Author Topic: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...  (Read 114032 times)

Manga

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #160 on: September 03, 2012, 12:22:33 AM »

I had a discussion with some people on HUB on Triumph, and we figured out that a buyout of CoH could actually come in 3 forms:

1.  Complete IP and game buyout, of course, is the best option, where we own the game and all its IP.

2.  Operating License - We retain the rights to operate City of Heroes and pay a percentage to NCSoft, where they avoid the operating costs buy still make some money.  They retain the IP rights, however, and can revoke our license at any time.

3.  Limited Operating License - We retain the rights to operate City of Heroes AS IS, but only for a fixed period of time, after which we have to remove all reference to NCSoft IP and possibly change the name of the game.  As long as we comply with the agreement, we pretty much own the game.

All three would keep CoH running for now, though #2 is the riskiest.

Codewalker

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #161 on: September 03, 2012, 12:53:11 AM »
FWIW, I'm 95% sure that the NCsoft-run server software is Windows-based. If we end up having to write our own, it will be able to be run on Linux and not require quite as much of the machine's resources devoted to just running the OS.

dwturducken

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #162 on: September 03, 2012, 01:01:49 AM »
Replying to the two above posts, option 2 seems like what NCSoft did when Cryptic left, getting them here, supposedly, so it may be that Perfect World ends up getting the money in a kind of hybrid of 2 and 3.

Running in CentOS or the like would be less resource intensive, but more problematic to migrate to from a Windows environment.  In that scenario, we're better off in the long term just shifting to a "let's make up our own and call it Village of Vigilantes" sort of scenario.

 8)
I wouldn't use the word "replace," but there's no word for "take over for you and make everything better almost immediately," so we just say "replace."

Teege

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #163 on: September 03, 2012, 01:02:29 AM »
Thanks for all your hard work Tony and everybody involved. I'll be helping spread the word, finance or anything else I can do to help. Something is better than nothing. Keep fighting the good fight!
Keep fighting the good fight!

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LowlyOne

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #164 on: September 03, 2012, 02:16:46 AM »
FWIW, I'm 95% sure that the NCsoft-run server software is Windows-based. If we end up having to write our own, it will be able to be run on Linux and not require quite as much of the machine's resources devoted to just running the OS.

As I have interviewed for a programming position for CoH before I know as fact that it runs on Windows in C.

LordTavm

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #165 on: September 03, 2012, 02:41:43 AM »
I don't have much to offer, but I was the Drama Editor for my High schools Magazine, and I still love to write and edit. If you need a writer please put me on your list. If we do a Kickstarter I'd also donate money to that as much as I can. I'd also pay a monthly subscription fee to be playing COH: Forever.

Codewalker

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #166 on: September 03, 2012, 02:54:08 AM »
The RE project will definitely need writers at some point, but it will be some time before we get that far. So unfortunately I don't have anything else to offer to do there yet. However if you want to get involved in the "Save CoH" projects, I'm sure that good writers would be more than welcome to help spread word of what's going on and appeal both to the people who can affect that decision, and also the media outlets who cover it.

agentq

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #167 on: September 03, 2012, 03:31:00 AM »
As I have interviewed for a programming position for CoH before I know as fact that it runs on Windows in C.

That is unfortunate. Is it C proper? C# or C++? If it's C, or C++ we might be able to recompile for CentOS. However, if it's C#, we're definitely stuck with windows machines.

Also for server architecture, having a cluster of virtual map servers, might be pretty good. We should probably still get physical DB server's, just because of the Memory caps on virtual machines at most hosts. If we try to do our own physical servers with a private cloud we're probably looking at major monthly server costs. I have a Rackspace quote for roughly 14k a month for a similar configuration with RedHat.

We could also, do physical servers and use an F5 Load balancer to offload extra load to a public cloud system. Maybe that means spooling up extra map servers as load increases.

DamianoV

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #168 on: September 03, 2012, 03:52:18 AM »
I applied a few years back, as well.  The programming test they sent was straight up, old school C.  Actually tripped me up a bit, I hadn't worked with old-style C-strings for a while at that point, and had to get my mind back into that mode.  It was funny, 6 months later I would've had no problem whatsoever, heh.  Anyway, yeah, definitely C.



Codewalker

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #169 on: September 03, 2012, 04:07:04 AM »
It's not C#. When it was first written C# was barely a blip on the radar.

