IBM Testing New Grid Technology with Quake 2

boschmorden writes "In conjunction with IBM, a group of college students from the University of Wisconsin developed GameGrid, a derivative of IBM's OptimalGrid effort. The students adapted the open-source version of id Software's Quake 2 first-person shooter, and attempted to scale it across the grid to stress the system." IBM is also planning on developing Quake 2 bots to take advantage of the system.

The Rights of Software ?

[Gothmolly]

If you design an AI bot, and let it loose in a system like a Q2 game running on a set of nodes, do you have the right to arbitrarily shut it down? At what point do you have a responsibility to the code that you spawned (a Q2 pun, work with me)?
As Dr. Chandra said in 2010, we're all life forms, whether silicon or carbon based it makes no difference.

sounds like nascent skynet

[lingqi]

bots that runs on distributed clusters, designed to take out humans in a simulated environment... hmmmm

if we arm them (the programs) with paintball guns we can do simulated battles from the terminator universe.

or until they get a hold of some real firepower and this becomes a real version of the terminator universe...

Either way I for one look forward to a beowulf cluster of these steel and wire overlords, yeah?

not a completely new idea

[jackb_guppy]

I know of large company that install quake servers 6 years ago to help balance 3 T3 lines. The quake servers (w/ players) gave a continous load that was easy to define and route, which helped in supporting a very large website.

Re:The Rights of Software ?

[Gherald]

> At what point do you have a responsibility to the code that you spawned

Obviously a troll, but I'd say my criteria is "self awareness." That's all that is important.

Acid test

[Zog The Undeniable]

Line all the players up and have one of them fire a railgun through the remainder [1]. Allegedly someone tried this at a LAN with 64 players and the server crashed. The problem is that the server has to send 4,032 death messages instantaneously. With 250 players it would have to do 62,250.

[1] for the uninitiated, a Quake 2 railgun slug keeps going through any number of targets until it hits a wall or other part of the scenery.

Re:A Test? Riiiight.

[sperling]

Chess software just requires massive processing. The whole point with this grid is to be able to do real-time simulations, and any decent game is exactly that.
They got a point though, this is more suited for MMORPGs, I'd believe any modern MMORPG would use some sort of clustering solution. The response times they mention seem decent, but I can't help but wonder what they'll look like in a real scenario with a few thousand players and a limited hardware budget.

We're doing something similar here at work, but I'd be fired in an instant if I spent 8 servers to sustain 80 users...

50 microseconds.. yeah!

[MikeHunt69]

Sounded good, until I got to this bit:

When doing so, IBM's GameGrid software typically operated with latencies of 50 microseconds or less, according to Hammer.

I hope thats a typo..

Re:Acid test

[llamalicious]

Easier, you want to lag the thing?

Setup a server and don't limit the number of projectiles used by the hyperblaster.

Give every player an HB and unlimited ammo. Tell them to run around shooting those all over... that'll lag the grid.

Of course, some of that is bandwidth driven... but, a good test nonetheless.

MMORPG - Mass Murdering Online RPG?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

As the article said (yes, I actualy had read it) IBM is exploring new consumer markets for their GRID tecnology... Gaming is BIG MONEY, and IBM is just taking their shot at it, too bad GRID systems are too expensive to be sold as video-game consoles!

Now, forget Quake2 and imagine this system running Battlefield 1942!! I already can see the Omaha Beach Battle with 500 players online, that's would be awesome!

Re:Acid test

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes I can report we did this at Auckmageddon 2 with more than 64 people. Custom map was made and one person tried to line up everyone else and blast them. We used a railgun, which crashed the server (a dual p266!) and then using the BFG we crashed the server a few more times.

We also managed to run a deathmatch with 123 people in it... had to write a quick and dirty mod to reduce gibs and a few other details but the server still crashed eventually.

Would be much easier with today's beefier hardware.

Re:not a completely new idea

[tolan-b]

actually on win95 when you can't work out whether you have no connection or whether the install is screwed it's suprising how often quake would work when no other network software would..