren't exact, there are many other factors such as the amount of projectiles, however formula (a) was from a server with a low volume of projectiles (Jail RP).

I'd appreciate other people doing this test and posting the results of when the game crashes.

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Badspot · June 05, 2011, 11:45:27 PM

I believe the maximum amount of memory a 32 bit application can allocate in windows is 2GB. The practical amount you can allocate may be less than that, either due to overhead in the memory manager or some other reason. Right now I'm on a win 7 64 bit machine with 8gb of ram. If I run the 32-bit version of photoshop the "Memory & Image Cache" section of the preferences lists the available ram at 1689MB. This may be the actual limit.

Memory is the main limitation in Blockland right now. Mainly due to inefficiencies in the torque simObject, ghosting, and resource manager systems. These would have to be rewritten or worked around.

Porting to 64-bit is probably a non-trivial task.

otto-san · June 06, 2011, 12:08:05 AM

Quote from: Badspot on June 05, 2011, 11:45:27 PM

If I run the 32-bit version of photoshop the "Memory & Image Cache" section of the preferences lists the available ram at 1689MB. This may be the actual limit.

No program I've ever used exceeded 1698MB, so I think that's correct.

Red_Guy · June 06, 2011, 04:52:31 PM

Quote from: Badspot on June 05, 2011, 11:45:27 PM

Porting to 64-bit is probably a non-trivial task.

This has been mentioned before on the garage games forums several times over the past few years, its a VERY difficult task. Id love to see it done because it would open up a lot for both Blockland and Torque.

As to the memory thing - I dont think thats limiting your number of players. My mining servers frequently use 1.5 to 1.7GB of memory when the brick count gets high, and this is only with 20-25 players.

I think the player "limit" problem is that somewhere inside the game, only 2 digits are being used to store the number of players, and when the player count goes from 99 to 100, something gets overwritten that should not be and Blockland hiccups.

Kalphiter · June 06, 2011, 04:53:23 PM

Quote from: Red_Guy on June 06, 2011, 04:52:31 PM

I think the player "limit" problem is that somewhere inside the game, only 2 digits are being used to store the number of players, and when the player count goes from 99 to 100, something gets overwritten that should not be and Blockland hiccups.

Uh, no, I reached 107 until the last few 20 spawned and crashed the server.