BZFlag Hosting - www.xgenservers.com

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xgenjon
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BZFlag Hosting - www.xgenservers.com

Post by xgenjon »

Hello,

We are currently under development but we want to have BZFlag as one of the games to host, however we have found no other hosters that host the game, thus we cant determine the following:

How much aprx bandwidth does BZFlag consume?
How much CPU does BZFlag consume?
What is the max players on a single server BZFlag can have?
What would a reccomended price be per slot (or players aloud)?

Thanks,
Jonathon

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Post by A Meteorite »

Bandwidth is about 4 kilobytes (32 kilobits) per second per player.

CPU is usually under one percent.

The maximum is 200 players, but most don't go over 40.

Price per slot... well, it depends... I think $1-2/slot might be reasonable. Or $99 flat-rate for all you can get.
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Post by pyr0 »

i agree with AM... it makes sense at 1-2 per slot, 1 is much better. it does suck to know that for a server, you need to either host it at your place or elsewhere... and elsewhere is costly... i wanted to get hosting at a good ircshell company i used, they wanted 2 per slot and it was absurd because i knew i wouldnt use that much bandwidth as a CS server would...
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Post by xgenjon »

Pricing is going to be set at 1.25 a slot. Thanks for your support, ill be sending both of you two a discount code.
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Durf
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one question..

Post by Durf »

one thing...im kinda new and im staring a server. im wondering if its hosted and up and running can i make changes to it without any cost?
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Post by xgenjon »

Yes, you can make changes to any of the configs and we have live techincal support to answer or aid you in any configuring questions you may have.
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ok cool

Post by Durf »

sweet, thank you soo much. now im soooo interested in this. gotta hurry to get my server done. :D
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Post by DJ Atomica »

WOAH! That's awesome! And didn't XGen studios make Defend Your Castle and Stick Arena (the two greatest stick games ever)?
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Post by QuantumBeep »

Let me tell you what I'm experiencing right now, using the server I host with

Specs:
Celeron D 2.53
512M RAM
80 GB Hard drive
100 megabit pipe into the internet
1000 GB monthly bandwidth

This costs me $100 a month, through Aplus.net

Right now, I host pretty much all of the Planet Mofo servers, plus several others. The most players we have ever hosted at once is probably 50 or so. We've never had lag problems whatsoever.

In the past 30 days, my bandwidth usage has been just over 80 gigabytes. We're running at 8% of quota.

I have never seen the CPU spike above 5% while hosting.

Right now, I have a rather large number of people with user accounts on my server, hosting games. I do not charge for this. If I chose to ask for donations, It'd be to the tune of "just enough to pay for the service".

If you ask for a couple dollars to host a game, I'd say you just might get enough users to pay half of your bill, provided you use a service equal to or cheaper than mine. Making a profit is entirely out of the question.

Bear in mind that I may in the future offer accounts to everyone. If that happens, I'm going to ruin your business. I doubt you can offer anything I can't. Not to one-up you or something, but don't sue me later if I choose to do that.
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Post by xgenjon »

Thats good, but we arnt using celerons to host our services. However, I am glad someone would host people for free just to lend a helping hand. I would be glad to list you as an affiliate to X-Gen and help in any way I can, I wish you luck, as I too know how hard it is to maintain servers.
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Post by QuantumBeep »

Yeah, considering we're at about 5% processor usage during our largest spikes, I think using a good Dual Opteron would be necessary to give our users the best experience possible. Just in case we suddenly find the need to host 4000 players on short notice.
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Post by Scorch »

We have to PAY to play? wow, is bz going downhill...
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Post by DJ Atomica »

Scorch, you have to pay to have a server from them. It's like "renting" the server. If you play BattleField 2 you have to pay to rent servers, too.
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Post by Scorch »

Oh i get it, I thought you meant client player slots.
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Post by JeffM »

they are charging per slot on the server, because more slots use more bandwith. so if you want a server with 10 players you pay 10 times the per slot price. It's a common method of pricing with dedicated game hosting.

all they are charging for is hosting and the service of setting it up. All existing servers cost there owners some money now.
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Post by RPG »

QuantumBeep
You have good total bandwith / CPU usage, but what about your network speed? What do you get up/down max on that server? (as speed would probably be the first thing you'd need to upgrade if you went for more people)
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Post by A Meteorite »

QuantumBeep
I just hope you can pay for it for awhile to come... (a couple years would be nice) :)
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Post by L4m3r »

A Meteorite wrote:Bandwidth is about 4 kilobytes (32 kilobits) per second per player.
IIRC that's only true for downstream. The upstream is (4n)^2, because the server has to send out the data for all the players, to all the players. This is what makes upstream so important, and why in many cases DSL can host more players than cable. :)
Optimism is just a milder alternative to denial.
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Post by tadd »

I'm not up on gaming lingo. I have a Mac Mini G4 at an ISP that has intermittent lag=300ms Problems. I am contemplating paying for a good server location.
Are you talking $1.25*maxplayers/ month? i.e. if I have a game that has a max of 40 players my cost is $50/month?

I am looking for a host and would pay for it but for $50/month I can put my Mac Mini in very well connected ISPs and have room to host a dozen bzfs instances each with 40 user max.

Right now I'm not paying anything for my host because the ISP is owned by a friend of mine but it has the intermittent lag issues.

Please advise.

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Post by QuantumBeep »

To clarify, my pipe directly into the internet is 100 megabits. That's my connection into the routers at Aplus.net, and Aplus's connection is faster than that.
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Post by pyr0 »

so QB, when you plannin to start doin some hosting :) i at least know of you, ive never heard of the xgen guy, so it wouldnt be too hard a choice (given, if he offers 1.25 and you offer 3, its still kinda obvious who im goin to in that case :) but i know youd go less then whatever he charges, hint hint)

War of the prices, not quite a flame war of OSs, but its good enough for me :D


off i go to save the day
-pyr0
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