Locality
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- Joined
- Oct 8, 2008
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There was a time when most multiplayer PC games included a feature which enabled you to host your own servers. The challenge in doing so was having sufficient bandwidth on an Internet connection (e.g. dial-up, ISDN, ADSL) of that era. This meant hosting online at scale was often the reserve of ISPs - encouraging gamers to hold LAN parties instead.
Since then, many publishers have removed the option to host your own servers from their games. This leaves future multiplayer availability in doubt, until they inevitably decide to discontinue their official servers. Now we find ourselves in a situation where high-speed low-latency connections (e.g. fibre, 5G) are commonplace, but without the ability to host our own servers...
Which is an exaggeration, of course, as there's never been a better time to host a game server:
- Fan-made patches bring improved compatibility and modern features to retro games.
- Retro games have low system requirements - some with newly added support for ARM based SBCs.
- Self-hosting at scale from home is possible - especially of games supporting IPv6.
- VPS hosting is affordable and offers a choice of different locations nationally.
So what's the problem?
Those who've tried hosting their own servers will know of the sparsity of players connecting to them. With the low probability of enough players connecting at the same time, there's less incentive to host servers. This often leads to bots being added to give the impression that servers are populated.
That's the reason for this post: I'm developing a progressive web app in the hope of bringing players and hosts together, with features for browsing local game servers and subscribing to push notifications about them. As well as documentation to guide you through hosting your own servers - which you can then add to the tracker.
I'm interested in reading your feedback and whether there are any specific games you'd like to see supported!
Please give it a go: https://gaming.locality.co.za
Since then, many publishers have removed the option to host your own servers from their games. This leaves future multiplayer availability in doubt, until they inevitably decide to discontinue their official servers. Now we find ourselves in a situation where high-speed low-latency connections (e.g. fibre, 5G) are commonplace, but without the ability to host our own servers...
Which is an exaggeration, of course, as there's never been a better time to host a game server:
- Fan-made patches bring improved compatibility and modern features to retro games.
- Retro games have low system requirements - some with newly added support for ARM based SBCs.
- Self-hosting at scale from home is possible - especially of games supporting IPv6.
- VPS hosting is affordable and offers a choice of different locations nationally.
So what's the problem?
Those who've tried hosting their own servers will know of the sparsity of players connecting to them. With the low probability of enough players connecting at the same time, there's less incentive to host servers. This often leads to bots being added to give the impression that servers are populated.
That's the reason for this post: I'm developing a progressive web app in the hope of bringing players and hosts together, with features for browsing local game servers and subscribing to push notifications about them. As well as documentation to guide you through hosting your own servers - which you can then add to the tracker.
I'm interested in reading your feedback and whether there are any specific games you'd like to see supported!
Please give it a go: https://gaming.locality.co.za
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