12-25-2007, 03:20 PM
*WARNING* This post is a WIP (Work-In-Progress) and will receive many edits.
I'm a very neat and organized person. I dont like clutter and cruft. Strange doesn't even describe my computer usage habits. I also have a lot of old hardware I like to put to good use. For the sake of getting the best possible gameplay and satisfying my curiosity as to how barebones a server I could build, I have made a minimal server ready for rapid deployment. This project has two phases, and most of you will be interested in the second.
[Phase 1]
Using a gentoo minimal x86 installcd I installed gentoo as generically as possible to be as compatible as possible on x86 hardware. I compiled everything with full i686 generic optimisations. Any further processor specific optimizations have been omitted. This build should work on any 32bit 686 or 64-bit running as 32. I installed only a basic install with no X or anything other than a working system with working toolbox to compile anything else. If anyone is interested in more on this, I'll be glad to elaborate and/or provide the binaries for this. If I ever get to it, I'll make a livecd out of this w/ the nexuiz installation, so you can run this on a computer w/o requiring a harddrive. I could launch nexuiz from a ramdrive. There is some fun potential for this project.
[Phase 2]
* Performance evaluation: Uncompressed (no overhead, more disk usage) vs Best compressed (Dec overhead, less disk thrashing)
* Re-run the process to get exact results for here
The stock data pack (data-20070531.pk3) is 261mb. Uncompressed it is 612mb. To uncompress, simply unzip the data-20070531.pk3 with your favorite zip/rar/ace/7zip/tar/gz/etc tool.
One of my servers is a 1v1 ladder rules. I have no interest in changing it to any other gamemode, so I don't need any of those maps or models. I stripped out all the maps but the 13 ladder rules maps (aggressor, aneurysm, bloodprison, darkzone, downer, final_rage, reslimed, runningman, runningman_1v1remix, soylent, stormkeep, toxic, warfare). Although just small text files, I also took out the 13 map configurations for other gamemodes (dom, tdm, etc). Since we use fullbright models, I could take out the other models. The 5 included demo files got scrapped. duAfter all was said and done these were my results:
data20071122-common.pk3 4.7MB
data20071122-1v1.pk3 26MB
From 261MB to 31MB :)
I also did the same for 2v2: data20071128-2v2.pk3 27MB
$ unzip data-20070531.pk3
$ 7za a -tzip -mx=9 -mfb=64 -md=32m data20071225.pk3 *
Thus far this was a proof-of-concept for me. Since all the maps are being reworked, this project is on hold until 2.4 comes out. I'm watching the progress of the data pack now and I should be able to adapt quickly.
I'm a very neat and organized person. I dont like clutter and cruft. Strange doesn't even describe my computer usage habits. I also have a lot of old hardware I like to put to good use. For the sake of getting the best possible gameplay and satisfying my curiosity as to how barebones a server I could build, I have made a minimal server ready for rapid deployment. This project has two phases, and most of you will be interested in the second.
[Phase 1]
Using a gentoo minimal x86 installcd I installed gentoo as generically as possible to be as compatible as possible on x86 hardware. I compiled everything with full i686 generic optimisations. Any further processor specific optimizations have been omitted. This build should work on any 32bit 686 or 64-bit running as 32. I installed only a basic install with no X or anything other than a working system with working toolbox to compile anything else. If anyone is interested in more on this, I'll be glad to elaborate and/or provide the binaries for this. If I ever get to it, I'll make a livecd out of this w/ the nexuiz installation, so you can run this on a computer w/o requiring a harddrive. I could launch nexuiz from a ramdrive. There is some fun potential for this project.
[Phase 2]
* Performance evaluation: Uncompressed (no overhead, more disk usage) vs Best compressed (Dec overhead, less disk thrashing)
* Re-run the process to get exact results for here
The stock data pack (data-20070531.pk3) is 261mb. Uncompressed it is 612mb. To uncompress, simply unzip the data-20070531.pk3 with your favorite zip/rar/ace/7zip/tar/gz/etc tool.
One of my servers is a 1v1 ladder rules. I have no interest in changing it to any other gamemode, so I don't need any of those maps or models. I stripped out all the maps but the 13 ladder rules maps (aggressor, aneurysm, bloodprison, darkzone, downer, final_rage, reslimed, runningman, runningman_1v1remix, soylent, stormkeep, toxic, warfare). Although just small text files, I also took out the 13 map configurations for other gamemodes (dom, tdm, etc). Since we use fullbright models, I could take out the other models. The 5 included demo files got scrapped. duAfter all was said and done these were my results:
data20071122-common.pk3 4.7MB
data20071122-1v1.pk3 26MB
From 261MB to 31MB :)
I also did the same for 2v2: data20071128-2v2.pk3 27MB
$ unzip data-20070531.pk3
$ 7za a -tzip -mx=9 -mfb=64 -md=32m data20071225.pk3 *
Thus far this was a proof-of-concept for me. Since all the maps are being reworked, this project is on hold until 2.4 comes out. I'm watching the progress of the data pack now and I should be able to adapt quickly.