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Author Topic: Urgent information about Layonara on NWN  (Read 2767 times)

Dorganath

Again, wow!Less than a week
« Reply #20 on: December 09, 2013, 11:50:28 pm »

Again, wow!

Less than a week later and we have raised enough to fund the NWN server for two more months!

Our continued thanks to everyone who has donated so far.

 

RollinsCat

Some coin from RC. Can make
« Reply #21 on: December 10, 2013, 09:48:39 am »

Some coin from RC. Can make it a monthly thing, it's on par with Netflix or Hulu.

 

Leanthar

gilshem ironstone wrote:I
« Reply #22 on: December 11, 2013, 09:38:35 am »

Quote from: "gilshem ironstone"&cid="2752208"

I also think the onus for contacting former players should not be on the Team alone, but on all the players that had contact with them over the years.  We, as players have a different perspective on how Layo has changed and should take it upon ourselves to capitalize on that.

I totally agree and thank you for your input on this important subject. There is only so much the team can do, we are spread very thin. We really need the community to help spread the word (far and wide) about Layonara and reach out to players that have quit playing and see if they may come back. The more the community can help us on this front the better the player base will become. Spread the word, please. 

 

WarriorOfTheLance

run the servers on your own
« Reply #23 on: December 27, 2013, 08:09:16 pm »

run the servers on your own machines for <cost of electricity> and cut your server bill to almost nothing along with a 30M/4M cable modem connection, that's far more than is necessary for 40 players... 50 bucks a month + electricity.
layonara doesn't need the $$$ they ask for, they need to think outside the box.

 

Dorganath

WarriorOfTheLance wrote:run
« Reply #24 on: December 27, 2013, 10:04:15 pm »

Quote from: "WarriorOfTheLance"&cid="2752528"

run the servers on your own machines for <cost of electricity> and cut your server bill to almost nothing along with a 30M/4M cable modem connection, that's far more than is necessary for 40 players... 50 bucks a month + electricity.
layonara doesn't need the $$$ they ask for, they need to think outside the box.

Thank you for your input.

Your basic premise, that being that we have servers of our own suitable for this purpose, is somewhat flawed.  That is to say, we don't own any suitable servers to do what you suggest. Though if we did own a suitable machine, we do have a line on a very affordable colocation deal which would be less than what we're paying now. But we don't at the moment. Beyond that, there are other considerations, so let's discuss the merits and pitfalls of your comments.

I don't know if you've been paying attention or not, but our IRC server, which is hosted residentially in a situation such like the one you are suggesting, has been down since an ice storm struck the Toronto area on December 22nd, knocking out power and/or Internet service to many, many people and for an extended period of time.  Sure, such disasters can strike data centers too, but it's far less likely when the data center has redundancies and infrastructure-grade connectivity.  So, had we made a poor choice as to whose house should host this fictional server of ours, we'd be out of luck and at the mercy of utilities who historically put residential customers (particularly pertaining to Internet connectivity) on a lower-priority list than businesses.

I suppose I could go into the merits of residential-grade internet connectivity vs. what commercial ISPs and data centers use (hint: it's not coax/DSL/U-verse), but I suppose that's a hair that could be split many ways.  Even "business-class" coax service from cable companies is visibly less reliable than the dedicated lines from a telco or fiber optic service that ISPs, datacenters and people who really, truly care about the integrity of their data connections.  Along the same lines, I won't even go into the difference between commercial-grade routers and firewalls vs. the off-the-shelf units that are intended for residential use, such as in the scenario you suggest. I come into contact with both scenarios on a daily basis. I could go on...but I won't.

It's all a choice of stability and reliability vs. affordability. We're presently leaning toward the former.

Circling back to the original comment, Layonara is not some company with a facility somewhere. Everything is distributed. There is no "headquarters" as yet.  Of the lead staff, no more than two people even live in the same time zone.  Believe me, if we had any of these things (which would imply an actual source of revenue enough to support such a thing), we wouldn't be having this conversation.

And to needlessly repeat what has been stated previously, donated funds are going solely toward the fees associated with the NWN server and not toward any other projects in which we may be collectively involved. It does not line our pockets or benefit us in any way beyond keeping the NWN server running.

So, while you are entitled to your opinions as to how we "should" do things and what we may "need" or not, I also suggest you are entitled to not donate if you feel we are not deserving of your donations.  We're not going to discriminate against who can and cannot play here based on donations. The fact that we've gone for quite a very long time (years even) without asking for a single donation should be proof enough of that.

Again, thank you for your input, and thank you for your interest.

