Post by ResidentLurker in The Headmaster comments

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ResidentLurker3 years ago (2 edits) (+4)

That is what a render farm is. A render farm uses the cpu and gpu of each computer in the farm to distribute the load, allowing for more rendering threads to be processed at once. An effective farm can take a project that would take a single computer 24 hours, and can cut that down to 4-5 hours depending on the processing power of each computer in the farm.

Edit: I just noticed you said supporters collective cpu's. That would be extremely expensive to do, as the bandwidth consumption would be insane. A render farm is normally multiple computers in one building (usually all in the same room) on the same LAN network so that you aren't having to send insane amounts of data through the internet. Also, the more varied the processing power of the computers in the farm, the worse of a farm it is, as the host computer has to divide up the threads to send to each computer, and multiple processing speeds would increase the host load. Too much variation in processing power can actually make the rendering process take longer. Most render farms are purpose built, with each computer built with identical specs to minimize this load.

theinsomnium3 years ago(-1)

Thanks for the explanation - however I found this, https://bitwrk.net/ - so technically it seems both possible and available.

ResidentLurker3 years ago(+1)

Yeah, but look at the price of bitcoin. Now tell me, do you think the dev makes enough money to pay a ton of people, not to mention the service provider, to utilize something like this? The amount of data that is processed per render can be staggering, Something that winds up only being 2 or 3 megabytes can eat 4 or 5 gigabytes worth of data to render properly. Now factor in the cost to not only utilize the service per megabyte or data, not to mention the possible data transfer fees that quite a few ISP's charge if you go over your monthly allowance. A single render that might take the dev 5 to 6 hours to complete alone might finish in 10 minutes with a service like that, but could potentially cost hundreds of USD each. Now think about how many renders are included with each update, not to mention renders that are unusable because of artifacts or data packets not transferring correctly. Each update would probably cost the dev thousands of USD. For a game that the dev is providing for free, I'll happily wait until they can finish it themselves so they don't go bankrupt and cancel the project, thanks.

theinsomnium3 years ago

First of all - I'm in Europe. No limit to monthly allowance on network traffic. And daily transferring hundreds of GB's is no issue.

2nd, my point was to have the supporters of a game provide this for free for the developers, as a kind of appreciation of their work. (and to speed up development) I know I would have loved to offer my computer resources to such a system.

ResidentLurker3 years ago

Oh? So you would be willing to leave your computer on permanently, and have it constantly bogged down to the point of being unusable pretty much indefinitely? Not to mention rendering is extremely taxing on your GPU, and even high end GPU's burn out much faster than they would under normal workloads.

Rendering is much more resource intensive than you might think. The last time I had a computer that was built specifically for rendering, I spent almost $5k USD, and after only about a year and a half, had to replace the GPU's in it.

Also, the software necessary to set up a service like you linked in your last post is anything but cheap. You know how everyone that builds computers hates cryptocurrency miners? Things like what you are suggesting is exactly how those guys turn a profit, and can afford to buy as many GPUs as they do.

danboxone20213 years ago

hi been a silent reader for a while insoms idea was good for people with money he forgot not everyone has money lol :)

ResidentLurker3 years ago

I agree, it's a good idea if you can afford it. However, if you look at some of the dev's posts and his patreon, it's fairly evident he can't afford expenditures like that, especially for a game that is provided free of charge.

theinsomnium3 years ago

Yes, I would, and I now do - same way as I'd imagine the developer is clogging up his system when rendering.

My computers are on 24/7 anyways - who turns off their computer these days?

The software I linked to is free - I set it up and it works fine. I now share my resources for people to use, and I set my price to 0. Only thing missing from this, is to limit usage to projects I wish to selectivly support only. So I'll look into how this could be done.

I really dont see the problem here. You seem very negative to my proposal for a community based appreciation of a game many loves. My only point was, I'm personally willing to offer my computer resources for projects like this - my system is idle for 12-16 hours a day (while at work+when I sleep) and I assume others are in same position.

Looking at how bitwrk solution work, it's a close to zero effort to send a smaller piece of renderwork to a remote node for processing.

Too bad for you GPU it got burned out. In my country, consumer rights would have given me the right to swap for a new as eletronic components are supposed to last for 5 years. But I guess other contries do not have this consumer protection.

So, I am sorry for you not seeing the possibillities for projects like this to get some help from it's community when surely the resources to set it up is available.

itch.io

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