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The Modem Lives On
Ant writes: "There's an interesting editorial currently running on 3dactionplanet which I agree with.
Game developers and companies need to think about us people who can't get broadband connections!
Yes, I am a part of the analog modemers. I can't play Q3A, HL, games,
etc. very nicely due to my 28800 connections (even with 56K). No cable
and DSL services here. Other options are just too expensive or won't
work (i.e. satellite for online gaming?)"
As a programmer directly involved with a very popular online game, the Age of Empires series, I can tell you online gameplay with a modem connection is taken very, very seriously.
If fact... Two of our very brilliant communcations programmers, Mark Terrano and Paul Bettner are giving a presentation on this very subject at the international Game Developer's Conference next month in San Jose, CA. (Go to www.gdconf.com and check out their presentation "1600 Archers on a 28.8 modem" (Actually, I just checked the site and they don't appear to have the full schedule posted yet, and the author search just goes off into la-la land)
Anyway, the things we at Ensemble do to insure good modem play include:
* Having our 8-player dedicated testing area not only include a LAN connection, but modems on each computer. Modem based playtests are conducted using up to 8 different dial-up ISP's.
* Periodically auditing network communcations bandwidth usage over the course of an entire game to determine peak bandwidth requirments. Network packets are optimized for minimal size even before they are compressed. Our performance target is for comm usage not to ever exceed about 24K BPS of bandwidth in both directions.
* In our new 16-station playtest facility that is currently under construction, we will have a fancy phone line simulator device that allows for controlled degration of line conditions.
* Tuning the communications code to account for the types of pings geographically diverse modem users are likely to encounter. (our games can dynamically adjust the communications turn length to adapt to shifting pings).
* Showing each user, while they are playing the game, an indication of the communcation link performance to every other player. This allows people to quickly determine who is the person whose connection has just gone to crap.
* And we added in Age of Kings, the ability to save and restore a multiplayer game when someone gets disconnected or crashes.
I could go on, but I just wanted to get across that we do spend real effort on all applicable fronts to make as good an experience as possible for modem-users.
Now this is no indication of what other developers do, and other types of game may be more sensitive to ping than bandwidth.. etc.. etc.. As allways, Your mileage may vary.
-Mp
Actually, if the US government would axe the monopoly they have granted to today's communication companies, broadband would be much better off.
Out in front of my workplace runs a bunch of dark fibre. Southwestern Bell runs that fibre at about 10% capacity or less. We have another location across town. We would like to lease one of those dark fibre lines to connect us together. Will they let us? Nope. SWB won't let ANYONE, no matter how much money they offer, onto their fibre lines w/o going through their ancient frame-relay network, and they charge you an arm and a leg for it.
I know a guy who was working for a Houston company that is actually going to run new fibre lines on the telephone poles into EVERY home in that area. He worked measuring the distance between the poles so they would know how much cable to buy and plan for the installation.
The telcos and cable companies fought them TOOTH AND NAIL the ENTIRE WAY to stop this. Why? Because suddenly their government-granted monopoly went out the window.
There is another company in Dallas, featured here on slashdot a little while back, that is installing 100mbps links to various buildings around Dallas for like $1k per month, using fibre lines that they have laid underground.
It is high time compulsory sales of fibre lines is forced upon the telcos. If they won't bother to move, we should make them move. They are the problem. Bandwidth isn't scarce. There is no shortage of fibre or etherswitches. It is all an artificial constraint placed upon us because certain corporations are more concerned with an extra two cents per share than human progress. Same deal as oil companies: can they still make an insane profit if gas sells for $.80 per gallon? ABSOLUTELY. Why don't they? Because the CEO wants to line his pockets with another few million that he won't ever get to spend in his lifetime anyhow. That's why.
Capitalism isn't failing; our government has just herded us into a corporatist economy.
-
The IHA Forums
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
To Recap: The bottom line is that if you have a moderately large gaming club of 25 to 50 members, you can start your own ISP at a cost that compares to some hardware upgrades.
The town of Laramie, Wyoming, has done just this by setting up Lariat.net. Residents started the networking business in 1995 in an effort to bring everyone in the area online after various squabbles with the area's telephone company (now Qwest). The initial cost was around $3,000, with many residents donating their own PCs, according to Glass. Relevant equipment was stuck on private land, and copper wire was bought from Qwest for areas that couldn't get wireless.
The cost of the service is pretty good compared to what it would be otherwise. Individuals get a normal dial-up service for $5 a month, or $20-$30 a month for high speed (10MB/second). It is doing quite well thank you.
