Idle PC SwarmAgent Hosting

[zwarmapapa]

My PC is idle a lot, and I think I'm not the only one that has that. I think it would be awesome if we could use our idle PCs to help eachother build lightmaps quicker. It's just like the SwarmAgent, except that it's open and for everyone.

Just to make it fair, there could also be a system build-in that only allows people that have 'helped' enough other people before they can use other people's hardware for their own lightmap building.

I think it would be awesome if such a system would exist, since a lot of UDK developers are Indies which can't afford powerful servers, but instead we're in large numbers. Distributing the lightmap building between tens or even hundreds of PCs will make lightmap building a lot faster.

Please tell me what you think about it, I would love to see a discussion about this.

[JessieG]

I don't see this being offered simply because other people's computers could shut off at any moment or lose Internet connection, which would cause more headaches than just waiting for your own computer to finish the job.

[zwarmapapa]

Well, even if one client just falls offline while building and his work package has to be done by another client, it will still be faster than building on one PC only. Since every client will only get a small work package, not a lot of time is lost when one just falls offline.

I don't know if the SwarmAgent can divide lightmap building into tens or even hundreds of packages, but if that is possible it will be a lot faster than building on one PC, even if you have to wait for some packages that have to be rebuild 2 or 3 times.

[Zeqzy]

What you can do is set bAllowAdvancedOptions=true in BaseLightmass.ini
This will allow extra options tick debug then lightmass will only export the information needed to make the light maps you can upload this to a server and have a download link to get the built lightmaps

[Lonella]

Basically the idea is good, it can be done similar to astronomical calculations, NASA gives everyone pictures of outer space, and the user's computer in his spare time, processes them, and sends the result back.