Setting up a community dedicated-monster-of-a-server

That's actually less difficult than the problem you are facing in PA.

Problem is: Push mechanics. The spacing between units enforced by the flocking system is per default way too low, so collisions and pushing enforced by the physic system is inevitable. Later one is solved iteratively until each single frame comes to a - more or less - stable solution.

That iteration however requires the oct tree, and the lists used to enable efficient lookups for all entities which span more than just a single leaf, to be updated after each single step. Shadowing the unit states would be sufficient if there was only a single pass per frame, but the iterative process requires recent data as units can move surprisingly far in a single frame when the physic system goes haywire.

In order to make parallelization "trivial", push mechanics would need to be eliminated, which would require more work on the nav system in the first place whereby units would need to clear passages on their own as soon as somebody tries to reserve the path - rather than to wait until units collide and then having to push entire stacks of units.

It actually works like the latter one in a lot of games, when unit collides, blocking units are not getting pushed away, instead this only triggers a notification to the blocking unit which causes it to move away on its own - basically issuing itself a movement command with the option of returning to the original position as soon as the path is no longer reserved.

that's besides the point extermians, he was just trying to illustrate that multithreading is relatively accessible.

If it was, Sup Com and PA wouldn't both have a single-threaded Sim.

supcom came before multithreading came out, you were saying?

Uh no it didn't. Sup Com has at least three threads. But the main one, the Sim, is single-threaded.

quite certain it's FA that's 2 threads (not three) not SupCom. supcom was released with single thread technology because at the time it was the norm and noone had really ventured into multithreading enough.

http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?t=15556.

Sim thread, Render thread + lots of smaller threads for audio, loading etc.

Either way Supcom need all clients to have the exact same sim. That's a lot more difficult than what PA has to do.
Also, multithreading was not a big thing when supcom dev was started. And after MT became popular, it was probably too late to think of a full engine rework.

this

There exists a MT version of Spring. A free game made by hobby devs.
Physics libraries like Bullet or Havok are multithreaded since years as well.
MT sim is quite possible. Sure it is not easy, but PA is an ambitious project isn't it?
Also during the kickstarter I can remember talking with mavor on reddit about MT and he did plan it. I guess they had to push out PA rather quick and had to not do it so far.

also what I figured.

So overall there are maybe 90$ or so in the donation box so far. Definitely not enough for anything substantial, but we could ofc look to setup a cheaper server. Would probably still be better than Uber servers and allow more players in general, but there already are a few dedicated servers setup by members of the community.
Personally I don't think there would be much value in setting up such a "cheaper" server. Dunno. What do people think?
Wait?
Cancel and refund?
Get a server that can be paid for right now?

I know next to nothing about hiring a server, but when I put "games server hire $90" into gooflz, these chaps came up who are offering a $90-per-month discount at present:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?p=9275666

Quad core Xeon w/ 16GB RAM, normal price $149.99/month, currently $59.99/month. Any use?

Well yeah that kind of server is within reach, but it isn't really that much better compared to the servers that are already running thanks to various members of this community.

like i've been saying from the start. go for the all-in option.

get more funders and supply the server from a household!! : D

We could gather some money to use this cpu

PA server compatible with new DARPA cpu confirmed.

Just a few transistors at this stage, no CPU, but impressive nonetheless.

that's not a CPU

y u do dis guys

@superouman