They want to clone this effort around the country, so you can contact them via this page. So get you buds together and put together a business plan. You might wind up with something you can have fun with!
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The European Union now has a bigger economy than the USA by a third
;)
That's funny - according to my handy-dandy CIA World Factbook, in 1999 the aggregate GDP for the 15 member nations of the EU was about $8 trillion. And (drum roll, please), for the US, about $9.3 trillion. Now, we could examine the per capita GDP of both, but, if we note that the US has ~50 million fewer people than the EU, we can clearly see that such an examination would only make you look even worse. But then again, why let some inconvenient facts get in the way of an otherwise ill-considered pontification?
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Not to mention that for the longest time, broadband was unavailable in many areas simply because the local telco's wouldn't sell it. They had the equipment, but wouldn't sell it.
The parent of this thread mentions Utah - the state with the highest rate of home computers per capita in the US. Broadband has only recently became a reality; after the cable company secured a 100% monopoly on cable TV, they offered cable service as a means to squeeze more money from consumers.
Meanwhile, the telco was resolutely refusing to offer even ISDN - let alone any form of DSL. If you wanted high-speed internet, you had to shell out $800 a month for a 1.5 Mbit DS1. USWest didn't want to let go of the gravy train.
Suddenly the cable monopoly offers broadband - 500kbit for $60 a month (at first). Only AFTER there was competition did USWest decide to offer broadband. DSL came into the high population density areas only recently.
And getting DSL is, as everywhere, as much as a sick joke as a service. Call QWest (who bought USWest) for DSL - they'll tell you the phone lines in your home are too old.
I became extremely cynical of this when QWest told a friend of mine that his home is too old for DSL, and he would have to hire QWest electricians - at prime rates - to re-wire his entire home before he could get DSL.
His home's construction crews had left the lot a couple of days before. The cement on the driveway wasn't even completely dry yet.
It has nothing to do with geography. Just the super-wealthy trying to outscore the next-door neighbor's income; a neighbor who happens to live in the next county.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Network games and web sites both need to be designed by people who pay attention to low-rate connections. Besides the fact that the Internet path itself gets rather slow quite often, modem-speed access indeed will remain the norm for some years, as many people have no choice. And there's nothing that the ISPs can do about it, because it's the telecomm carriers and cable companies who have the wires.
Why some folks just can't get broadband:
* To get a cable modem, the cable company has to have the upgraded Hybrid Fiber-Coax (HFC) plant, as well as a cable modem terminating system (CMTS) and the rest of the needed gear. This is becoming more common but lots of cable systems aren't there yet; for instance, the old TCI systems were real fixer-uppers.
* To get DSL, the subscriber must be within 15,000 wire feet or so of the ILEC central office. This rules out a lot of homes, even in cities, because COs are spaced wider than that in all but the densest places.
* DSL won't work if the subscriber is served by a Digital loop carrier (DLC) system, which is the norm for new installations more than 12,000 feet or so from a CO (and sometimes much closer). Somebody could theoretically put a DSLAM at the DLC location, but the economics and practicality are often poor; it's very very rare at present.
* DSL won't work if the wire is not in good shape. That's often the case. (Especially in former-NYNEX territory!)
* There still has to be a DSLAM; this is hard to justify in smaller COs. DSL's basically an urban service.
* Wireless bandwidth is expensive. Even if you could go faster than 9600 bps on cellular, you wouldn't like the price. Unlicensed wireless is "free" bandwidth, but the range is short, so again most people don't live in range of a provider (wireless ISP). And that requires an antenna location, decent near-line-of-sight path, etc.
So I have advised my consulting clients to design their web sites using a 9600 bps link! If it's usable at 9600, then it'll be grand for most folks. I really hate sites that are slow to load even on a cable modem or T1 link. And those are too too common -- the developers aren't designing for the real world, but for an indoor demo.
500MHz Pentium III, or similar
520MB Free Hard Disk Space
OpenGL 3D Accelerator
Broadband Internet Access
NOTE: If cable or DSL is not available in your area, Mindfuck Software recommends our partners at Century 21 Realestate and monster.com to aid in your relocation. This may seem harsh, but it really is better for society for you to move away from your almost-paid-for 2-story house on 3 acres of land, and into a 2-bedroom apartment with crackhead neighbors who throw eachother into the wall at odd hours to the incessant beat of stompin'-loud Kid Rock. You won't regret it, and your LPB gaming peers will thank you.
We hope you enjoy the game, and wish you well for your adventures in the ghetto.
Kid-proof tablet..