 

WarriorOfTheLance

you don't need a server in a
« Reply #25 on: December 28, 2013, 02:16:18 am »

you don't need a server in a data center to run this game, there are a ton of servers out there still running for free with many players playing on them and they are run from people's homes.. on PC computers... you don't need server hardware to run this stuff... a standard pentium 4, 2.4 ghz with hyperthreading will run a database capeable of supporting 64 players, a pentium D dual core processor with 2 gigs of ram will run the server several times over... the minimum requirements are simply a pentium 3 800 mhz system... that will support 4 players easily...  you could run both things on your core i7 processor with the servers on one core each and the database on another without problems. You can get a "business" class DSL or Cable line installed at your home for 80 dollars a month, and i'm sure the speeds are better than 3M/3M now which was the old speed of your servers with dual burstable t1s. As for an IRC server, that's not even necessary... it's a bit overboard since you can start your own support channel for free on many of the IRC servers run around the globe, such as irc.freenode.net... you could easily set up and run a free channel there for Layonara.

I'm just offering suggestions, sometimes worth more than donations.

 

miltonyorkcastle

I think the primary point of
« Reply #26 on: December 28, 2013, 03:26:35 am »

I think the primary point of Dorganath's post was that were we doing what you suggest, we would be subject to potential days long outages such as what happened with our IRC server. Maintaining the game servers where we do allows us to avoid going prolonged periods without service.

 

Dorganath

milty is correct.I know well
« Reply #27 on: December 28, 2013, 10:48:26 am »

milty is correct.

I know well what it takes, as a minimum, to run the NWN game servers we have now, and believe me, it is not currently running on anything spectactular...a Pentium Core2 Duo, to be exact....and it's been running there perfectly well for years now, handling two instances of the NWN server and the database that's shared between them. This server is not, unfortunately "ours" but rather it is leased from the hosting company. Bandwidth of residential-grade services vs. "business-class" services of the same technology is secondary to the reliability and stability of either of those connections. I see it daily.  Lost/dropped packets are mildly annoying (at worst) to someone sending an e-mail or browsing the web (if they're even noticed), but compound that for 5, 10, 20 players online, and it's a problem that shows up as lag.

As milty said, we have made the choice to have the server hosted for reasons I have already discussed and will not repeat. Knowing what it takes to run NWN on a computer and getting back to the fact that we don't just have spare hardware laying around, it's somewhat unfair of us (in our belief) to ask that of anyone, and it's unfair to our players to subject them to all the extra layers that would come with running Layonara off someone's desktop PC. We could do it that way, yes, but we have chosen to go for a more reliable, stable and consistent experience for everyone.

 

Dorganath

Oh also and for the sake of
« Reply #28 on: December 28, 2013, 10:55:24 am »

Oh also and for the sake of information, our IRC server (the hardware for which is being used for more than just IRC, by the way) is not just for "support" as you suggest. We, Layonara as a whole, use it for several other things, some available to the public (like an interactive social space, RP, etc.) and some not (GM and other team discussions and meetings).  It is a convenience, but again, this service is being hosted in a way like you are suggesting and we have been down now for six days as I write this.  It may not be "necessary", but it's also more than just a support channel, and I was using the associated outage to illustrate my point about the reliability of home-based hosting.

 

lonnarin

*tosses in another $50
« Reply #29 on: December 30, 2013, 05:46:22 am »

*tosses in another $50 towards the effort*

Game On!

 

jadewillow

By keeping NWN Layo on life
« Reply #30 on: January 01, 2014, 05:34:50 am »

By keeping NWN Layo on life support, are we diverting precious resources from the next gen?

 

RollinsCat

I'll toss in a player
« Reply #31 on: January 01, 2014, 08:39:33 am »

I'll toss in a player opinion: No. We're donating to keep things going so we can continue to have fun given that the next gen has no set date for release, is my take on this. And keeping a core community for the next gen alive, since starting a new MMO in the current environment is quite a challenge. Having an established and loyal playerbase seems to me to be a good investment for any startup.

 

Serissa

Sent $20.
« Reply #32 on: January 01, 2014, 08:57:43 am »

Sent $20.

 

jadewillow

Thanks Rollins. I agree about
« Reply #33 on: January 01, 2014, 09:59:29 am »

Thanks Rollins. I agree about keeping the playerbase and hate the thought of losing NWN Layo. Just thinking of all the effort (Character Approvals, CDQs, player requests, and Dorg's countless hours) required to keep NWN alive. If taking those cycles and repurposing them to the next gen would accelerate it, it might influence people's decision to donate.

 

Just a thought along the lines of further reducing costs. Has anyone looked at hosting on Amazon (or other) cloud? 

 

Dorganath

jadewillow wrote:By keeping
« Reply #34 on: January 01, 2014, 11:27:22 am »

Quote from: "jadewillow"&cid="2752600"

By keeping NWN Layo on life support, are we diverting precious resources from the next gen?

Excellent question! 

