Online Game Cluster

axehind writes "Carlo Daffara posted to the openMosix mailing list about his game cluster. It's a 6 node cluster using Athlon XP cpus and running linux & openmosix (with some qdisc trickery) for the OS. It is used to host approximately 1000 users playing online games, like Jedi Knight and Quake III. Here's a link (italian) to the pictures."

Comments

FP

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't imagine a beowulf cluster of these.

/.ed

[psergiu]

or:

Il luogo è shashdotado. :)

waiting

[jdkane]

It is used to host approximately 1000 users playing online games
More like "It was used to..."
During the standard slash/dot.ing period, the cluster probably serves about two Quake players at max.

Re:waiting

[actor_au]

During the standard slash/dot.ing period, the cluster probably serves about two Quake players at max.

And knowing online gamers, one will be cheating and the other camping.

Imagine...

[SlimFastForYou]

That same cluster spec running 1 instance of a game for someone to play on :). Someday I hope for clustering software to be to the point where when someone at a LAN party goes to sleep, their processing power can be used to help other machines.

Re:Imagine...

[kevinqtipreedy]

This is already possible. I have a Mosix Cluster where all of the nodes run off of a bootdisk. They remotely mount a file system. When someone goes to sleep, i put one of the boot disks in his or her computer. All I have to do is add their mac address to the database and add their dns name or ip address to the mosix config.

Link to Google Cache

[wmspringer]

See the site here.

(I

Why use Mosix ?

[boaworm]

OpenMosix is used for load balancing, allowing processess to migrate during runtime.. I wonder what happens if you are trying to "gib/frag" someone and the server process migrates to another node .. ;-)

It seems to me it would make more sense to use only the mentioned queue-system to position the games evenly.

supercomputer gaming

[mmca]

http://www.supercomputergaming.com/

is doing something similar. If you cut through all the marketing hype it looks pretty cool.

-M

As seen on the openMosix board...

[deadhammer]

Somebody should post this to Slashdot.org: How to assemble your own game server with openMosix

The fools! Muhahahahahahaha!!!

Careful what you wish for...

[Queuetue]

Moshe said:

Somebody should post this to Slashdot.org: How to assemble your own game server with openMosix

BTW, has anyone else seen the AppAssure soft-core porn ads here on slashdot? Better than the .net ads, by far! :)

Why not make ONE game...

[SexyKellyOsbourne]

That uses all CPU resources of a cluster, and leap 10 years into the future?

The AI would use genetic algorithms, the sound would have every echo and diffusion effect possible, the graphics would use real-time raytracing, and the level count would be as extreme poly as possible. Simply spare nothing when it comes to CPU power, and just let it fly.

Just use nothing but outright raw CPU power to render the whole thing.

Re:Why not make ONE game...

[Screaming Lunatic]

That uses all CPU resources of a cluster, and leap 10 years into the future?

The same reason that game companies don't make games for machines with 8 CPUs or 4 CPUs, or even 2 CPUs. People just don't have machines out there to play the game.

You can do it server-side, because some geek just has to put together a bunch of computers. On the client-side, can you imagine that 12 year old that keeps fraggin you when you're playing RtCW online putting together a cluster of computers? (That was rhetorical)

The AI would use genetic algorithms

"True to life" AI, does not imply good "Game" AI.

the sound would have every echo and diffusion effect possible,the graphics would use real-time raytracing, and the level count would be as extreme poly as possible

The network latency would kill you. Motherboards are moving to AGP 8x so that they can get more bandwidth to the graphics card.

Re:No wait

[The_Sock]

Clusternig is not a buzz word. It's a very real solution to many of the problems faced by enterprise applications and infastructure. Combined with .Net can be used to aid in providing web services, giving you One Degree of Seperation for your customers. Combined with XML and RDBMS, clusters can provide you with the speed you need for your enterprise software, and the 5-9s reliability that you require, without vendor lock-in.

In short, clustering is the solutions for tomorrows problems today.

Interesting

[ekrout]

Here's a link (italian) to the pictures.

I've always heard that a picture is worth 1000 words, but no one ever mentioned I'd have to translate them all into English.

FAQ

[Catskul]

Yes, Ive read the FAQ, but as the parent noticed its getting rediculous.

Regarding the issues in the FAQ, most of the news isnt time critical, especially if its a link to a small site. So waiting 6 hours isnt a big deal. Despite the FAQ response I think it would still be a good idea.
In response to worrying about if the content changed: First of all it wouldnt be a big deal and second of all, how much harder would it be to recache it every 5-10 min ?

So the quick answer is: "Sure, caching would be neat." It would make things a lot easier when servers go down, but it's a complicated issue that would need to be thought through in great detail before being implemented.

I think its time someone went ahead, thought it though and implemented it.