Competition Subculture

[kyle]

This game has grown and same thing with the competition. A lot of the traffic into these servers are through the masters, but this is not necessary the best way to do this any more. When we load the master server it communicates with all of the servers in the list. This creates a lot of traffic to those other servers that is not intended.

I was playing on CTWF during the past ladle and every time the players where switching servers, the gameplay was effected. It was fine until after each stage of the ladle. That's why I propose removing the ladle servers from the master list and using a subculture instead.

Server Implementations would not be that hard, instead of having someone like dlh add each server into the subculture, allow these servers to connect to it via a modified masters.srv file. these still would use TALK_TO_MASTER, but the master that it is talking to is the subculture.

I understand players would have to get used to using subcultures. It may take a little bit of a learning curve, but no more than what pickup entails.

Overall having competition servers grouped together is a lot better than being mixed in with several other servers.

[sinewav]

Let's say we have a subculture of 8 servers. If everyone leaves one server and joins another using the subculture, the lag experienced by the remaining servers in the subculture will be less than if we only used the master server, correct?

People will still be able to connect through both the master server and the subculture. I guess this is just a matter of getting everyone used to using a subculture instead? Is there any way to have the master server hide Ladle servers, thus prompting people to use the subculture or custom connect?

Do we ever need more than one subculture? Even having one subculture every month means another Ladle responsibility for someone. And, sometimes we don't know what servers are available until the weekend. Using the resources and the staff we have, how can we assure this gets done every month? Is there a way to partially automate this process?

[kyle]

As it is now, with them on the master list, the servers are also sending infomration to the normal players of the game. If we move them into thier own subculture this would be eliminate this type of traffic, posibly removing some lag.

As for servers they should only be listed on this subculture, as i mentioned above by creating a custom master.srv this can be achieved. by doing this there is also no need for someone to update the subculture as it has been done in the past. Esentually this subculture server would work just like the master servers. However having a few of them always allows for the case of a subculture server being down.

[epsy]

Another option would be for the masters to do most of the pinging, with clients being served the list as seen by the server instead of pinging everyone. The clients can query the server directly to get their ping or more up-to-date information.

[kyle]

That could be an option, but this would not be effective as older clients would not know what to do with this information, Also with that the master servers will have to transmit a lot more information. It may not be a bad thing to implement it, but the benefets of it won't happen right away.

[epsy]

Indeed not, but, unlike what I said previously, it doesn't conflict with your proposal, and on the long term it is much more beneficial.

[delinquent]

What about setting the master to ping only every... say, 30secs, and when needed?

[Z-Man]

Subculture won't reduce stress by players switching competition servers via the subcuture. You still get every switching player ping every competition server. What it would do is reduce the load to the non-competition servers.

Master servers already only ping servers every couple of minutes. That is a non-issue.

Epsy's idea would work and is already half implemented. You can already instruct your client to not ping servers directly (some privacy setting somewhere, can't look it up now). However, currently, this would give you neither current player information (that comes from the masters, then, which usually are not up to date) nor accurate ping times (doesn't matter here). We probaly need to introduce a tiny ping packet that only does that and doesn't request player information. That'll require client and server updates, of course.

In the meantime, just use server bookmarks. They don't ping anything. It's what I use for the recordings. Before the ladle, I bokmark all potential servers I need. Takes a minute. Of course, I use a template user.cfg with bookmarks cleared out, because deleting bookmarks is a pain.

[delinquent]

Hang on, why not simply remove the master form the competition equation altogether? Epsy, if you added a specific browser for competition servers, they have talk_to_master set at 0, and add a competition menu item? Much like an existing bookmark, but it downloads a new cfg with the ip and port addresses every time it's clicked on. That way, the servers don't have to be pinged at all?

[Jip]

I also want to point out, that removin competition servers from the master list would prevent new people from noticing about competitions.
The best way would be to motivate competition players to use a subculture.
If I understand it correctly from this bug report, it is already possible to add
ADD_MASTER_SERVER <addres> <port>
to the config. So nobody would need to update the master server list manually every ladle.

[Z-Man]

why not simply...

The same answer as for almost every suggestion containing these words. Because it is not simple.
(Now, RINCLUDEing bookmark definitions could work, but there are many drawbacks. For starters, it's complicated to execute, results are cached forever, and regular bookmarks get overwritten.)

[kyle]

Subculture won't reduce stress by players switching competition servers via the subcuture. You still get every switching player ping every competition server. What it would do is reduce the load to the non-competition servers.

A subculture still should reduce some lag in those servers, for instance CT has several servers on the serverlist using the same machine, each of these would also get pinged effectively adding more traffic to those machines.

I do like epsy's / your idea on making the masters do more. and the clients do less. The only problem with this is how long until the players upgrade their clients? How long e still should reduce some lag in those servers, for instance CT has several servers on the serverlist using the same machine, each of these until the full benefit with be seen?

That is why i think my idea of a dedicated subculture would be better for right now. It takes less time and maintenance than bookmarking. It would work well until the master servers send more data to the clients and people upgrade to utilize the new code.

[Z-Man]

Subculture won't reduce stress by players switching competition servers via the subcuture. You still get every switching player ping every competition server. What it would do is reduce the load to the non-competition servers.

A subculture still should reduce some lag in those servers, for instance CT has several servers on the serverlist using the same machine, each of these would also get pinged effectively adding more traffic to those machines.

Oh, right. Hadn't thought of that scenario. Yes, then a subculture is helpful.