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IBM Testing New Grid Technology with Quake 2

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the advances-in-fragging-technology dept.

boschmorden writes "In conjunction with IBM, a group of college students from the University of Wisconsin developed GameGrid, a derivative of IBM's OptimalGrid effort. The students adapted the open-source version of id Software's Quake 2 first-person shooter, and attempted to scale it across the grid to stress the system." IBM is also planning on developing Quake 2 bots to take advantage of the system.

5 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. IBM wants stress testing ? by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 5, Funny

    IBM Corp. has begun a real-world test of its grid-computing system by turning to a familiar geek pastime: games.

    I'd have hosted Slashdot instead. Or updates.microsoft.com.

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  2. All bots are now by Trigun · · Score: 5, Funny

    Giant blue gorillas with six million hit points, deadly accuracy, and are backed by a legion of undead lawyers.

  3. Acid test by Zog+The+Undeniable · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Line all the players up and have one of them fire a railgun through the remainder [1]. Allegedly someone tried this at a LAN with 64 players and the server crashed. The problem is that the server has to send 4,032 death messages instantaneously. With 250 players it would have to do 62,250.

    [1] for the uninitiated, a Quake 2 railgun slug keeps going through any number of targets until it hits a wall or other part of the scenery.

    --
    When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
  4. Re:A Test? Riiiight. by sperling · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Chess software just requires massive processing. The whole point with this grid is to be able to do real-time simulations, and any decent game is exactly that.
    They got a point though, this is more suited for MMORPGs, I'd believe any modern MMORPG would use some sort of clustering solution. The response times they mention seem decent, but I can't help but wonder what they'll look like in a real scenario with a few thousand players and a limited hardware budget.

    We're doing something similar here at work, but I'd be fired in an instant if I spent 8 servers to sustain 80 users...

    --
    The next great MMORPG.
  5. Re:not a completely new idea by lovebyte · · Score: 5, Funny

    I remember when in the mid-90's we used to call playing doom and later quake : Network testing

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    I'll do it for cheesy poofs.