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[Jay]

Would you think there'd be any hosting companies that could host a minecraft server for cheapsies?

Doubt it.
It takes a considerable amount of RAM and processing power.  And probably bandwidth, too.

That sounds awesome, I wonder how big the servers will be.

Infinite maps, player counts limited by RAM.
1 GB supports roughly 20 players, in a worst case scenario (they're all spread out with zero overlapping chunks).
Untold how much bandwidth 20 people take up, though.

[Vattic]

I was messing around on a duplicate of my serious save. I gave myself loads of tracks and minecarts and built the fastest and most expensive way to travel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jUnl8q_nVs

Oh and here is the cheaper alternative.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WntHPkjmQyI

[Nilocy]

I was messing around on a duplicate of my serious save. I gave myself loads of tracks and minecarts and built the fastest and most expensive way to travel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jUnl8q_nVs

That is awesome.

[Saint]

Could you also possibly have some processing handeled by the cilents too, say 4gb of ram on the server and part of the processing is given to the cilent maybe 1gb of ram and the server and cilent communicate to share info they process?
However if this is possible (I have no idea if it is) it would require a lot of internets.

[Vattic]

That is awesome.

Cheers. I just updated my original post with a cheaper alternative you might like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WntHPkjmQyI

[andrea]

now you should explain how these things work.

[Tradanbattlan]

...I think he just spams right-click to move from boat to boat...
Ingenious!

[Jay]

Could you also possibly have some processing handeled by the cilents too, say 4gb of ram on the server and part of the processing is given to the cilent maybe 1gb of ram and the server and cilent communicate to share info they process?
However if this is possible (I have no idea if it is) it would require a lot of internets.

We barely even have shared threads in the SAME computer, let alone NETWORKED threading in the consumer market.
Wait a few dozen years.
...90% of the clients wouldn't have the kind of bandwidth available for that anyway.

[Vattic]

...I think he just spams right-click to move from boat to boat...
Ingenious!

You sir are correct. In the videos I am using an autoclicker / macro to one of the extra buttons on my mouse. It's not much slower clicking manually as I couldn't shorten the gap between autoclicks without it removing me from the boat/cart.

[Aqizzar]

I was about to say that that would make an interesting cornerstone of a static defense.  You situate your base behind a very thick wall (or the back end of a cave or something), and then line the one-tile hallway in and out with minecarts/boats.  The you can spam-right-click to get in, while anything else has to dig through either walls or the deconstruction of the hallway.

But then I remembered other players can just right-click-spam their way in too.  Maybe useful against digging monsters or something, I dunno.  Like you said, it's fast, but it's also ridiculously expensive and pointless.

[Vattic]

Not that expensive if you use boats.

I have to say though that I won't be using this in my serious games, I've already finished building a proper set of tracks with simple wooden bridges. I consider this an exploit.


You can see if on the left and in the distance. 377 tracks in total. I just wish, when using powered carts, the carts would stick together better rather than get launched up the track.

[Calhoun]

Could you also possibly have some processing handeled by the cilents too, say 4gb of ram on the server and part of the processing is given to the cilent maybe 1gb of ram and the server and cilent communicate to share info they process?
However if this is possible (I have no idea if it is) it would require a lot of internets.

We barely even have shared threads in the SAME computer, let alone NETWORKED threading in the consumer market.
Wait a few dozen years.
...90% of the clients wouldn't have the kind of bandwidth available for that anyway.

Well, The only problem with this is that if you offload things from the servers to the client, you lose security.
It isn't inconceivable to have a sort of Peer-to-Peer network for this purpose. It'd just be damn hard to do, and it'd be significantly less secure.

[Thexor]

Could you also possibly have some processing handeled by the cilents too, say 4gb of ram on the server and part of the processing is given to the cilent maybe 1gb of ram and the server and cilent communicate to share info they process?
However if this is possible (I have no idea if it is) it would require a lot of internets.

We barely even have shared threads in the SAME computer, let alone NETWORKED threading in the consumer market.
Wait a few dozen years.
...90% of the clients wouldn't have the kind of bandwidth available for that anyway.

Well, The only problem with this is that if you offload things from the servers to the client, you lose security.
It isn't inconceivable to have a sort of Peer-to-Peer network for this purpose. It'd just be damn hard to do, and it'd be significantly less secure.

"Damn hard to do" is right. Even if we assume that nobody has a firewall, you've still got to assume that there's something the server can safely offload and not need back any time in the conceivable future. Remember, you've got latency to contend with - anything the server sends 'away for handling' is effectively lost for anywhere up to half a second (or more, for laggy situations).

If you've still got a centralized server, nothing of any importance could be dealt with this way. You might be able to offload connection requests... maybe some chunk requests, depending on how they're handled... but most features would be restricted - you've got two sources of latency instead of 1, and having to wait 1-2 seconds every time you wanted to place a block for the server to recognize it would be game-breaking. If you've got a totally networked and decentralized server, we're talking about something that's never, AFAIK, been successfully attempted on any kind of reasonable scale, and that would probably require a substantial amount of original research to successfully design and implement. (There's also the security concerns you've already mentioned - any software on a user's computer can be hacked, period. There's a reason hackers keep circumventing DRM 'solutions' - if the code is on their machine, they can eventually break anything. If SecureROM, with dozens of security-focused engineers, can't stop hackers from manipulating their code, there's no way Notch will have a chance.)

Never mind that, assuming you have a 32-bit OS with access to ~3GB of RAM (4GB, minus what Windows reserves for addressing space), you should be able to support roughly ~60 players at a time. (Since being spread out is a very real possibility, we'll assume the worst case.) If you load the server on a 64-bit machine, you could potentially host thousands of players, depending on just how much RAM you've got - you'll have the potential for these massive, semi-MMO servers some people are demanding. So, really, there's no need for such a complicated system in the first place.



So yeah, I really don't think Notch is going to consider a heavily-distributed networked system. 

[Nilocy]

Then again your all thinking in this in the inifinite sense. I'd be extremely content just having a 10000x10000 server. Its only 10x10km, even then you could quite easily push that to 100x100km.

Also, i was giving the Mega railways some more thought. Its annoying how you can't fuel trains while in the carts (hopefully you will in future).

But for the sake of realism I came up with the idea that you can't build railways anywhere, only on top of cobblestone.
So this'd make two big demands on economies(hah, I've spent way to much thinking about this) in villages.
1. for the need of a lot of picks, unless you can consitantly fashion diamond ones.
2. the excessive need of stone for bridges.
This is my current idea for train stations.

W = Wooden planks
R = Railway
X = piece of removable railway, so most likely placed on top of dirt.

Code: [Select]

  RRRRRRRRRRRRRR
  R  WWWWWWWWWWR
>RR XRRRRRRRRRRX
<RXRRWWWWWWWWWWR
  R XRRRRRRRRRRX
  R  WWWWWWWWWWR
  RRRRRRRRRRRRRR

This is assuming that the trains run on the left side of the double track.

[Calhoun]

Well, actually, If you make a limited but large map, that doesn't deload any part of it, then it's going to end up consuming more resources than an infinitie one that does.