Question about barrels

[emuthreat 2837]

For the time being, I am  very interested in any persistence-related hijinks that could potentially crash a server.  Better now than after the game is 1.0.

If anybody else shares this interest, I am trying to get an experimental wrecking crew together to try and ruin some .60 experimental servers in short order.  Players with vehicle acquisition, driving, and efficient loot collection skills to the front of the line, though escort and overwatch players are also needed to avoid the time wasted by the influx of EXP KOSers.
You MUST be able to play for periods of around six hours straight in order to accumulate the necessary resources before a hotfix takes away the progress.  We will have to move fast and hoover-up as many barrels and vehicles as possible, then start collecting and warehousing a certain class of persistent items, while establishing a steady supply of tents to keep the items safely stored until the necessary amount have been collected.  Once we have amassed an unreasonable number of target items, teams will position themselves at the different warehouses, and begin simultaneously emptying the contents of the tents onto the ground.  If we do well, we will see widespread client crashes; if we do great, the server will have to be taken down and reset.

Anyone wishing to participate in my attempt to break experimental should contact me through PM, and we'll get a shared conversation going to hash-out the details.

[tenmbits 2]

1 hour ago, emuthreat said:

JFor the time being, I am  very interested in any persistence-related hijinks that could potentially crash a server.  Better now than after the game is 1.0.

If anybody else shares this interest, I am trying to get an experimental wrecking crew together to try and ruin some .60 experimental servers in short order.  Players with vehicle acquisition, driving, and efficient loot collection skills to the front of the line, though escort and overwatch players are also needed to avoid the time wasted by the influx of EXP KOSers.
You MUST be able to play for periods of around six hours straight in order to accumulate the necessary resources before a hotfix takes away the progress.  We will have to move fast and hoover-up as many barrels and vehicles as possible, then start collecting and warehousing a certain class of persistent items, while establishing a steady supply of tents to keep the items safely stored until the necessary amount have been collected.  Once we have amassed an unreasonable number of target items, teams will position themselves at the different warehouses, and begin simultaneously emptying the contents of the tents onto the ground.  If we do well, we will see widespread client crashes; if we do great, the server will have to be taken down and reset.

Anyone wishing to participate in my attempt to break experimental should contact me through PM, and we'll get a shared conversation going to hash-out the details.

Just collect small stones/berries/apples. You'll have to abuse the instantaneous action bug, but it's for the sake of testing anyway.

[emuthreat 2837]

Just now, tenmbits said:

Just collect small stones/berries/apples. You'll have to abuse the instantaneous action bug, but it's for the sake of testing anyway.

There was a specific class of item that I noticed causing problems in .59; but it had gone stable by the time we discovered it; the resources were better suited for their intended use, and we didn't want to wreck the server we were playing on at the time.  I already know what exactly I want to do, and the rough number of items needed to do it.  The whole point of this exercise is to  test natural, intended, game mechanics on EXP before it goes stable, that have a real chance of causing unwanted server issues under normal circumstances.  I'll give you a hint:  The items in question started out in .59 as not being persistent, were then given persistence, and recently, the persistence was reduced--possibly to the same level as backpacks.  They are items that any large, highly-mobile group would be wise to stockpile throughout the map; easily accessible in case of emergencies.  Hence my original behavior of warehousing large quantities of them.

And no, I don't want any "help" from people in the form of duping.

[pilgrim* 3513]

 

  The Persistence Problem - the Server Bandwidth Problem

Hey people here's another Great Wall of Text from the Unique PILGRIM, - it seems to me this is a serious real upcoming problem - so pay attention if you want to  [ that means you too EmTh, Bukake, Brian H (please?),and scriptfactory (clued in guy) ]  and any soft/hard ware freaks still around) and ask yourself Questions.
or -  ignore it , or throw it away, or complain.. whatever..  probably if you don't want to read or think you'll thank me for putting it in a spoiler - you can pass right along..
But here is an overview on stuff I EXPECT is coming up :
 

Spoiler

 

According to hearsay reports from Private servers - the game is already close to "maxed out" and can run into memory problems from time to time. Each private server carries a little extra software weight onboard because of the private shard function. But the extra price charged for private shard is "supposed" to cover the extra hardware resources needed for the private platform. By "supposed" - I mean exactly that.. the reasons and details of "why, what, how much" are obscure. Check the SP info to see how vague they are about this.   

These "rumors" make sense
Consider the particular case described on the forum a while ago:

 That situation is  - two linked private servers - a 40/40 full private "open-to-all" server that shares the shard with the private 'clan-only' server, which has only 5 or 10 players but has a lot of stored loot.
 At peak-play times one server crashes every five mins, according to the mod (owner). The other does not.

The SP says the "the game runs out of memory." Therefore the crashes are not their fault, they can do nothing about it - the SP says this is 100% a BI problem.  They are claiming (indirectly) that the SP set up their hardware correctly (a while back) to run a BI instance, but since then BI has been loading more stuff into that 'space' to the point where the game instance has begun to fail.

