Hello TMS members,

If one is going to host a MUD using their own server, will players experience a grand amount of latency if the game engine, the website and e-mail server are all running on the same machine? Would it be wiser to have two servers and split the load in that manner?

What about security issues?

I ask because I am not entirely sure how many CPU cycles and bandwidth are consumed when running a game engine.

Unless you are running the MUD and HTTP server on an old machine CPU latency will not be an issue. I run both on a P2 850mhz with 256meg of ram with no problems.

The main problem is bandwidth. An average site (< 100kb on front page) will not create much bandwidth drain unless you get a large number of hits (500+/day). I have a 256kb upload and quite comfortably run a MUD hosting 10-20 players and a webpage with a 90kb front page and receive roughly 200 hits/day without much noticable lag. Occasionally it will spike for a second if a few people try and access it at once but for the majority of time it is fine.

Security issues will exist regardless of wether or not the servers are run on the same machine. Standard security procedures should be in place anyway (no extra services, updated software etc.)

Hope this has been somewhat helpful to you.

It completely depends on how CPU intensive your particular game is, how efficient whatever engine you're using is, and likely how many users you have online.

We've had speed issues on top-end Xeon servers that are only running a single MUD, but that doesn't happen without an extra large number of players on (500-600+) during an event when they're all running around quickly doing stuff. Our Rapture engine is also running interpreted code, which is, of course, inherently slower than native, though nicer to work with.

--matt

If you're going to have website and game on the same machine, you may as well code the http protocol into the game itself and have the game be its own website. It would listen on two ports, say 4000 and 80. A connection to port 4000 would be assumed to be telnet, and would be treated accordingly- namely, log in and play the game. A connection to port 80 would be assumed to be a webclient, and would be treated accordingly- namely, display web content. There are many many virtues to this: no more separate in-game boards and web-boards, the two would be one and the same and posting on one would be identical to posting on the other; ability to do various commands such as "who", "help", etc. from the webpage; possibly even the ability to log your character in on the webpage and do character-specific information commands ("score", "eq", etc.) If you wanted to really make yourself stand out you could even let people actually play over the http content, similar to games like . Players from outside the mud community are attracted to your webpage, play around for awhile bumping around the main town, then try to walk outside--- "To leave the city, download a mud client and connect to port 4000! (more detailed instructions)" There's a lot of potential for this sort of thing. And as long as we're at it, there's no need to limit this to just the website. The email server could also be coded into the game itself, allowing eg. imms to read their email in-game, and reply in-game! In fact any protocol you can think of, is just begging to be incorporated.

CPU shouldn't be an issue.

As for the bandwidth, if it becomes a problem you should be able to throttle certain apps (either through the web server itself, or through the OS).

Stilton