Going beyond the 16-player limit

[Aurora]

Is it possible? I think my connection could handle more than that, since I've succesfully hosted many 16-player-games without lag.

[manored]

I think not yet.

[Strategia]

AFLobby. 32 players.

[AF]

Actually, I have yet to add a maximum value so you could create a game with 128 players in the lobby and it'd work untill you got ingame and spring crashed/half the players dont turn up.

[Tobi]

As for Springs current limits:

MAX_PLAYERS: 32
MAX_TEAMS: 16
MAX_ALLYTEAMS: 16

This is inclusive spectators, and also should keep room for watching the replay (takes 1 player for local watching, or any amount when hosting it).

So it will be impossible / borked to watch a replay of a game with 32 players. It will also be impossible / borked to host a replay for more then 32 minus the number of players in the game "replay watchers". Also note that in a game with over 16 players there will need to be comsharing because there are only 16 teams/allyteams supported.

Hence the official MAX_PLAYERS is 16, since this should not give problems with teams/allyteams and watching/hosting replays for up to 16 players.

[Neuralize]

Tobi, you're not getting the point, we can still jam 128 players into the battle room of AFLOOBY regardless of your petty game engine's "limitations."

[TradeMark]

MAX_PLAYERS: 32
MAX_TEAMS: 16
MAX_ALLYTEAMS: 16

Why only 16 teams? Does that save some space that you used only 4 bits instead of 5?

[Tobi]

Neuralize, that wasn't the point of the OP... The question wasn't related to a specific lobby at all, he was just asking what the current limits are (in different wording), which I answered

TradeMark: that's because spectators don't take up teams, and the 16 extra players are only there to allow 16 players to watch a hosted replay of a 16 player game.

[Aurora]

What kind of restraints generally force games to have maximum limits of maximum player amounts?

Btw. how do I install AFLobby?

[Radja]

Why only 16 teams? Does that save some space that you used only 4 bits instead of 5?

i think that a whole team information is much more than 1 bit

[Tobi]

He just means saving space in the indices to the teams

JJ45:

I can't be sure about other games, but in Spring it is a quite arbitrary limit. By changing some constants in the code it can be increased easily, but this is at the cost of some CPU cycles and some memory (in all games, not just games that use many players).

Also, just like happened when we increased it from 10 to 16, there is probably hidden code that assumes team indices are max. 16..., which could cause some nice infolog spamming or other funky bugs in >16 player games.