Firstly, I have sucessfully compiled a multi-threaded test application in BlitzMax, as have others.
Care to post the sourcecode for that? It's on the SVN if you'd care to look, possibly in a distro by now (I havnt looked in a while).
I don't care to look because frankly setting up SVN to work with Blitz, considering the amount of usage it gets, doesn't seem cost effective, even if I do get to prove you wrong. Additionally MMO's have been around a lot longer than the multi-core fad
Yeah. Back then it was a "multiple processor fad" instead. Running 60 odd 3D objects and receiving net data for them is not going to enforce a mandatorry requirement of making your application dual core
I didn't say it was. But then again I seriously don't consider 60 simultaneous players particularly "massive". If it were then you'd be right, however normally when people are talking about MMOS, they aren't talking about game franchises like Tribes or Battlefield. They're thinking graphical versions of MUDs, with hundreds of simultaneous users. Now back in the day, when this was basically just "The Big Cave Adventure Online", this wasn't a big deal, because computers could cope with executing instructions faster than you could type them in. Today, the server needs to do a whole lot more than just interpret instructions, and send a quick message back to the user telling them it didn't understand what you're trying to do. remembering that this is a forum of mostly indi coders and Blitz is aimed at the indi market yes?
Just because something is "indie" doesn't mean it has to be half-arsed. There are plenty of top quality indie MMOs like CCP Games' Eve Online, and if you believe for a second that their 60.000 consecutive users in a single universe is run off some discarded Windows box, you're sadly mistaken. In many models the server applications, or in some smaller business models, application (singular) can sit on any ordinary web server,
This is where your analogy fails. MMOs are nothing like ordinary applications. The amount of data and computations needed for an MMO are several orders of magnitude greater than what most business applications need. If you take a look around data centres you'll see not just rack mounted units, but also mini-ATX machines and other small form factor computers.
Oh I know. We have 2 ourselves in the datacenter that we use. But they're not running MMO's, they're running ordinary web applications. Our MMO when it was running on a similar system, could handle just about 30 consecutive players, before the game became increasingly unplayable. You don't instantly need a Cray XPS or IBM's finest just because you're selling your game with an online business model.
Of course not. Especially if you're planning to fail. If you're planing to be even moderately successful (lets say 5000 sales in the first 6 months), you're going to have to scale up real quick, so you might as well start big. That way at least you're sure your software scales up as well as the hardware. Infact for many smaller MMO's it makes more business sense to use smaller machinery so that normal capacity is spread over more than 1 machine, giving you redundancy and fault tolerance in cases of a disaster.
You mean like a blade server, which apart from full redundancy usually features hot swapping of defective blades? Thank you for reiterating my point. So we agree then that it would be foolish to invest in a lot of regular PCs and have to deal with all sorts of wierd synchronization issues, when a blade server and a SAN is cheaper (long term), has better redundancy, are easier to back-up and scale more elegantly (either up or down)? Again, you're taking the concept that all MMO's have to be like WoW with billions of players, this isn't the case.
WoW only has about 6000 players in one world (or server or shard or whatever) IIRC. The fact that you don't seem to think that makes a difference, is probably the kind of thing you should keep to yourself and certainly not tell your investors. Or post somewhere they might accidentally stumble across it. Like on the Internet You sir, in my view, have trolled and sought argument on purpose for whatever reason I don't know,
Your argumentum ad hominem has been duly noted. I can't explain why you felt need to imply I knew nothing of MMO's
You don't need to explain it. I already explained it several posts ago. To summarize I thought what you were stating was "an inaccurate representation of facts". As it turns out you were just dead wrong, and I no longer need to imply that you don't know what you're talking about, because you've already made that plainly obvious. However, whilst i'm busy compiling multi-threaded applications in Blitz and planning the MMO i'm writing commercially next year, i'll be the one not thinking twice about someone who thought they knew better and didn't on an internet forum.
Good for you. I'd suggest you throw a little research into your busy schedule though. But there's no reason to take advice from some random bloke off the Internet now is there? I mean not when you already know the one universal truth. Right? Surely not... the Duck is lost for words :O
Rubbernecker! :o> Works sweetly me thinks.
Indeed. How do they prevent cheating? Do you know?