ID:1432123
 
Ok so I'm an admin on http://www.byond.com/games/ EternalDuelistSoul.DuelMonstersGenesis

I'm interested in looking for a web space host to host the game's host files and rsc files.

Let me begin this by saying I'm not the owner of this game. I'm not the coder for this game either. I'm just an admin who's been with the game for a long time. I help out with small maintenance updates from time to time and I icon new player icons.

For those unaware, the game is a bit on the large size for a byond game. The rsc file is somewhere in the 120mb range but there is a rather large update in the works at the moment and we're adding new content all the time so I'd feel more comfortable with estimating the rsc file to be closer to 200mb in the not so distant future.

Obviously having a rsc this large means players have to spend a bit of time downloading it when they first log in.

ISSUE #1
On top of the large resource, we have a strange issue where byond will randomly decide to force a player to completely redownload the resources from scratch. We don't know why, it just happens. So this would be an issue that would be amazing if it could be solved.
tl;dr - Byond makes players randomly re-download the resource files

ISSUE #2
Another issue that's popped up here and there. We've noticed that for whatever reason, some dedicated servers seem to have trouble with the game. We're not entire sure why. It seems like some of these servers have trouble reading the save files. A bit of an example, (Since this is a card game I'll be using those terms). We have over 8000 cards in the game. Players make a deck that is stored in their safe file like a list. (The save files are encrypted if it makes a difference).
Certain dedicated servers (but not all of them) will have a strange issue where when a player logs in, they'll receive an error that is used when a card is missing. (It usually comes in to play after an update after we move a card). Those cards will be removed from their decks. The issue is that the card isn't missing. The server just has issue with reading that bit of the save file. It seems to be an issue with the servers reading the save files though and not a rsc corruption. I say that because
1) the non-dedicated servers run just fine.
2) certain dedicated servers run fine as well.
3) the cards are just being removed when a player first logs in and it checks their save file. The cards themselves are still in the game and players can re-add them to their deck.
4) the cards that the game has issue with seem to be random for each player but consistent for that player. Meaning 1 player will always get card XXX removed from their deck no matter how many times they relog but another player wont have issue with that card but may have issue with an entirely different card.
So I wasn't sure if this bug has popped up for anyone else on byond or not and if anyone found a solution.
tl;dr - certain dedicated servers have issues reading save files.


THE MAIN WEB SPACE SUGGESTION QUESTION

And now for the main reason of this post. Does anyone have any recommendations on web space that can be used to hold host and resource files to set up a game for remote rsc downloading so our players dont have to download from the host anymore?

Due to a byond bug where our players have to redownload the resource. I'd say our average player probably downloads the rsc in it's entirety atleast once a week.

So that means that the 200mb rsc that is pretty likely to be downloaded soon is downloaded 4-5 times per player in a month.

We also have on average maybe 30-70 players online at a time depending on the time and day of the week (We hold tournaments on the weekends which draw more players). (It's thanksgiving right now and the game currently has 2 servers running. 1 with 37 players and 1 with 12.)

I'm not 100% sure about this but I'd guess we might have a possible 500 unique player logins in a week. We have a lot of regulars but we also have a lot of players that only poke their heads in for a few hours here and there throughout a month or only show up for tournaments.

So that's an estimated 200mb rsc. An average player downloads it maybe 4-5 times a month. With an estimated 500 unique logins in a week. That's coming out to 500gb/month in bandwidth if my math is right.

This also isn't including people downloading the host files or the possibility of a new update making people download things all over again (we update 1-2 times a month currently) so maybe 750gb/month would be a safer bet?

So that would be my requirements I guess. A site that can handle 750gb/month bandwidth with good upload speeds. Maybe a host that's flexible and would let me change plans if my bandwidth estimates are way off.

Any recommendations?
<.<
Really Xirre Really All you can suggest?!?!?...

Recommend yourself the right way!

For example:

"Hello IceFire2050,

I am Xirre and I host stuff.

Check this out: http://www.byond.com/games/Xirre/ShellServer


~Xirre~"

Would that be to hard man? o.o





Free or paid?
I dunno. He said 200MB. That means he needs to have it uploaded constantly because people will be downloading it a lot. I have 35Mb/s upload. That's like 4MB for every second. I don't know if I'd like my network being... harassed.. like that. However, If he's paying decent money, I can upgrade my bandwidth limits, throw it on my web server, and bam, he can have it downloaded no problem.
consider using the preload_rsc ;)
He's looking for a web server to link preload_rsc to as well. While I'm up for it, I just need to prepare my network for it. Because I'm not all that sure if I could handle that many requests daily.
Xirre we can split the load (sounds so wrong).
I just want to know if he's looking for free or paid. And if paid, how much. ._.
Sorry about the late response. Had to deal with the holidays. I am looking for a paid service. Obviously something like this wouldn't be free. As for how much, that really depends on the service. It's also why I asked for suggestions, so I could see the various prices out there.

I'm looking for something... standardized... I guess that's the right word for it. Tiered pricing maybe? As in this is what I'm paying for and this is what I'm getting.

If you guys want to see just what your in for with this game, I suggest you try playing it.

Also, remember I'm not the owner of the game, I'm just an admin though I am more involved in the game than the rest of the staff.

As far as I'm aware, at the moment the game preloads certain animated graphics and sound files used in the game to avoid any kind of tearing when those animations have to actually play and sync up with the sound effects. Other files are downloaded as needed. Such as the icons for the various cards (Currently 8627 Cards broken into 89 set files, each set has it's own icon file that contains icons for all the cards in that set)

If your service can work for us, it'd be great. But as far as we know, our game is one of the most resource intensive games on byond, if not the most.

Also, I'm not sure if I was clear enough. I'm not looking for a dedicated host. I'm looking for a web server to host the rsc file to remote link it so that the actual game hosts dont have that burden on their systems. I'd also like to host the actual host files there so we don't have to use sendspace anymore. Essentially a server with maybe 750GB/month in bandwidth and a high upload speed to host files for people to download.
And to clarify, we tried preloading everything in the game before, but then we had players sitting for 5-10 minutes on some non-dedicated servers waiting for their resources to download.

The resource download was also killing some of the slower servers when too many people logged in at once and were all downloading that large resource at once.
http://xirre.dyndns.org -- And, I have a web server. On my own network. >.> No middle man (reselling). Straight from me to my ISP and then to the client.