Myst/Uru – Page 8 – The Kind Healer

Taking a ‘Page’ from SL to Re-Scale Uru

A post I made at UO bears repeating here:

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What I’ve heard of the server software (from UU’s perspective) would not require too much major rework for scalability I think. You’re connecting to only one ‘Age’ instance at any one time anyway. So…

Put each Cavern instance (I heard 5? More likely 2-3 for ‘Production’) on a separate server or CPU/core; That should allow better connectivity and up to 100 or so instead of the average 45 (though total in shard was almost over 100 once?). Terrapin’s fog concept works well in this respect too; Never quite understood why you’d send/rcv movement data for somebody you can’t even see.

Relto/Nexus and anyone playing the Ages in ‘Prime’ fashion moved to one scalable cluster; Instances spawned should balance similar to game instances on something like Diablo II Realm Games. And ‘hoods on another scalable cluster. Since KI comms is mostly text, a meta-process similar to an IRC-daemon can be stuck on a medium-grade box.

I’d be curious to know what is getting reworked on Plasma. Because you could still do all this on *one* server and be compatible to the existing format. The all important crux is how much the network communication code got ‘fixed.’

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I think I’ve spent too much time in SL, and as a Unix SysAdmin, to come up with something like this…

;)

:link:

An Amazing Birthday

Yesterday, the 9th, has had several meanings for me the past couple years.

Other than the obvious (my birthday), its the anniversary of Uru Live’s Shutdown, for which I’ve been rather bitter and vocal about in the past. Because of that, and the activities of last year, it also became a symbol or indicator of what the year would be like, see what I would participate in.

Well, two things happened that day which could bode well for an exciting year.

First, Marie S. of the DRC posted a [small, yet appreciative][DRC] note for the day stating “we are anticipating being able to gather again with you in one place next week.” Yay! Very nice birthday gift, thanks!

Then, a couple hours later, Linden Lab (aka [Second Life][SL]) opened a new Preview. There were three basic things on this pending release:

– Estate (Island) Tools makover. More like overhaul, IMHO, and for the better. There’s more than what’s being discussed on the notes, even the wiki’s, to explain here. Suffice it to say, if you own an island sim (or several) there, you should be happy.

– A better ‘following’ camera when in a vehicle. Before it was locked (though settable by the scripter). This should make things more natural.

– Better communication on the backend, aka ‘Grid,’ for stability and scalability. Though mostly transparent to the client users, its a big step towards cleaning up the grid architecture and makes individual simulator ‘regions’ more autonomous. From the notes, many of the major functions are going through a couple central servers when it crosses the region boundries. This change will have the regions talk to each other direct, and thereby also make the grid more like a peer-to-peer network too.

There were also some scripting changes made, mostly in the data gathering for sims/regions and individual parcels.

As I said, a lot happened yesterday, and I’ve overall been happy. But between these two events, I can definately tell that my life just got *very* interesting…

–Alan

[DRC]: http://www.drcsite.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=235
[SL]: http://secondlife.com

Comments and Second Thoughts

Those visiting may note I’ve added the ‘Second Thoughts’ weblog to my sidebar listing. It’s not a mistake.

Unlike those I see rampaging each other via the SL forums these days, I do feel that Prokofy does make sense at some level. I’ll admit it takes a while sometimes to figure out what, :) but as a ‘third party’ observer of sorts (my heart is still with Uru) its easier to see perhaps.

One of the most humourus things, though, is that both Prok and the FIC he rants about really are concerned about the same thing – the future of Second Life. However, they’re fighting each other so vehemently that they’re not doing the *correct* thing damnit, and turning collectively to Linden Labs with their grievances.

This is so much like the DRC-related sqabbles in Uru Prologue it makes me want to cry sometimes.

Perhaps that is why I applied for the Resident Moderator group on the SL forums.

We shall see…

–Alan

Many a Coincidence This Weekend

Just a quick note for now, maybe flesh it out later…

It seems several things have been happing the last few days on the Uru scene:

– The DRC forum has slowly sprung back to life, in a way. It appears that Laxman is running some experiments again. Additional word appears to be (I need to confirm this) that the site has broken away from Ubisoft’s hosting and/or control, which may have prompted the experiments. It’s definately prompted a wipe of the forum user accounts.

