wraggster
February 1st, 2012, 20:53
Swedish non-profit technology organisation MuchDifferent has set a new world record for simultaneous online players, hosting 999 combatants in its browser based FPS Man Vs Machine.
Planetside (http://www.edge-online.com/filter/all/tags/3722) previously held the record, with 600 players. The Man Vs Machine session lasted two hours and saw players divided into the two titular teams. Watch the video below for a taste of what it's like to face a 500-strong opposition.
In a blog post on MuchDifferent's site (http://blog.muchdifferent.com/?p=281), CEO Christian Lönnholm admits that initial balancing was off, leading to the human team decimating their mechanical adversaries at first.
"After the first half hour, the score was overwhelmingly in favor for Team Man," he writes. "We did some adjustments to the gameplay balancing but it was not until the end of the two hour session that Team Machine had turned the tides and now the roles were reversed and Team Man was not even able to leave the spawning area.
"Getting a game balanced is hard and our guesswork proved to be quite off the mark. In the end, I think most people had an enjoyable experience of the sheer massiveness of it all and having the game run smoothly helped with that."
Guiness World Records subsequently validated the attempt, and MuchDifferent is now in the process of refining the underlying tech for use in other online games.
http://www.edge-online.com/news/online-fps-sets-new-world-record-999-simultaneous-players
Planetside (http://www.edge-online.com/filter/all/tags/3722) previously held the record, with 600 players. The Man Vs Machine session lasted two hours and saw players divided into the two titular teams. Watch the video below for a taste of what it's like to face a 500-strong opposition.
In a blog post on MuchDifferent's site (http://blog.muchdifferent.com/?p=281), CEO Christian Lönnholm admits that initial balancing was off, leading to the human team decimating their mechanical adversaries at first.
"After the first half hour, the score was overwhelmingly in favor for Team Man," he writes. "We did some adjustments to the gameplay balancing but it was not until the end of the two hour session that Team Machine had turned the tides and now the roles were reversed and Team Man was not even able to leave the spawning area.
"Getting a game balanced is hard and our guesswork proved to be quite off the mark. In the end, I think most people had an enjoyable experience of the sheer massiveness of it all and having the game run smoothly helped with that."
Guiness World Records subsequently validated the attempt, and MuchDifferent is now in the process of refining the underlying tech for use in other online games.
http://www.edge-online.com/news/online-fps-sets-new-world-record-999-simultaneous-players