It doesn't matter if "too much stuff" means - more zombies - more loot - vehicles - or a max of players scattered in a pattern that puts the most stress on player bubbles - (or any combination of those things) - or if it is simply the private shard database hitting it's storage roof either for total items in memory, or an overdose of one particular item - or a combination of effects so that the server's processor share-time calls a foul on that game instance.

1 ) the first consequence is that the SPs obviously ARE going to put up the price of the game sooner or later ( = sooner, naturally) and will claim that since persistence came in the hardware requirement has increased beyond what was originally defined, and continues to increase..

2 ) this problem so far reported on private servers with private shards, will expand over to public servers as more loot is stockpiled and and any more game functions are added. For instance more zombies or better zombie AI, or animal behaviour, or better FPS .. in fact "anything" that adds to memory/processor use.

Many public servers are run as if they were private, and stock huge quantities of loot, but have few players. And other public servers hav max players but don't have vast stashes of loot because of that.. so these two factors cause a kind of temporary playable equilibrium - just for the moment - on public servers.

Private servers don't have that balancing effect and seem to be already getting into trouble, if we can believe hearsay from the SPs.

Back years ago when there were one or two experience non-BI programmers hanging out on the forum, there was some doubt expressed about "optimization" - because "optimization" means either getting the game to run better OR it means cramming the game into an available processing bandwidth that can just not deal with it all (until it just about can deal with it = "optimized"). So optimization can mean "trying to fit the damn thing into the box, and then don't add more stuff"

Persistence has burst open the top of the "box" completely, The only limitation to instance bandwidth expansion now is the point where the database fails to manipulate the quantity of data required... or the server hardware simply fails to deal with that much real-time data processing anymore.

Ways to deal with this ? : (and I'm NOT saying these are good ways, OK?)

** Limit the total number of objects (e.g. barrels) on EACH server, so if you bring one in from outside, somewhere on that server a dude's barrel full of his stuff just vanishes.

** Reduce the lifetime of persistent objects so they won't build up so fast when more are brought in? Maybe that explains the 8-day rule we are hearing about? And a reduction for tents too.

** ENCOURAGE players to play on low pop servers.. that would solve ALL the hardware bandwidth problems for quite a while!

** Limit the number of object-instances across ALL the public servers - so that (for instance) across all 80 Gameservers European servers there would be a total of 2400 barrels.  
- This means having a REAL global loot economy.
-  And this also means that everyone MUST to have free access to all public servers - so no more public "keep out" clan kick-servers - that would have to be totally enforced.

** On private servers - reduce the max numbers of all items, and run shared shard private serves the same way (same limitations) as above.

** When i say - reduce max numbers - this has to include equipment, unless BI set the limit on tents and other storage to make sure that even if they are all totally full of one kind of gear, there is no server or database overdose.

** Increase the price of servers - meaning that instead of running 7 instances of DayZ on one hardware server, the SPs run 5 instances and (of course) charge the same price for the 5 as they charged for the 7. To give each instance more processing bandwidth.

** PREDICT how much software bandwidth BI will require for AI, zombies, other planned game features, and reduce items and persistence real-time requirements (right around NOW) to leave room for those features.. so no one is shocked when the crunch comes. I think it is coming.

Hmm .. I've been worrying about this stuff for nearly 2 years, and the way persistence came in actually freaked me.
Someone can tell me I'm just paranoid, please ?

 

 

 

And ONE big smile for everyone I've ever offended by my RUDENESS and I deeply apologize.  I promise to never use bad words, just like I never ever used them in the past.

 :)

__________________________________________________________________

173.199.94.27:2302   <<  = THE HELPY HELPERS: FOR MERCY OR MAYHEM  >>
Play on an honest public hive server.   Enjoy

 

Edited April 6, 2016 by pilgrim*

[Mookie (original) 799]

Whatever the technical/bug part of this, the server management element is, for me, by far the biggest factor.

And, yes, my stash has now gone for good because the server it was on has gone private...

[emuthreat 2837]

We have been assured over the last couple months that the server hosting rules, guidelines, enforcement, and agreements with SPs will be given some attention.  We can only hope that it is sufficient.

While I'm back on here again.  Might I reiterate that  8-day cleanup timers on storage items is a terrible idea, which makes persistent base building playstyles inviable.  Not envyable, INVIABLE. 
If I wanted to play on three different private servers, and keep a camp close to a military base and a camp near each coast, it would require ~9 hours of running around just to avoid losing my progress every week.  

There has to be a balance that allows a lone-wolf player to establish and maintain a couple bases, while still having time to actually play the game.

[pilgrim* 3513]

 

Edited April 6, 2016 by pilgrim*

[AmazingAussie 38]

On 3/17/2016 at 8:24 PM, Hicks_206 (DayZ) said:

Each barrel color spawns and maintains a level of around 30 per color, on .59 - with a lifetime of 8 days without being interacted with.

The 8 days is refreshed any time you move an item inside it.

Same still apply in .60?