From my, ahem, work with the client I can tell you that it's primarily C with a little C++ mixed in (mostly in third party libraries). I'd guess about 30% of the code is shared between client and server, possibly a little more.

My comment about running on Linux was more in context of the RE project. Although, if we somehow ended up in possession of the official server code, it would probably run just peachy in WINE.

Chrome

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #170 on: September 03, 2012, 04:23:36 AM »
Anything you need me to do I am game.. Lets not give up without a fight! Good luck Tony!

agentq

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #171 on: September 03, 2012, 04:25:21 AM »
Thats good news! I was thinking it would work under WINE as well, but not sure how stable that would be for a server. I've only played with WINE to play games under OSX and Ubuntu. Not sure how much resources WINE would suck up?

Codewalker

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #172 on: September 03, 2012, 04:34:25 AM »
Not much, actually, as a server uses much less of the Win32 API than a game client with graphics code does, so it would actually be pretty darn stable. A server process spends most of its execution time running custom code loops, which WINE doesn't do anything with -- it just executes it directly. WINE only steps in when it tries to access the Windows-specific functions.

Which, for a server, will very likely be limited to file and network I/O, and the timer APIs.

Xenos

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #173 on: September 03, 2012, 04:38:02 AM »
My comment about running on Linux was more in context of the RE project. Although, if we somehow ended up in possession of the official server code, it would probably run just peachy in WINE.

I am not a programmer, so forgive me if this is an irrelevant point to bring up, but you may be aware that COH was "ported" (more or less successfully) to the Mac. Maybe that would be helpful in the context of WINE. TheManga was pretty much the main player helping to troubleshoot the Mac client and would have a lot more insights.

And yes, in a perfect world I'd love to see the Mac client survive, but I don't expect it to happen.

Codewalker

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #174 on: September 03, 2012, 04:47:46 AM »
IIRC the Mac port used Cider, which is more or less a Mac version of WINE.

I've also successfully run the CoH client on WINE on Linux and even FreeBSD before, and despite some graphics issues it was functional.

Manga

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #175 on: September 03, 2012, 05:02:37 AM »
I am not a programmer, so forgive me if this is an irrelevant point to bring up, but you may be aware that COH was "ported" (more or less successfully) to the Mac. Maybe that would be helpful in the context of WINE. TheManga was pretty much the main player helping to troubleshoot the Mac client and would have a lot more insights.

WINE is not really designed for running Windows-based server applications on Linux.  A better bet for that would be VirtualBox or VMWare for Linux.  Both have server-class products for running virtualized servers on a Linux base.


And yes, in a perfect world I'd love to see the Mac client survive, but I don't expect it to happen.

I will personally do what I can to make sure it does.  :)

Also, I have a detailed plan worked out for any possible transition in a purchase/licensing scenario, but I'm not going to cover that yet because it would be premature to discuss it until we at least get a "yes" or "maybe" out of NCSoft.  IF we do, be sure that I will happily post the detailed plan in its entirety.

Xenos

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #176 on: September 03, 2012, 05:08:03 AM »
I will personally do what I can to make sure it does.  :)

Also, I have a detailed plan worked out for any possible transition in a purchase/licensing scenario, but I'm not going to cover that yet because it would be premature to discuss it until we at least get a "yes" or "maybe" out of NCSoft.  IF we do, be sure that I will happily post the detailed plan in its entirety.

Well, you just made my heart happily skip a beat... :D

Thanks for having it on your radar...but yes, the big question comes first.

TonyV

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #177 on: September 03, 2012, 05:28:51 AM »
Hey, stop distracting our reverse engineer, we need him reverse engineering!  :P

...I keed, I keed. I'm excited that I'm finding out we know a lot more than I thought we knew.

Sleepykitty

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #178 on: September 03, 2012, 05:53:58 AM »
o.o about the servers.. are you absolutely sure they didn't shrink them down a lot for CoH:Freedom? I was under the impression part of it was suppose to be new server code letting them instance multiple 'servers' on the old hardware so they could bunch the euro servers up with the US ones.. a little birdie told me that some of the old CoH server stuff was moved over to be used with GW2, most specifically the auction server and global chat server...
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dwturducken

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #179 on: September 03, 2012, 06:12:58 AM »
I'm really sorry that I opened this can, but, since we're there, anyway, this was an entertaining read:

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/2663243#2663243

I especially like the pic of what I can only guess they are calling the Bay o' Wolves.
I wouldn't use the word "replace," but there's no word for "take over for you and make everything better almost immediately," so we just say "replace."