How to process a very heavy downloadable multiplayer game

Question

I am a programmer and I'd like to know how to process a very heavy downloadable multiplayer game. This game will have robots like in Armored Core with arms and legs which are changeable but it will have like 100 players in a certain area fighting aliens and each one fires like 10 bullets each second plus the enemy attacks.

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That is like 2000 bullets each second flying in all directions, plus explosions and missiles and lasers and the environment too, and the AI of the aliens.

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Is that very hard to process on today's computers? If it is heavy, how would I process that in a multiplayer scenario? Does every computer split up the job and do their own part?

Answer 1

Is that very hard to process on today's computers?

For a programmer that has to ask the question - yes. For a programmer capable of writting efficient code and using a modern high end computer (that would right now have 120 physical threads) - not really. THe AI may be a problem, but then that can run on a cluster of machines.

Does every computer split up the job and do their own part?

Do you TRUST your players not to cheat? If you do not - can you answer that question yourself?

Generally you hire someone who has experience writing distributed systems. Generally this is way over the head of "a programmer asking question" and the level architects with real time experience come into the game. All thos bullets may sound heavy, but I proces a data stream here doing sometimes in excess of 100.000 updates per second, so - it is doable.