Hosted Server

[rigas]

Have you ever thought of having a version (or feature) along the same lines as say an Unreal Tournament server? Where as the GM can have a "server" running on another machine at a location that may have higher bandwidth and then all the clients connect to that location so that the GMs bandwidth is not used for all things. Then the GM connects to the "server" in a special mode that gives him the interface of the GM and the players connect as normal.

Just some thoughts.

Rigas

[Doswelk]

Have you ever thought of having a version (or feature) along the same lines as say an Unreal Tournament server? Where as the GM can have a "server" running on another machine at a location that may have higher bandwidth and then all the clients connect to that location so that the GMs bandwidth is not used for all things. Then the GM connects to the "server" in a special mode that gives him the interface of the GM and the players connect as normal.

I personally cannot see the advantage to this...

You would still use up bandwidth uploading stuff to the server, granted when the game is running there may be a little less bandwidth usage, but unless you are doing voice and using modules (thus the players already have the content), the band width usage is small.

I do remember people who were using FGII over dial-up (text only of course) so unless you have some very,very strict broadband capping not sure what this would gain?

[Griogre]

There are advantages to this approach because it allows the GM not to be the host. IE you could have someone at a university be the GM with having to use a VPN. The main reason would be bandwith though. If you had a corporate account that had much better bandwidth you could run the dedicated server on this account and then log in from at home. Or if you were traveling and at a hotel (which usually have sucky connections) you could run the server from your home.

The original owners chose not to do a dedicated server. The new owner has not said anything one way or another. There is probably less reason to do a dedicated server for VTT than first person shooters though.

[Doswelk]

There are advantages to this approach because it allows the GM not to be the host. IE you could have someone at a university be the GM with having to use a VPN. The main reason would be bandwith though. If you had a corporate account that had much better bandwidth you could run the dedicated server on this account and then log in from at home. Or if you were traveling and at a hotel (which usually have sucky connections) you could run the server from your home.

The original owners chose not to do a dedicated server. The new owner has not said anything one way or another. There is probably less reason to do a dedicated server for VTT than first person shooters though.

I sit corrected :p

[Sigurd]

I think the concept of offloading the bandwidth to another server\client is interesting. We often play where a player with a better connection would be happy to take some of the bandwidth load.

I like the idea of being able to designate a phantom picture and module source to lighten the load on the DM's connection. It might be an interesting development to offer your machine as a data store\resource to offload bandwidth from the DM. Perhaps if that player logged in early.

Perhaps FG would benefit from something like a small local torrent just for game materials.

Strategically, I think we're better to distribute the workload among our own computers though.

[Valarian]

There was also a fairly big backlash when this was last suggested. Mainly due to people liking the client/server model and that a hosted model is screwed if the server is down or in the (hopefully, unlikely) event that the company fails.

[drahkar]

There have been several attempts at running a hosted server based system. None of them have succeeded that I know of to date.

[Griogre]

There was some backlash vs this but you seem to be confusing a dedicated server with a central server. There is no particular reason a dedicated server can't be run by anyone.

The biggest problem with dedicated servers from Smiteworks viewpoint was security and just hassel factor - another build to keep track of.

[HDresden]

It would be nice if any player with a full license could host the server, and the gm connect as GM. However I would think that would mean the player would have to have all the Modules story stuff on their computer.. and well I know as a player that would be very....very... tempting ;p