It's kind of hilarious reading people who think servers come out of thin air and "Because HoN can do it, so can SC!"
Shadowed, your argument is baseless because you have no idea how server resource usage scales with increasing number of units and games hosted. Where are you getting your memory usage to transmit information about 1000 units vs 10 units? A unit is just a few bytes in memory so I imagine scaling won't be an issue. Neither will the number of users / games hosted. These things are VERY scalble.
Servers are more powerful than you think and (good) developers are not stupid when it comes to optimising their code for large volumes.
In any case, no one here will know for sure.
More servers means more money, more maintenance, etc etc. Tossing servers at the issue isn't always going to fix it.
Neither am I talking just about memory, it adds up when you have to do a lot of unit checks here, a few more there. Assuming what MisterD says is accurate, it also means the server has to keep track of the entire game state rather than just passing the data around, which again, more resources to do.
You are wrong. Blizzard can fix this with dedicated servers. That is part of the cost of making a good product and it is great that we have HoN to set an example.
You also don't seem to understand the concept of scaling. As long as it is not expotential, it is not a problem. I suggest you Google it. Just because it needs to do a 1000 extra checks or hold 10000 more objects in memory does not equate to server lag x 1000.
This is getting off topic so I'll just say. Blizzard disagreed with you, since they didn't go with that method. As you admit yourself, nobody knows for sure, but I would say it's a safe bet they actually looked at the pros and cons and didn't just pick the method out of a hat.
On September 09 2010 11:02 MisterD wrote: shadow actually you are wrong here. The network really submits only a players actions. All clients in one game use a synchronized random number generator to perform the exact same simulation on all games. Due to this synchronized simulation, out of sync errors like in old starcraft replays or on waaagh!tv (if you ever watched warcraft) could occur: by switching up two player actions, one simulation would totally run out of control, resulting in 90% of all actions being invalid due to the erroneous simulation state, which in turn results in all units just standing around more and more and in the end nothing would move at all and just stand around doing nothing.
the starcraft client/server model is very much different from the model used in counter-strike for instance, where mainly the server decides over hit or miss. You may have noticed really ugly delay when running around in first person mode on a starcraft2 custom map: This is caused by that synchronized model, where every client displays the exact game state. unsynchronized client/server models like for counter-strike rely on the server being the deciding entity and sending world updates and every client displays a slightly different world state, which allows for immediate movement without waiting for synchronization, and thus not experiencing this lag.
I think you read what I said wrong, or I'm reading what you said wrong.
I'm not saying the server runs the game, I'm saying that if SC2 wanted to stop (for example) a fog of war hack it would have to do unit vision checks on the server instead of the client. Compared to HoN, which I assume does it on the server if fog of war hacks don't work as people claim.
I'm not saying that SC2 is doing anything on the server beyond the basic communiction. Although it is interesting, I didn't realize they synchronized that much onto the client.
shit sorry, i missed that "in order to make maphack impossible" part :<
I was going to write a long, long essay explaining why i think managing the game states is viable for blizzard in regards to CPU and RAM costs, but I've decided to keep it short.
Firslty - CPU speed and RAM is very cheap these days, and its continuing to become more powerful every few months at a crazy rate.
Second - Managing the game may seem like a large amount of work, but it really isn't. It scales linearly for the most part, and managing vision really isn't a huge a mount of work when you consider the grid based setup of the maps - we only need to check buildings/structures outside of cells that have already been "discovered" as visible. Since visibility already displays plenty cells around you, that's a large saving. (What i am saying is you don't need to check all 50 buildings and 100 units per player)
Thirdly- Checking that players aren't using memory edits, code caves, and other types of tom foolery to execute functions like the immortal warp in would be a very simple routine of looking up within a hash table of whether the function is a multiplayer ability or not.
Finally - We have EMULATED wow servers which support 4000+ players online on a single server. There is no denying a wow server is thousands of times more work then running a single ladder game. There is no reason blizzard cannot pull this off for some ladder games.
One thing i want to state about why they haven't done this, is the latency and the nature of the protocol. I believe R1CH or someone else covered this before, but bursting data when you move into enemy territory is not great when there are so many units that will suddenly be discovered and sent, that it probably wouldn't work so well in such a fast paced game like SC2. I do not know much about this topic, so im going to wrap up with that - there probably are solutions to this.
On September 09 2010 11:28 Shadowed wrote: This is getting off topic so I'll just say. Blizzard disagreed with you, since they didn't go with that method. As you admit yourself, nobody knows for sure, but I would say it's a safe bet they actually looked at the pros and cons and didn't just pick the method out of a hat.
They figured that forking out for dedicated servers will not increase their profit margins much. Plus, it is cheaper to reuse warcraft 3 archetecture design + warden and get the product on the market faster. These are valid points from Blizzard management perspective.
It is up to the community to show them that we take the issue seriously especially when HoN has proven it works.
I dont like hackers but this guy isn't a typical hacker.
From what I understood he is part of a "famous" hacking group in the edge of nowhere of internet. After reading his two essays, on SEA forums, this guy is actually interresting. He does reveal, eventhough after being busted, epic failure(s) of the game. I'm not defending him at all, but come on you got to admit he is right, at least, on one point: if blizzard wants StarCraft II to be #1 they'll have to face true problems like him.
Might it be the new way to get hired from blizzard ?
A friend of mine who skilled with GE told me, this hack or something is caused by Blizzard. If you open your GE and load the default setting of Warp Gate, click an command card and see the ability commands, you will find Warp In Immortals. So someone made the hack programs or changed something of the client, and when he click on that button, warp in an Immortal instead of whatever that icon supposed to be, and the command is still legal, because there IS a command for warp-in immortals.
I think we should report this to Blizzard, for whatever the reason or cause, such cheating is unbearable.
Admin, please delete this post if this made trouble. I'm reporting to Blizzard anyway.
For YouTube viewers, of course. People who haven't seen this thread yet.
It sounds really fake and you don't need to pretend, it's supposed to surprise them, not you.
It sounds really fake because you are already aware that he knows what is going to happen. Otherwise, a person listening that has never seen the replay or read about it, is more than likely not going to think, "this guy sounds awfully fake...".
He wants it to seem like he is surprised so he does not spoil the audience's reaction when they see it for the first time. He simply made a youtube video for people to watch man, no need to be so controlling and authoriative.
LOL... controlling and authoriative... Get real. I'm not posting "OMG YOU SUCK AND I'M BETTER THAN YOU", I'm simply telling it how it is. No one with a brain would think he just randomly casted a replay of a hack wth completely unknown players without knowing about the hack. His reacton is also obviously fake, no matter your prior knowledge. The only thing he needs to do in order not to spoil the audience's reaction is to not tell them in advance about the hack, doh. He can even say there's a surprise and it still wouldn't spoil anything.
On September 08 2010 18:33 ReCharge wrote: I think what the "hacker" is trying to say, is he's trying to have fun & forcing blizzard to fix their problems, they hacked so that blizzard will be aware of this & fix it as early as possible.
*weird, I'm actually defending the hacker* xD
this is possibly the worst way to make blizzard aware of their problems...somebody loses 12 points and you lose 60 dollars..nj!
It was more like $80-100 due to games costing more down here, which is a fair amount of money to waste really for most, especially if he forks it out again.
EPT
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