1000-Player FPS World Record Attempt This Month

[Snipeye]

1000-Player FPS World Record Attempt This Month
12:30 AM - January 19, 2012 by Kevin Parrish - source: MuchDifferent PR

MuchDifferrent will attempt to land in the Guinness Book of World Records by hosting a first-person shooter supporting up to 1000 simultaneous players on a single map.

Swedish tech company PikkoTekk -- now called MuchDifferent -- sent along a friendly email on Wednesday reminding us about its attempt to land in the Guinness Book of World Records with 1000 simultaneous players participating in an FPS. MuchDifferent asked if we wanted to participate, and naturally we gleefully agreed.

As reported back in March 2011, Man vs. Machine is an FPS based on the Unity engine that can support up to 1000 simultaneous players on a single map. The purpose of this game is to demo the capabilities of the PikkoServer load balancing product. By using the software, game developers can supposedly build any kind of high-player density MMO game that can handle up to 1000 players on one specific map across eight cell servers. It also supports eleven actions per second (10 movements plus 1 fire), a total bandwidth downstream per player of 420 kbit/s and more.

"MuchDifferent has created a dynamic traffic router/load balancer, PikkoServer, that divides the battlefield between the game servers and glues the result together for the clients, multiple times per second," the company said in a separate press release on Wednesday. "Although Man vs Machine is based on the Unity Engine, any modern game engine could easily be retrofitted with the technology to create something similar in a few months time."

"When we first announced it as Tanks vs Robots in Spring 2011, several hundreds of thousands took a look at the trailer that showed our pretty crude test game," CEO Christian L?nnholm said in his blog. "Even though we made a disclaimer where we kind of explained that this was by far not the best looking game and that the networking was the real eye candy, people simply assumed that there was some kind of trade off between graphics and having a massive battle."

He said that the resulting game which will be used for the Guinness World Records attempt stems from the studio's research into how the Unity engine can be tweaked for the best performance, graphics, animations and effects while still maintaining an acceptable framerate as 1000 players duke it out on-screen.

"I guess we might have overdone pouring love and time into this onetime event," he said. "However, it is not often that we network engineers get to stand in the general spotlight. For network nerds such as ourselves, this game shows a new dawn to completely new types of online games where massive amount of players, advanced AI and complex interactions with physics can be achieved with great ease. As a gamer, I just can?t wait to experience the feeling of rushing towards the horde of enemies and anticipating the thrill and insuring chaos of battle."

For more information about Man vs. Machine, head here. The Guinness World Records event will take place on January 29 @ 16:00 CET. Gamers can actual participate by purchasing a ticket via the Engineers Without Borders - Stockholm organization?s website here. All earnings will go straight to the organization.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/MuchDifferent-Tanks-Robots-FPS-Guinness,14514.html

 

[Too Twitchy]

Nice! Dont forget Planetside 2 that is currently in development! =D

 

[Snipeye]

Man vs Machine Breaks Record: 999 Simultaneous Players

Man vs Machine Breaks Record: 999 Simultaneous Players
8:00 PM - January 30, 2012 by Kevin Parrish - source: MuchDifferent

MuchDifferent was just one player shy from its original 1000-player goal, but landed in the Guinness World Records Gamer Edition nonetheless.

MuchDifferent battles it out with developers, press, and gamers.
A 10am EST on Sunday, MuchDifferent set a new world record for having 999 players battle simultaneously on a single multiplayer map, just one player shy of the company's 1000 goal. The previous record-holder was Sony's PlanetSide which saw 399 players participate in a battle within the same zone.

"The world record number has been confirmed by an independent expert who was observing the game as it was taking place," MuchDifferent announced at the conclusion of the Guinness event. "Confirmation from the Guinness World Records Gamer Edition will take a few more days, but we are supremely confident that our world record will be included in their next edition."

According to MuchDifferent, more than 1000 players were trying to sign into Man Vs. Machine simultaneously, but only 999 players were able to get in at any one moment. That said, for those who signed up and weren't able to attend -- it's not your fault the 1000-player goal wasn't reached.

"At 16.04.29 CET, Man was winning the battle against Machine as 999 people were part of a new world record," the company said. "About a second later, our server choked on the enormous number of people trying to get in to the game. We were receiving a far higher number of requests than we were expecting."

"But the server was restarted and during the next hour and a half we were averaging somewhere around 980 players at any given moment," the company added. "Proving that PikkoServer can take the strain and deliver an entirely new multiplayer experience never seen before."

This is certainly good news for developers seeking to create a FPS of large-scale multiplayer proportions. PikkoServer, the server and network technology behind Sunday's Man Vs. Machine demo, will be offered to studios at a later date. MuchDifferent will likely take the data it acquired from the recent FPS-based "test" and make the necessary tweaks to provide a more stable solution... and maybe even achieve the 1000-player goal after all.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/MuchDifferent-Man-Vs-Machine-FPS-Server-Networking,14590.html