Zoning...Please Wait
 

I can never remember what server I was on, but heres the deal-

Logged onto a green server, been playing on it a bit - prolly 20 players or so. I'm sure someone knows me as Krunch the Monk

Point is, I was able to zone maybe 1 out of 5 tries IF the zone I wanted to go to was empty (no players).

On failures to zone I never did get the zoning message on the screen and after a 5 to 10 minute timeout, I would be relocated to the homepoint (i'm assuming) of the zone.

Now if the zone was already occupied by at least one other player, I had no problem zoning - I would get the message on the screen and zone rsther quickly - at least compared to EQLive.


Thing is I don't mind sharing a zone, in fact would prefer it - but the respawn rates are too slow too keep more that one person occupied, so I'd feel like a KSer trying to share a zone with other player(s).

Anywhos I digress.......

Here's guessing that the server only had so many zones avaliable.
What I would like to see is instead of having to wait 5-10 minutes to unsuccesfully zone, is code that checks for zone avaliabilty upon trying to zone and will instantly TP you back to the zones homepoint if there aren't any zones avaliable.



-Jerry

it does that, the problem your probably describing is that the connection times out because the zone took too long to load. When the server admin has zones in sleep status, the server has to boot the zone before it will try to zone you. If there is a problem that is slowing the zone, ie db errors or lag, then it might not boot up fast enough before the connection times out.

Is there a way to dedicate a zone server to a specific zone? that'd help out alot. I notice players goto GFAY and Arena often...

Yes

this is my boot5zones.bat with a dedicated rathemtn server ... obviously you will need to change IP addresses if you are running a public server.

If I dedicate a server to that zone, will that zone always be up? or will it sleep and have to be woken?

its always up.

Thank you, Mattmeck, that was very helpful.

On a local emu, sometimes, when i #zone from, say, poknowledge to kaladima , kaladima zoneserver boots up, but doesn't send any packet to client...


I'll make it more detailed thought, and with some logs...

Let me ask this -

Would it make any sense to combine servers from various locations to specifically serve zones.?

IE a distributed server:
A PC in Alaska handles the Halas/Everfrost/Permakeep zones
A PC in Kansas handles the Karana zones
A PC in Hawaii Handles all the ocean zones

Or would it not work becasue of communication lag times, or just a cluster**** idea in the first place.

Reason I ask is because I see quite a few servers with only 1-2 players on and I really hate to see all that effort be used in such a small scale.


-Jerry

This has been discussed but it was decided it wouldnt work.

Imagin the DB / world being in Kansas and the zone server in Texas, befor the person could zone into the zone World would have to send the DB info from Kansas to Tezas then let the person zone, if they hadnt timed out by then. It would be way laggy trying to do this across the net.

Hmm, heres how i think it could be done :
set a local DB server for each zone PC and use replication between the DB servers.

BTW heres how replication works (with MS SQL at least) : You have several DB server with the same DB. When data is changed on 1 server the change are made on the other server. So only the changed data is sent between DB servers not the entire DB.

The interval between the replications and the data that can be replicated is configurable. In eqemu case i think only the Character table need to be replicated because pretty much everything else is static.

But also, is there a lot of data going between zone and world? If not then maybe it could work :)

hehe, EQEMU is not the best for BW, there is a LOT of info going between zone and world. :D

another thing to think of for this, Everyone your thinking of using would have to have a better then cable connection, would have to have several computers to use exclucivly for this, and would need to be trustworthy.


Most of the servers you see up now are people running a server on an old P-1, or running it on there only computer, and the reason there is only 3-4 people on the server is because thats all they can handle.

Also you need to realize that 99.99% of server only stay for a few weeks to a month. So you would get a lot of people willing to try this idea but what happens when they get bord with it and stop.