So I’ve been playing Icarus with the wife and the optimization is hot garbage. Wife is hosting and pulling 10 fps with a Nvidia 3070TI
We enjoy the game so I start doing research. Turns out once you’ve played enough the database on the host just gets too big and chokes out the CPU threads since it can’t use more than 2 cores.
Answer is to migrate your world to a sepf hosted dedicated server. Say no more.
So now I got an excuse (wife approved) to setup a computer as a server and keep it running. I have an old HP SFF i5 16GB RAM with an SSD I’ve reimagined a few times for a home server.
Flashed it with Debian and setup the Icarus server in docker. Runs like a champ.
Bonus points. I hooked up a wattage meter and it idles at 1~2 watts!
I used to run an old gaming computer as a home server and it felt like $30 a month in electricity.
Edit: System idles at 19 watts. I had the meter plugged into the wrong device…
Now I can start throwing more stuff on there once I figure out backup for the game world incase I bork it.
First of all, congrats on your server!
But I was wondering, though I don’t really know much about Icarus. But why wouldn’t you just be able to run the server on the same machine? If it only takes two cores anyway, most modern systems should easily run that besides the game itself no?
Not saying this isn’t a better solution, just doesn’t seem necessary to create a server for just that. But now you get to enjoy the experience of how deep the self hosting rabbit hole goes. Have fun and good luck!
The intent of having a third machine is to allow either one of us to play without bothering the other.
She was hosting and if I wanted to play I’d have to poke her computer. It’s a gaming desktop so it also costs more to run.
This way I can play and leave her alone if she’s busy.
Ok, that’s a valid reason. But you didn’t touch on that in your post. You only talked about performance. Hence my wondering.
Valid observation. I was mainly excited about having an excuse to run a 24/7 server.
New games are horribly optimized. There are a lot of multiplayer games that if you run the server and client on same machine it goes to shit.
That seems purely resource bound. So as long as your pc has enough cores and memory I feel like it should work fine, can’t see what brings it down except excessive iops? . But I haven’t had much experience with newer games like this, so I can’t really dispute your experience.
The game runs a single core for your game session and multiplayer load. Limit of the game engine.
Not if you run it in two different processes. Then it’s exactly the same as your new setup.
That is correct. Most people run a dedicated server on thier gaming rig.
I just wanted the excuse to setup a home server.