Server to Server Gate/Portal?

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    Ignore the minecraft knockoff, but skip to 0:55 in the video. Would something like this be possible in StarMade? A warpgate or portal that someone could walk through / fly a ship through and end up in another server? Essentially, this would be bringing servers out of seclusion, if they decide, and interconneting everyone. Seemed like an interesting concept.


     

    Nuclear Doughnut

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    I personally like the idea. Way back when we talked about writing a wrapper for a server to do this as an unofficial mod... it never went anywhere but I like the idea of someone being able to go "Trans Server" but the servers would have to agree on sharing certain data and resources....
     
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    I personally like the idea. Way back when we talked about writing a wrapper for a server to do this as an unofficial mod... it never went anywhere but I like the idea of someone being able to go "Trans Server" but the servers would have to agree on sharing certain data and resources....
    Ah, of course. If this is possible, server's shouldn't be obligated to take part.
     
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    This is possible in the Minecraft - project called BungeeCord - I see no problem create similar proxy for this awesome game.
     
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    I hadn't heard about that mod til now. Looks like it uses "Ancient Gates" to send people to different servers. Perhaps the StarMade variant could be a specific type of warp gate, or maybe a ship could use their jump drive if it wouldn't cause any issues.

     
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    I would love a persistent multi-server universe much more.
    Each Galaxy loaded by another server. This way we could scale the game up to MMO level.

    A gate between two servers should be simple, but you would have a long loading-screen ;)
     
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    therimmer96

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    I have been thinking about this for awhile, I half like it.

    I think linking 2 seperate servers as they are now is just wrong. however, if the linked servers all operate as the same server, with the same staff and same rules and same configs, with each one holding a galaxy, that could work IMO.

    It would allow things along the same line as MMO's, with each "instance" being seperate would mean people far away won't ever cause lag on the same server as you, because their not on the same server as you.

    This is something I hope the modding API allows, rather than being vanilla. Its just something I think would be far too complex and niche to be in the game by default. But servers should be allowed to do something like this.
     
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    I have been thinking about this for awhile, I half like it.

    I think linking 2 seperate servers as they are now is just wrong. however, if the linked servers all operate as the same server, with the same staff and same rules and same configs, with each one holding a galaxy, that could work IMO.

    It would allow things along the same line as MMO's, with each "instance" being seperate would mean people far away won't ever cause lag on the same server as you, because their not on the same server as you.

    This is something I hope the modding API allows, rather than being vanilla. Its just something I think would be far too complex and niche to be in the game by default. But servers should be allowed to do something like this.
    What I was thinking was something along the lines of giving a server admin the ability to either set their server as public or private. If set to private, then a server admin would have the option for creating a whitelist of other servers that can travel to his/hers. Alternatively, if set to public, then your server has the option to travel to anyone else's server set to public, through means of a warp gate that an admin used a specific command on, etc. This by no means has to be done any time soon in the game's current state, but it would be a really nice game feature to have when StarMade becomes more developed and polished.
     

    Edymnion

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    I can see a big problem with this though.

    Different servers can have vastly different settings that will make the ships between the two either drastically different in power scales, or completely unworkable in the first place.

    For example, the first server I was on had mining cranked up x35, you eat one asteroid and you got 200k mats. It was pretty much dedicated to big big big builds. 10 million shields were pretty much required just to fight the pirates. Link that to a 1x vanilla server and there's going to be problems when somebody rides roughshod with their uber capitol ship until an admin gets on to stop them.

    And won't be an issue for much longer, but another good example is that some servers keep docking enhancers turned on, others turn them off. I'm on a "dock anything" server, and I have quite a few ships where if they crossed over into a pure vanilla server they'd be crippled as their internal power generators undocked and all their turrets fell off.

    Even without that, what would stop you from making a ship over on a 1,000x mining server that gives you 100 million credits, and then just flying it over to a vanilla server, completely destroying any semblance of a slow growth model they were trying to cultivate?

    Or heck, what types of block can stack with what other kinds of blocks are something that can be set server side. What happens if I'm on a server that stacks things like computers and modules into single slots, I have a full inventory, and go to a server that doesn't do that? Do I lose my blocks?

    There are seriously way too many server specific variables to allow willy nilly transport between them.
     

    therimmer96

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    I can see a big problem with this though.

    Different servers can have vastly different settings that will make the ships between the two either drastically different in power scales, or completely unworkable in the first place.

