Expansion?

[Rakeleer]

Since Planeshift is (mostly? everything but the web content?) GPL, and popularity does not typically equal capital, I was wondering what the plan or  proto-plan was going to be for expansion?

If PS is wildly popular, I can see serious latency issues at that point, unless some technology other than client>server is used (which doesn\'t seem to be the case, afaik).

[kinshadow]

Only the code is GPL.  All models, art, music, worlds, are under the PS license.  Thus, the game \"content\" is \"free as in beer\" and not \"free as in speech\".

There is an updater, so I guess all smal addons will be through that.  I would also guess that large additions (expansions) will require an additional download (maybe an iso?) to utilize that material (other levels, etc.).

[Rakeleer]

By expansion, I meant as in:

1000 new players would require a proportional increase in bandwidth.

In  EQ they can justify buying another server/T1.  Since PS won\'t be doing it that way, I was wondering what they had in mind.

[kinshadow]

Ahhhh... server scalability.  I thought you meant expansion in the taditional EQ/UO \"sell you another box\" sense.

Since bandwidth isn\'t really the issue it the base case (as debated in earlier posts... PS is supposedly very frugal on the network side) then they just need more machines up to a certain point (prolly 1-2K simultaneous users) for processing (AI, etc).  Beyond that limit, it is really at the mercy of the donators for an individual server cluster.  Then, you have the issue of more \"shard\" donations.  I think the current plan is one per continent till the donated server in question fills up, but I could be wrong.

[acraig]

Well, if we become that popular then I hope we can get some corporate sponsership somehow.   I agree that it will most likely be a concern but for now we can only work with what we have and see how it goes.  

I cannot think of any technology besides server ( can be a cluster ) -> client.   Peer to peer is not an an option in this case since it\'s too open to hack.

[Rakeleer]

I\'m not 3l1t3 enough to know what might or might not work as far as the server tech goes.  Was just curious (and really dreading the lag - when beta phase starts).