– With the DRC site stirring also comes some old players returning to forums, as well as some of their home UU shards. They’re hoping for the best, and are catching up on events to see what’s in store. A big wave goes out to any of you whom have stopped here from one of my Uru forum sigs. Like everyone else, I can only wait and hope, but I’m glad to ‘see’ y’all again.

– By sheer coincidence (perhaps due to my finding out I took over the ‘Uru’ tag in technorati), I wandered about and found the weblog of Alahmnat, one of the most well-respected moderators on the Ubi forums. There’s a very illuminating post giving another good reason why Cyan closed the Myst series; When I have time I’ll say more, but the weblog should be on the sidebar as of now.

Wow, this is a lot to happen over the x-mas weekend. Tis definately busy. Perhaps what I’ve done to help this year has not gone to waste after all. I can still hope.

–Alan :link:

Computer Specs

It’s been brought to my attention that certain types of systems may be having specific issues with Second Life.

I’m going to bring up notes on my three systems here, and their varying successes with SL at this time. Uru is also included for comparison.

### Desktop:

*Mainboard* is [865M01-G-6ELS][MB] – Based of a stock intel 865 chipset, SATA with no RAID controller (they look like extra IDE connections in the BIOS). Case is an Antec Aria.

*Processor* is P4 3.0 ghz, HT. Not overclocked, since this a Small Form Factor / MicroATX system and heat is already a factor in this build.

*Video* is from an NVidia 5700LE, 128 meg mem, AGP 8x. Also stock.

*Misc:* Memory 1 gig, 2 sticks @ 400 (to allow 800 FSB dual-channel). Sound is from the onboard AC97, stock driver that came with the system. HDD – boot is 80 gig Maxtor IDE, extra storage from a 120 gig Seagate SATA. DVD-ROM Dual-layer writer.

*Stability:* Built around New Years 2005, was great then (mid 1.5.x). Started having general latency issues in a number of sims around mid-1.6.x release (Aug-Sept), and the problems came to a head during the 1.7 initial release (though some rare sims became much better). I have not evaluated 1.8.x as much yet, as RL has intruded a lot more. Uru runs fine, though I normally run windowed 1024×768 nowadays.

### Notebook 1 – HP L2000 Special Edition (aka LiveStrong):

Review [here][LS] (not mine).

*Processor* is AMD Turion 64, 1.8 ghz. *Video* is ATI Radeon Xpress 200M IGP, shared memory (128 used), stock drivers. *System Mem* 1 gig (minus 128 for the video). *HDD* is 100 gig @ 4200 RPM.

*Stability:* Not bought with any game in mind, let alone SL or even Uru. However, both *can* run on this system – sort of. Uru runs at minimum resolution and settings, reasonably stable. SL can run but has horrible latency (likely due to the shared memory). All SL testing done via the 1.7.x codebase so I’ve not had a chance to test 1.8.x.

### Notebook 2 – Sager 8890-V

Specs [here][Sag].

*Processor* is P4 3.2 ghz, HT. (This is a ‘desktop replacement’ grade system.) *Video* is ATI Radeon 9600 Mobile, dedicated 128 meg mem, latest drivers supplied by Sager (due to LCD screen support). *System Mem* 1 gig, 2 @400 (800 FSB). *HDD* is 60 gig @ 7200 RPM. *LCD* is a Very Rare True 16″ @ 1280×1024; Flawless.

*Stability:* Uru runs beautifully, even in fullscreen at max res. SL has had texture corruption from litterally day one (I signed up and went through Orientation on this system); Unable to fix as of yet due to special ATI drivers that support my LCD screen. Amazingly, there is not much in the way of latency on this notebook. Mind ya, the texture issues are a show-stopper in its own right.

This will be updated as I run tests over time.

–Alan

[MB]: http://www.ocia.net/reviews/foxconnmobo/foxconnmobo.shtml
[LS]: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2455&review=HP+Special+Edition+L2000+Notebook+PC
[Sag]: http://www.notebookforums.com/archive/index.php/t-6055.html