    For example, the first server I was on had mining cranked up x35, you eat one asteroid and you got 200k mats. It was pretty much dedicated to big big big builds. 10 million shields were pretty much required just to fight the pirates. Link that to a 1x vanilla server and there's going to be problems when somebody rides roughshod with their uber capitol ship until an admin gets on to stop them.

    And won't be an issue for much longer, but another good example is that some servers keep docking enhancers turned on, others turn them off. I'm on a "dock anything" server, and I have quite a few ships where if they crossed over into a pure vanilla server they'd be crippled as their internal power generators undocked and all their turrets fell off.

    Even without that, what would stop you from making a ship over on a 1,000x mining server that gives you 100 million credits, and then just flying it over to a vanilla server, completely destroying any semblance of a slow growth model they were trying to cultivate?

    Or heck, what types of block can stack with what other kinds of blocks are something that can be set server side. What happens if I'm on a server that stacks things like computers and modules into single slots, I have a full inventory, and go to a server that doesn't do that? Do I lose my blocks?

    There are seriously way too many server specific variables to allow willy nilly transport between them.
    This is why I feel any interlinked servers should be operated as a single server, and should be purely for server performance.
     

    lupoCani

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    Obviously, inter-server links can't be arbitrarily user-created. For any two servers to allow passage between one another, admin-level approval must be required from both ends, or you are, in practice, giving the average user infinite block-spawning capabilities. With this core principle, however, the idea sounds entirely plausible.
     

    Nuclear Doughnut

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    Agreed on that. another thing would be is How do we transfer resources over? would we just copy the player "state" file to the new server as part of the transfer? You'd also have to have a single Faction list otherwise the IDS would get messed up. Another issue is how do you configure the ship that comes through the "gate"
     

    Asvarduil

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    I personally like the idea. Way back when we talked about writing a wrapper for a server to do this as an unofficial mod... it never went anywhere but I like the idea of someone being able to go "Trans Server" but the servers would have to agree on sharing certain data and resources....
    In a way they already do, if you can get at the list of available servers. We've already got a warp gate effect. How about while connecting to the other server, you're "experiencing a lengthy warp", during which time the connection is made, and block data set up? All your mod would need is the ability to set up a trigger that, when a ship passes through it, to tell the client what to do.

    After all, as far as the client is concerned, it's undergoing a controlled reconnect, during which time it should show you the warp effect.
     
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    I can see a big problem with this though.

    Different servers can have vastly different settings that will make the ships between the two either drastically different in power scales, or completely unworkable in the first place.

    For example, the first server I was on had mining cranked up x35, you eat one asteroid and you got 200k mats. It was pretty much dedicated to big big big builds. 10 million shields were pretty much required just to fight the pirates. Link that to a 1x vanilla server and there's going to be problems when somebody rides roughshod with their uber capitol ship until an admin gets on to stop them.

    And won't be an issue for much longer, but another good example is that some servers keep docking enhancers turned on, others turn them off. I'm on a "dock anything" server, and I have quite a few ships where if they crossed over into a pure vanilla server they'd be crippled as their internal power generators undocked and all their turrets fell off.

    Even without that, what would stop you from making a ship over on a 1,000x mining server that gives you 100 million credits, and then just flying it over to a vanilla server, completely destroying any semblance of a slow growth model they were trying to cultivate?
    I suggested giving the server administrator the option of selecting either public or private for their server for this very reason. No one would be obligated to do this. Servers set to private should be able to utilize a whitelist of other servers if they want to limit who can and cannot enter their server. Obviously, public would just let you join anyone else's server that is also set to public. That way if you would only like for your server to interact with a select group of other servers, you could. Or, if you want to become part of a huge interconnected web of servers, then you could elect to choose public for your server.

    Or heck, what types of block can stack with what other kinds of blocks are something that can be set server side. What happens if I'm on a server that stacks things like computers and modules into single slots, I have a full inventory, and go to a server that doesn't do that? Do I lose my blocks?

    There are seriously way too many server specific variables to allow willy nilly transport between them.
    Of course, there would be some details that would have to be worked out for this type of feature to work efficiently.
     

