How many players will DS handle simultaneously?
General answer: As of Dead Souls 2.10, Dead Souls on a unix host running a modern OS on modern hardware can handle a couple hundred players with no software lag. Detailed answer: I have run tests on Linux and Solaris, firing playerbots into a test mud. These bots walk around, pick fights, get stuff, drop stuff, examine things, etc. They are coded to be as unidle as an extremely busy player… typically with less than 2 seconds between commands, all the time. What I found is that with the default settings, a DS mud on a unix host with a 2.5GHz proc doesn’t hit noticeable lag until you’re roughly over 200 very active players. At around 250 V.A.P. you notice a little lag, which doesn’t change much until about 350 V.A.P., at which point you’ll get occasional, definitely noticeable lag. It doesn’t get into “bad lag” territory until around 400 V.A.P. Above 500 you start getting into annoying lag territory, and above 600 or 700 it’s “not fun”. Note, however, that real players are rarely as in