For the most part, the answer is "no". I have pulled back significantly from the things I have done over the years. Development-wise, I am personally very much in maintenance mode, which is to say I am not, myself, scouring the modules, looking for things to tweak, drumming up new places, new systems and so forth. I still have a small Project Team who are primarily tasked with area building/adjustment and who are working of a few changes. When they're ready, I'll put them together into a module update and update the servers. Similarly, if anything pops up that needs fixing or adjusting, I'll do that as well.  However, I am not presently spending a significant amount of time on developing for NWN. The last big chunk of time I set aside for this was over the summer when the site was down, which is when I developed Fortune.

It's not that I don't still enjoy developing for NWN. Despite its warts, I really have enjoyed working on the platform, and of course the developer in me can always see things that could be adjusted or added.  I could keep Layonara "fresh" and "new" despite it running on the aging NWN platform. But as you are suggesting, the considerations for the next generation have to be taken into account.

Administratively, I am personally sharing these sorts of tasks with Rowana, who is also involved with creating the next generation. Sharing the load helps us both, and our goal is to remain somewhat more managerial without micro-managing. An old boss of mine had a saying: Hire good people and get out of their way.

In some ways, having a smaller active community is a blessing in both regards, though I certainly would enjoy seeing the Server Status page more "alive". Nostalgia also plays a part into whether or not to keep NWN going, but as has been suggested, having an active community, even a small one like this one, as a base for the Layonara brand can only be a benefit.  Keeping NWN going gives us that basis. Your presence and continued interest shows us we have something interesting.  As time marches forward, we'll be taking steps to broaden that basis, though not necessarily increasing the NWN community. As small as we are (even in our prime), every little bit helps.

So coming back to the original question, keeping NWN alive clearly diverts some resources, but presently they are worth the diversion. The benefits outweigh the costs. I have said for quite a while that if this remains true, NWN will continue.  If we had to shut down NWN for financial considerations, it would be a loss all around...one of those hard choices that would hurt in more than just the nostalgic sense.

Thanks for asking!

 

Dorganath

jadewillow wrote:Just a
« Reply #35 on: January 01, 2014, 11:53:13 am »

Quote from: "jadewillow"&cid="2752605"

Just a thought along the lines of further reducing costs. Has anyone looked at hosting on Amazon (or other) cloud? 

Another good question!

We investigated cloud hosting options (though I don't think we looked at Amazon...I'd have to check with orth on that one) when the site/forums went down in July. The demands of the web site, primarily the memory and CPU needs, made cloud-based hosting actually less economical than a dedicated server (though the deal that IceDragonDuvessa helped us get really tipped it in).  Because of how cloud pricing works, it sometimes does not help us when there is an application such as NWN, which is hungry for memory and CPU time and which is "always on".

So yes, it's been a consideration and for the moment, we're going to stick with the dedicated server. This may change as cloud computing continues to change (and prices along with it), but for now, there seems  to be little to no benefit, financial or otherwise, to switch from a dedicated to a cloud server for hosting NWN.

That said, cloud hosing is possibly something we may look at for the next generation.

 

Guardian 452

Leanthar wrote:gilshem
« Reply #36 on: January 01, 2014, 12:24:59 pm »

Quote from: "Leanthar"&cid="2752354"

Quote from: "gilshem ironstone"&cid="2752208"

I also think the onus for contacting former players should not be on the Team alone, but on all the players that had contact with them over the years.  We, as players have a different perspective on how Layo has changed and should take it upon ourselves to capitalize on that.

I totally agree and thank you for your input on this important subject. There is only so much the team can do, we are spread very thin. We really need the community to help spread the word (far and wide) about Layonara and reach out to players that have quit playing and see if they may come back. The more the community can help us on this front the better the player base will become. Spread the word, please. 

i felt this was more of a GM team issue because I assumed they had easier access to the (former) players email addresses. And making up some sort of email letting them know some highlights of what has changed over the years might pull a some of them back for a while... Maybe even hold their interest until this next version becomes playable.

 

Dorganath

Well, nearly a month has gone
« Reply #37 on: January 02, 2014, 12:03:53 am »

Well, nearly a month has gone bye since my initial post, and I have to say, I am extremely pleased with the way people have shown their support. I had hoped we'd get enough to get us through January.  As it stands right now, we have enough donations to pay for just over five months worth of server fees ($623.14 as of the time of this writing).

Well done and thanks to all who have contributed!

I especially want to extend our gratitude to the person who single-handedly contributed about 2.5 months worth of server fees in a single donation! Truly, the response and support shown in the last several weeks has shattered our anticipations.

 

 

RollinsCat

Ten ducks for
« Reply #38 on: January 02, 2014, 07:04:19 pm »

Ten ducks for January. 

 

Quack.