    NeonSturm

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    I personally like the idea. Way back when we talked about writing a wrapper for a server to do this as an unofficial mod... it never went anywhere but I like the idea of someone being able to go "Trans Server" but the servers would have to agree on sharing certain data and resources....
    Hyperspace servers where portals are closer together!!!
    [DOUBLEPOST=1430170933,1430170212][/DOUBLEPOST]
    I think linking 2 seperate servers as they are now is just wrong. however, if the linked servers all operate as the same server, with the same staff and same rules and same configs, with each one holding a galaxy, that could work IMO.
    I hope configs are allowed to differ for selected parts - that makes ship designs more interesting.

    Different servers can have vastly different settings that will make the ships between the two either drastically different in power scales, or completely unworkable in the first place.

    Even without that, what would stop you from making a ship over on a 1,000x mining server that gives you 100 million credits, and then just flying it over to a vanilla server, completely destroying any semblance of a slow growth model they were trying to cultivate?
    Just cut the ship you arrived with and paste it at the return location. cut+paste
    Make a copy of it at another server which is again cut until you arrive and it's pasted back.
    Certain rules could port block-changes from one server to another via a blueprint-editor before loading. (the rule could be "port all changes" or only compatible changes).

    Obviously, inter-server links can't be arbitrarily user-created. For any two servers to allow passage between one another, admin-level approval must be required from both ends, or you are, in practice, giving the average user infinite block-spawning capabilities. With this core principle, however, the idea sounds entirely plausible.
    Agree.
     

    Auriga_Nexus

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    This is an interesting idea, and while I'm sure people are tired of us EVE Online vets making comparisons between that and Starmade, it would be possible to run several servers each with jurisdiction over a specific galaxy, much like Tranquility which is the supercomputer cluster of blade servers CCP Games uses to house the EVE universe and all of the magnificent bastards that call it home. (For those unfamiliar with how EVE servers work - its all the same interconnected universe, but different servers host different systems and so shit going down in Fountain won't necessarily affect Catch since the two regions are on different server clusters)This would mean larger scale, and larger server population, all without impacting server performance.

    However, while a system like this already works in the case of EVE we have another problem to deal with; that is, all of the EVE servers are owned, controlled, and administrated by CCP, and with a few exceptions are all practically in the same room of the same building in Rejkavik. Starmade's servers, on the other hand, are independently owned and operated. This creates a bit of a problem as people have mentioned before, because if you're going to allow intergalactic travel, the source and destination servers need to be similar to each other. Now settings that have an impact on server performance but not necessarily game balance can be ignored - if server B can handle larger planets than server A then there isn't any reason why server B's planets should be constrained to match server A - but things such as balance tweaks, starting equipment, mining bonuses, etc. need to be the same to keep gameplay fair and balanced. And player information needs to be, if not shared, at the very least synchronized, because the idea isn't just seamlessly changing servers, you're also bringing character and faction ID, inventory, and whatever you are currently flying with you.

    Now all of this would be easy if the servers were all owned and administrated by the same entities, but we've got many, MANY different servers all franchised with their own admins, data, and rules. If something like this is going to work it needs to be either A) multiple servers owned and operated by the same people, or B) a joint, cooperative effort between the admins on two separate servers, because though you might have two different machines in two different geographical locations, the only way to allow this while keeping gameplay balanced is to essentially merge the administrators of those servers into one allied group.

    I'm all for it - I think having interconnected servers will do wonders for allowing larger-scale games with larger numbers of players, and it solves the ever present issue of server performance at least on the grand scale - though if an entire fleet from server B wants to all go play on server A at once, that could be problematic. But any kind of interdimensional travel of this sort will only work if the gods of each universe (read: admins) are willing to allow it and can actually agree to work together, let alone come up with a shared rules standard, rather than making it a dick-measuring contest on a multiversal scale like some people (and I shan't name names -_-)
     

    NeonSturm

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    Or perhaps have teleport stations which transport you into another body (eve does that when you die) on the other server.

    Not that I want to copy Eve in any way, but keep the game running (not reload everything from HD) would be the first step to connect servers.
    And it would allow you to quickly join events or check out what's happening there.

    Also there needs to be some sort of shared chat - could be an advantage even if you can't travel between servers if yours is pretty unpopulated at some daytime.
     
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    BungeeCord in the Minecraft work not as mentioned EVE online. Interconnected server have one owner, same staff etc. There is no need interconnect hundrets of servers with hundrets of owners,rules etc. As server owner want for example main server in the survival mode, when player go through gate to another my server - this server will be in the battle mode, or have custom map, settings, etc... This multiserver proxy will be nice load ballancing, for example one server per galaxy and many others usage...