Today, while we were doing load tests in Wright Plaza, I was also doing another kind of load test on my standalone. This one relates to server-side bots. I was able to have a 3×3 megaregion with ~2,000 prims, 200 bots and my client connected to it!
My client was quite happy. The only thing that didn’t seem to be working was the walking animation. Apart from that, I was able to walk, fly, chat and generally interact without much lag. Pushing it to 300 didn’t quite work well yet, I was stuck in 10, 10, 10 on login.
Mind you, server-side bots are a very light load on the server, much lighter than a regular client and lighter than a libomv bot. For starters, they don’t connect over the network, so there is no packet sending/receiving. Then, these particular bots I’m developing aren’t that smart yet, so they don’t request any assets from the server — their load is essentially the physics that comes with them and all the updates that are sent to regular clients as the bots move around.
I have been playing with server-side bots lately because I am involved in projects that require them for simulations. I will have to have at least 500 of these. We’re very close… I’m quite happy with the results today!