Avid player here, and the improvements are definitely noticeable. If you've been on the fence about this game, I definitely would urge you to give it another shot. :)
Thats a nice offer... CLOK is an extremely beefy server application though, probably wouldn't run too well on a VPS. We were pretty much maxing out a single core on a Xeon X3440. We pretty much need a dedicated CPU. Even with the new server's Xeon E3-1230 v5, it's got pretty high usage and wouldn't really play nice with others.
It's a single month's lease payment. Note that even if we don't meet that goal, CLOK isn't going away. I've been pretty much paying for the majority of costs myself and will continue to do so. The team thought I should make the costs a bit more visible though, since I've been basically making the equivalent of a small car payment every month, and sure would be nice if I didn't have to. Any support at all is appreciated, but never expected.
CLOK was pretty much the first of its kind in terms of a MUD being run purely in Python (it pre-dates Evennia). It's an entirely custom MUD engine powering a pretty large world, nearing 8000 rooms and 3000 critters (NPCs). It was built by someone who had no programming experience whatsoever, let alone ever worked in MUD development. It's far from optimized. Pretty much every time I work at the code I find something that could be done better. However, it is also one of the most robust, feature-rich MUDs out there. As a single-threaded, single-process application, CLOK was using 100% of a logical CPU core up until the new server upgrade. It now sits around 60~80%. Should CLOK be able to run on cheaper hardware? Yes. Can I modify over 140,000 lines of code and completely work our main event loop and AI code overnight? No. Do I want future expandability and expect CLOK to easily support 100+ simultaneous connections? Yes.
Keep in mind this is a fully managed, dedicated, server with 24/7 support, in an enterprise datacenter with fully redundant connections. Server crash at 2AM on a weekend? No problem (not that it would ever happen). Want to be able to do whatever the heck I want on the server and not be limited by a strict set of rules, a jailed shell, and disk/memory/CPU quotas? No problem. CLOK frequently has periods of over 3000 hours of uptime. The only time I ever have to shut it down is if there's a kernel update that requires a physical reboot. We also get players from the other side of the world who say CLOK is the only MUD they can play that doesn't suffer from horrendous network lag.
I've run a VPS before, I'm not doing it again. And I'm not going to run it out of my (or someone else's) basement.
You can get an i5, i7, or Xeon 2 x E5504 with 16GB RAM for at least half the price. Even less. Issue fir you perhaps is it would be in a European datacenter.
$200 for a super popular Minecraft server is being spent these days, for example. For a MUD, even if it was Aardwolf for example, is quite expensive honestly. Europe does have the better prices for these things, though. And no limitations to bandwidth.
MUDs like EmpireMUD for example run off of the servers I work with and they barely use a 5th if their resources.
Again if things get rough to keep up the costs, let me know and I’ll help you find a cheaper solution. Which doesn’t mean a worse solution.
Avid player here, and the improvements are definitely noticeable. If you've been on the fence about this game, I definitely would urge you to give it another shot. :)
Also, mods, could we get a clok flair? What is the protocol for that?
Shoot a message to the mods directly
If you guys have any issues again, hit me up and I’ll host you guys for free. (www.funcity.org)
Thats a nice offer... CLOK is an extremely beefy server application though, probably wouldn't run too well on a VPS. We were pretty much maxing out a single core on a Xeon X3440. We pretty much need a dedicated CPU. Even with the new server's Xeon E3-1230 v5, it's got pretty high usage and wouldn't really play nice with others.
I wouldn’t set you up on a VPS or with others. Your own server. If you guys ever need it, let me know.
What's the server funding thing for on the wiki, a single month of server rent, or a new server, or what?
It's a single month's lease payment. Note that even if we don't meet that goal, CLOK isn't going away. I've been pretty much paying for the majority of costs myself and will continue to do so. The team thought I should make the costs a bit more visible though, since I've been basically making the equivalent of a small car payment every month, and sure would be nice if I didn't have to. Any support at all is appreciated, but never expected.
Why is it 200$/month? What in the world is your MUD doing that requires that?
CLOK was pretty much the first of its kind in terms of a MUD being run purely in Python (it pre-dates Evennia). It's an entirely custom MUD engine powering a pretty large world, nearing 8000 rooms and 3000 critters (NPCs). It was built by someone who had no programming experience whatsoever, let alone ever worked in MUD development. It's far from optimized. Pretty much every time I work at the code I find something that could be done better. However, it is also one of the most robust, feature-rich MUDs out there. As a single-threaded, single-process application, CLOK was using 100% of a logical CPU core up until the new server upgrade. It now sits around 60~80%. Should CLOK be able to run on cheaper hardware? Yes. Can I modify over 140,000 lines of code and completely work our main event loop and AI code overnight? No. Do I want future expandability and expect CLOK to easily support 100+ simultaneous connections? Yes. Keep in mind this is a fully managed, dedicated, server with 24/7 support, in an enterprise datacenter with fully redundant connections. Server crash at 2AM on a weekend? No problem (not that it would ever happen). Want to be able to do whatever the heck I want on the server and not be limited by a strict set of rules, a jailed shell, and disk/memory/CPU quotas? No problem. CLOK frequently has periods of over 3000 hours of uptime. The only time I ever have to shut it down is if there's a kernel update that requires a physical reboot. We also get players from the other side of the world who say CLOK is the only MUD they can play that doesn't suffer from horrendous network lag. I've run a VPS before, I'm not doing it again. And I'm not going to run it out of my (or someone else's) basement.
You can get an i5, i7, or Xeon 2 x E5504 with 16GB RAM for at least half the price. Even less. Issue fir you perhaps is it would be in a European datacenter. $200 for a super popular Minecraft server is being spent these days, for example. For a MUD, even if it was Aardwolf for example, is quite expensive honestly. Europe does have the better prices for these things, though. And no limitations to bandwidth. MUDs like EmpireMUD for example run off of the servers I work with and they barely use a 5th if their resources. Again if things get rough to keep up the costs, let me know and I’ll help you find a cheaper solution. Which doesn’t mean a worse solution.
The difference is night and day. CLOK was always a great place, but now it’s great and less laggy.