What to do when you reach 256 users online?

[Iceman]

Well what an odd question to be asking these days... but what does one do when you reach 256 users online?

[dspain]

Well what an odd question to be asking these days... but what does one do when you reach 256 users online?

purchase the mysql multiple servers using a single database solution!

of course we just recently got the wgsdk to take mysql as a databasing option, but thats the vision.

so many people have asked me to do like i did with tele-arena and make a simple standalone majormud server but thats alot of work for metro to resurface one day and tell me to stop.

so best advice i can give is have some patience, we'll figure something out.

[Iceman]

Well what an odd question to be asking these days... but what does one do when you reach 256 users online?

purchase the mysql multiple servers using a single database solution!

of course we just recently got the wgsdk to take mysql as a databasing option, but thats the vision.

so many people have asked me to do like i did with tele-arena and make a simple standalone majormud server but thats alot of work for metro to resurface one day and tell me to stop.

so best advice i can give is have some patience, we'll figure something out.

So something like the Pervasive SQL update... which is essentially the replacement for btrieve... and how Quicksilver BBS I believe it was cracked open the majormud files to be shareable and made some pretty neat web stuff for his game?

Although I think it required taking a conversion step in the process of all the dat files... which is the scary part of never being able to go backwards? Pretty sure there was a posting in the forums here someplace.

http://www.themajorbbs.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=152

He converted his entire BBS to run PSQL, not sure if thats a jumping point to two copies sharing the same dats or not heh... although I'm still wrapping my head around needing two running copies to get past 256 connections... why can't it be the 65536 I'm used to! lol

[dspain]

Well what an odd question to be asking these days... but what does one do when you reach 256 users online?

purchase the mysql multiple servers using a single database solution!

of course we just recently got the wgsdk to take mysql as a databasing option, but thats the vision.

so many people have asked me to do like i did with tele-arena and make a simple standalone majormud server but thats alot of work for metro to resurface one day and tell me to stop.

so best advice i can give is have some patience, we'll figure something out.

So something like the Pervasive SQL update... which is essentially the replacement for btrieve... and how Quicksilver BBS I believe it was cracked open the majormud files to be shareable and made some pretty neat web stuff for his game?

Although I think it required taking a conversion step in the process of all the dat files... which is the scary part of never being able to go backwards? Pretty sure there was a posting in the forums here someplace.

http://www.themajorbbs.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=152

He converted his entire BBS to run PSQL, not sure if thats a jumping point to two copies sharing the same dats or not heh... although I'm still wrapping my head around needing two running copies to get past 256 connections... why can't it be the 65536 I'm used to! lol

yeah i wrote Quicksilver an interface for him to do that, a simple database that logged specific info like who was on channel X and what not, and the rest he pulled from the WCC*.DAT files.

it will all come around, we have already done great things with this old software to revive her, i already got the ipv6 stuff moving forward, and have already updated the SMTP stuff to use base64 authentication as well as support connecting to an alternate port on the smarthost which has allowed verizon users and comcast users to use smtp email without requiring a second machine.

[Iceman]

So anyone have any ideas on what to do once I hit 256 users sometime in the next couple months it appears if the trend keeps going...

Is there a list of free BBS's still active (all I can find is turbosentry.org) so I can at least add some message when someone signs up as new and is rejected, so they have a bbs that will have access for them?

Never thought I'd want a 1024 line system for bbs users.

[Toyduck]

So anyone have any ideas on what to do once I hit 256 users sometime in the next couple months it appears if the trend keeps going...

Is there a list of free BBS's still active (all I can find is turbosentry.org) so I can at least add some message when someone signs up as new and is rejected, so they have a bbs that will have access for them?

Never thought I'd want a 1024 line system for bbs users.

Do you have the ability to run a second system yourself? I'm not sure how the licensing for MajorMUD works in that respect.

There are a number of other free systems active; however their worlds/environments may be different.

[Iceman]

Do you have the ability to run a second system yourself? I'm not sure how the licensing for MajorMUD works in that respect.

There are a number of other free systems active; however their worlds/environments may be different.

