> > It might save overhead for clients, but certainly not valve.
True, but I doubt it would take a very robust set of load-balanced servers to handle the load (and it's not like Valve's having profitability issues). Heck, we recently built a new co-located server with a xeon 1271, 32GB of ram, and 5 high-end SSD's for our community for less than $2500. Even if Valve had to spend 5x that on a system to offload the work from the client to a server-based solution, it would be totally worth it. Speed is important in the server browser. There are times I do a search in the browser for a particular map to see where our servers come up, and they show up in a few seconds, and other times where it takes over a minute. If the clent could pull all the info from a static source, not only would searches be lightning-quick, but there could be a ton more fine-tuned sorting of the servers done as well. Even better, all those complaints about the server browser not working for some folks would disappear, as their networking setup would no longer matter, since they would all be pulling down a single static file each time, etc. Anyhoo- just another idea ;-) On Sat, Jul 4, 2015 at 2:00 PM, Kevin C <[email protected]> wrote: > It might save overhead for clients, but certainly not valve. > > From our tests valve servers are not being reported by the master server, > so your client does not actually get any data about them. The performance > goes down as more servers are populated in your list, apply a filter > early(under 1k servers or so) and the filter works fine, even after 3k+ > servers though it was only a few seconds delay from typing a map name in > and getting results. > > (I cut a lot of text from this thread, it was too large to submit) > > On 7/4/2015 1:49 PM, E. Olsen wrote: > > However I have to say the server browser itself has some severe >> performance issues and takes a lot of CPU to sort just a silly few servers >> (even now with just a handful of community servers its slow). >> It also seems to buffer data so that I have to press refresh at least >> twice, otherwise I get entries that are obsolete (trying to connect to them >> does not work). > > > I think this is due to how the system works (querying servers in > realtime, I believe). It was much, much faster a few years ago before Valve > added thousands of their own server to it, which leads me to believe those > servers are still being parsed, just not shown (which is certainly not > ideal in terms of speed). > > I've actually thought there was always a better way to do that. Why not > have every server send an info packet to a central database every 30-60 > seconds or so, and have the server browser draw all the info from that > database instead? The only issue, I believe, would be displaying local ping > values for each player, but I'm sure that could be worked out (perhaps, for > the purpose of the browser, replace ping with and actual region/location, > and allow the player to sort closest server to farthest, etc.)? > > At any rate - if there were some way for them to draw the info from a > static database instead of querying thousands of servers, I think it would > both speed things up, and save alot of overhead. > > > On Sat, Jul 4, 2015 at 1:36 PM, Dominik Friedrichs <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Thanks to 1nsane, I guess that feature invalidates my point. >> >> I have to disagree regarding the "thousands of servers" Kevin mentioned >> though. Once you filter for a specific map and decent latency, especially >> at awkward times of day, it usually comes down to 3 or less Valve servers >> for me. >> >> However I have to say the server browser itself has some severe >> performance issues and takes a lot of CPU to sort just a silly few servers >> (even now with just a handful of community servers its slow). >> It also seems to buffer data so that I have to press refresh at least >> twice, otherwise I get entries that are obsolete (trying to connect to them >> does not work). >> >> Regarding finding a gaming community and whatnot... I just cant be >> bothered - I want to launch the game and play, thats it. >> > > > _______________________________________________ > To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, > please visit: > https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds > >
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