FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

I am thinking about starting a server. The computer I will use has an Intel Pentium 4 processor and 1 Gigabyte of RAM. Is that enough, and if so, how many players can be online before the latency gets out of hand?
Thank you.

Good enough. Any PC is sufficient to run a minetest server from a CLI (cmd). Most Minetest unoptimized servers top off at 5 players. If you tweak values hard enough, you might be able to fit in upto 7 or more players.

1 GB, is however too less RAM to use any of the more drastic mods. RAM usage on my own server was nearly 2.9 GB with a hell load of mods (maybe 30?) including mesecons and stu's modf.

Thank you for the information. It appears that I may have to upgrade some stuff. However, I currently lack the necessary funds - so I'll do what LandRush guy did and set up a donation button, and hope for some cash to upgrade stuff with.

It appears that my motherboard is crap. I had to hotwire the Power Supply unit to get it to boot. The rest of the stuff could use an upgrade too. Sadly, starting a minetest server will have to wait. Again.

hoodedice wrote:RAM usage on my own server was nearly 2.9 GB with a hell load of mods (maybe 30?) including mesecons and stu's modf.

My server takes 200 MB of RAM at ~8 players.
With some little mesecon parts and pipeworks.
Seems like there are worlds between smaller and bigger mods :3

SegFault22 wrote:Thank you for the information. It appears that I may have to upgrade some stuff. However, I currently lack the necessary funds - so I'll do what LandRush guy did and set up a donation button, and hope for some cash to upgrade stuff with.

Good luck, gaming servers don't make much profit at all.

My (now defunct) server ran on a ~500 MHz machine with 128 MB of RAM, with some "heavyweight" mods like mesecons and technic. Granted, sometimes it will just lag players out of existence, but most of the time it ran fairly fast, and supported up to 10 players at once (with some latency).

I think a Pentium 4 with a gig of RAM will be enough to run a server.

SegFault22 wrote:Thank you for the information. It appears that I may have to upgrade some stuff. However, I currently lack the necessary funds - so I'll do what LandRush guy did and set up a donation button, and hope for some cash to upgrade stuff with.

I think I've recieved about $60 in donations over the period of about a year. So not the type of income you can rely on for upgrading a machine. For leasing a budget VPS it does make a difference though.

It's enough, but expect lag at times.

Do you really need to host a server though?

It seems that one of the RAM slots on my zombie-motherboard is not functioning properly. Almost every time I start up the rig, it begins to boot, then stops booting and boots again, displaying only 512MB of RAM (1 chip). However, seeing the other information has given me hope - maybe it isn't a worthless cause after all. I'll go ahead and try to set it up once I get some other stuff finished.

Calinou wrote:It's enough, but expect lag at times.

Do you really need to host a server though?

Does anyone really need to host a server?