Well as far as I always understood all of the license agreements... I can only run a second copy of any of the software on a "backup" machine for development and/or testing purposes... not a live system... So legally I'd have to buy more licenses...

although that doesn't fix my problem of a 256 limit... sure I could run another bbs, but all thats going to do, is have people on one bbs logon to the second bbs to play there too... and I'm not going to invest the countless hours to try and screen every connection, I have enough issues with that from one system and the ways people try to beat the duplicate IP module. (believe me, if some people could run 20 accounts, they would)

at this point all I can think of to do is send people someplace else once I average 240 users online... it'd be great to run more lines on one system, but the idea of having to upkeep two BBS's and maintain things without it being a wild west free for all, or a system that requires multiple hours daily sorting through signups and who's trying to use proxys or logon both, is not something I am interested in.

I just want to keep a classic game alive, and a casual friendly place to play it... but I don't want to turn this into a job running multiple systems.

Guess I'm going to have to find that module that kicks off demo users to keep a channel open for those in another class... hopefully it still works and lets me add a disconnect message to list other BBS's.

[Toyduck]

Do you have the ability to run a second system yourself? I'm not sure how the licensing for MajorMUD works in that respect.

There are a number of other free systems active; however their worlds/environments may be different.

Well as far as I always understood all of the license agreements... I can only run a second copy of any of the software on a "backup" machine for development and/or testing purposes... not a live system... So legally I'd have to buy more licenses...

although that doesn't fix my problem of a 256 limit... sure I could run another bbs, but all thats going to do, is have people on one bbs logon to the second bbs to play there too... and I'm not going to invest the countless hours to try and screen every connection, I have enough issues with that from one system and the ways people try to beat the duplicate IP module. (believe me, if some people could run 20 accounts, they would)

at this point all I can think of to do is send people someplace else once I average 240 users online... it'd be great to run more lines on one system, but the idea of having to upkeep two BBS's and maintain things without it being a wild west free for all, or a system that requires multiple hours daily sorting through signups and who's trying to use proxys or logon both, is not something I am interested in.

I just want to keep a classic game alive, and a casual friendly place to play it... but I don't want to turn this into a job running multiple systems.

Guess I'm going to have to find that module that kicks off demo users to keep a channel open for those in another class... hopefully it still works and lets me add a disconnect message to list other BBS's.

I was thinking along the lines of splitting the MUD, say realm 1-5 on BBS #1 then 6-9 on #2, if you can do such a split. If such a thing can be done. Use an unlimited telnet server behind your firewall/router to direct users to the proper BBS.

You can probably put some BBS's in your logout message for now; and dspain could probably build you a module if you wanted one pretty quickly and reasonably.

Please excuse any lack of knowledge on my part, I've never run MajorMUD nor do I know much about it.

[Iceman]

I was thinking along the lines of splitting the MUD, say realm 1-5 on BBS #1 then 6-9 on #2, if you can do such a split. If such a thing can be done. Use an unlimited telnet server behind your firewall/router to direct users to the proper BBS.

You can probably put some BBS's in your logout message for now; and dspain could probably build you a module if you wanted one pretty quickly and reasonably.

Please excuse any lack of knowledge on my part, I've never run MajorMUD nor do I know much about it.

Well all this still requires running multiple worldgroups... worldgroup has a 256 user limit, so all the modules have a 256 user limit... I just don't want to run multiple systems, one is time consuming enough with this many users, I don't want to double the work with a second... plus none of the users want to be split apart from everyone they've become friends with.

I'm actually running into problems of the system buffers not being large enough to display everything... a "who" list in majormud is now being cut off for the last dozen players once we hit around 200... seems around 170 its fine but after that people start disappearing off the bottom... all the "Z" and "Y" and "X" names listed at the bottom... so I'm even beyond the buffers at this point... (buffers already at worldgroups maximum 16k)

Thinking of editing the text blocks to see if I can strip out some data so a whole listing will appear when we're full up.

[Toyduck]

Well all this still requires running multiple worldgroups... worldgroup has a 256 user limit, so all the modules have a 256 user limit... I just don't want to run multiple systems, one is time consuming enough with this many users, I don't want to double the work with a second... plus none of the users want to be split apart from everyone they've become friends with.

I'm actually running into problems of the system buffers not being large enough to display everything... a "who" list in majormud is now being cut off for the last dozen players once we hit around 200... seems around 170 its fine but after that people start disappearing off the bottom... all the "Z" and "Y" and "X" names listed at the bottom... so I'm even beyond the buffers at this point... (buffers already at worldgroups maximum 16k)

Thinking of editing the text blocks to see if I can strip out some data so a whole listing will appear when we're full up.

Well, I can understand your feelings on multiple systems. I'm lucky enough (I guess) that monitoring additional systems falls in line with what I do anyway - install and monitor systems for small business's in the area.

Question; I've read that some systems have users who let scripts run their characters..is this true?

[Iceman]

Well, I can understand your feelings on multiple systems. I'm lucky enough (I guess) that monitoring additional systems falls in line with what I do anyway - install and monitor systems for small business's in the area.

Question; I've read that some systems have users who let scripts run their characters..is this true?

I'm certain 99% of majormud players use scripts... http://ods.ods.net/megamud.html is basically what most are using... I tweaked the install package to be configured to telnet immediately and added my bbs so all they have to do is click connect... before it was setup by default to use dialup without any bbs listed and most people gave up trying to figure out how to make it work to relive the old days... that's why I got most of my users, remove the barriers to make it super easy to connect with a single click.

you could go into my realm and you'll see almost everyone uses it, however I've got a unique situation having so many actual players someone is almost always live at the keys, especially with the various time zones the users come from... so all hours of the day is active in some fashion... if I could post the majormud chat log you would see in just an hour your entire scrollback would be filled with chat.

[Toyduck]

I'm certain 99% of majormud players use scripts... http://ods.ods.net/megamud.html is basically what most are using... I tweaked the install package to be configured to telnet immediately and added my bbs so all they have to do is click connect... before it was setup by default to use dialup without any bbs listed and most people gave up trying to figure out how to make it work to relive the old days... that's why I got most of my users, remove the barriers to make it super easy to connect with a single click.

Excellent, In today's market you do need to make it easier for users to connect. Dialup is quickly becoming an obsolete protocol and users expect 'smart' software <easy>.

you could go into my realm and you'll see almost everyone uses it, however I've got a unique situation having so many actual players someone is almost always live at the keys, especially with the various time zones the users come from... so all hours of the day is active in some fashion... if I could post the majormud chat log you would see in just an hour your entire scrollback would be filled with chat.

But why? I don't see the enjoyment factor in using scripts...?

[Iceman]

But why? I don't see the enjoyment factor in using scripts...?

Various answers for various people... mostly so they can get larger characters and go on boss hunts with other people... the larger you are the bigger the bosses you can socially go attack... some systems let people get 2x 4x 10x the exp normally provided just so people can get the instant gratification... however soon they get bored because they've "finished" the game nothing left to do... that's why I keep it normal, and with the heavy amount of users it takes them longer to get bigger so they socialize more on the smaller things and work together more since they need more people to do something they could on their own at other bbs's...

That's also why I limit connections to two per household... force people to work together and make it more fun... when they can make 4 characters they pretty much don't need to work with anyone to get anywhere, they'll be able to do it all on their own... I would make it 1 character per household but a lot of families now play... plus roommates so 2 was a good limit without taking away too much socialization. It's basically just a big chat room with monsters to attack.

[SouthernCross]

I rn the radio station, reworked the entire WG Database, took out the ugly HTML replaced with PHP etc and run it all off of the same Pervaise Database. You might be able to get it to work with updating the Database.

I never thought of trying to increase users beyond the 256, because I have mine setup to accept 100 users tops and run it around 60 average. I have a 60 meg business connection. I guess the point is, that updating the database to work with expanding the allowable users might work as well as running a multiple server database. The source code for WG3.30 has been available for some time, so if someone has the time, they might be able to just update it within itself.

[Toyduck]

Various answers for various people... mostly so they can get larger characters and go on boss hunts with other people... the larger you are the bigger the bosses you can socially go attack... some systems let people get 2x 4x 10x the exp normally provided just so people can get the instant gratification... however soon they get bored because they've "finished" the game nothing left to do... that's why I keep it normal, and with the heavy amount of users it takes them longer to get bigger so they socialize more on the smaller things and work together more since they need more people to do something they could on their own at other bbs's...

That's also why I limit connections to two per household... force people to work together and make it more fun... when they can make 4 characters they pretty much don't need to work with anyone to get anywhere, they'll be able to do it all on their own... I would make it 1 character per household but a lot of families now play... plus roommates so 2 was a good limit without taking away too much socialization. It's basically just a big chat room with monsters to attack.

Interesting, that also explains why I see so many systems warning about dupe accounts and or limiting them. Your system PVP or Non-PVP?

[Iceman]

I rn the radio station, reworked the entire WG Database, took out the ugly HTML replaced with PHP etc and run it all off of the same Pervaise Database. You might be able to get it to work with updating the Database.

I never thought of trying to increase users beyond the 256, because I have mine setup to accept 100 users tops and run it around 60 average. I have a 60 meg business connection. I guess the point is, that updating the database to work with expanding the allowable users might work as well as running a multiple server database. The source code for WG3.30 has been available for some time, so if someone has the time, they might be able to just update it within itself.

This is the part where not being a programmer puts me at the mercy of others heh... from my knowledge the past few decades, the limit was always a DOS limit carried over with btrieve... I was even checking out the unix version which in theory should break away from this entirely, but it appears the 1.01 unix version is pretty much the exact same dos based system, except made to run on various unix flavors... no extra benefits. (they always said in the future it'd allow thousands and be more flexible, I guess that was going to be version 2)

Assuming the problem was tied to btrieve as the 256 limit, which I just don't know enough about it to even guess, your idea sounds like it'd open the doorway but the whole program itself I assume has all sorts of 256 hooks into it as a result of that I'm sure... probably take a lot of effort. (and after the core program was fixed, I'm guessing many modules have all the 256 user hooks as well, since many modules sold various counts allowed into it)

[Iceman]

Interesting, that also explains why I see so many systems warning about dupe accounts and or limiting them. Your system PVP or Non-PVP?

NoN-PvP (to create a casual play environment)
unlimited limiteds (since you can't go kill the guy who has what you want)
equipment is loyal (won't drop upon death to prevent deathpile raiding)

Lot's of systems keep PVP (or set it +/- 7 levels as an example) as part of the game, if you change that it dramatically does change game play... basically the first dozen people will have all the special items and you'll never really get to see what that's like... with no ability to go take it from them.

So I had to do something to give everyone a chance at getting items, and having a reason to play half the game... lots of the fun is going to those bosses to get items... if the bosses won't drop the items, no reason to really go or play that half of the game.

Making items unlimited creates a new problem also... people take anything they see on the ground because they figure, the person will just go get another and they can't attack me back so what are they going to do about it... really demoralizes people... you can change items from limit 1 to limit 999 so you can still track items and find the thieves and delete them, but that as I was experiencing could take hours and hours a day with how many people die... so I could say tough luck and nobody would work together anymore, or make items loyal so they don't drop upon death and people will still work together to get them for others.

I call it... MajorMUD Lite... casually play without frustration... it does remove some risk/reward aspects but these days I see there is a larger crowd who wants one easy thing in life versus another thing they have to spend hours fixing and redoing... we have reality if we want that.

[SouthernCross]

There are workarounds. I do believe the 256 users is program limited, it might be because of the old 16 bit system support. I am not sure. Questman or someone else might be able to answer that question.

[Toyduck]

This is the part where not being a programmer puts me at the mercy of others heh... from my knowledge the past few decades, the limit was always a DOS limit carried over with btrieve... I was even checking out the unix version which in theory should break away from this entirely, but it appears the 1.01 unix version is pretty much the exact same dos based system, except made to run on various unix flavors... no extra benefits. (they always said in the future it'd allow thousands and be more flexible, I guess that was going to be version 2)

I have played with the UNIX version also. It seems to be a straight port to UNIX and it still runs as a single process. I "think" the biggest effort was the conversion of the GSBL library and the BBS code so it would compile for UNIX and it's requirements. Too bad the source was lost.

[Toyduck]

So I had to do something to give everyone a chance at getting items, and having a reason to play half the game...

I call it... MajorMUD Lite... casually play without frustration... it does remove some risk/reward aspects but these days I see there is a larger crowd who wants one easy thing in life versus another thing they have to spend hours fixing and redoing... we have reality if we want that.

Actually I like that. One frustrating aspect I discovered when I first started playing online text games was the constant effort to remain alive long enough to actually accomplish anything. On the one large system in my area I really liked Infinity Complex, but there were a group of users that would attack and kill you withing minutes, if not seconds, of you entering the game. You stood absolutely no chance. As I result I migrated to games I could explore on my own and kept me from installing PVP games on my system.

[Toyduck]

There are workarounds. I do believe the 256 users is program limited, it might be because of the old 16 bit system support. I am not sure. Questman or someone else might be able to answer that question.

I'm not sure where the fix should be, the GSBL or the actual BBS code. Moving to 32bit NT did address the RAM issue; but the 8.3 file name structure is still in place as well as the 256 user limit.