Best way to connect multiple client pcs to a single game disc over LAN?

[kevincolby650]

At my computer shop we are looking to install a few smaller(under 4GB) less popular online games on a central computer.

Here is what I would like to accomplish if possible.

1. Max of five or so computers can read from the drive and play the same game at the same time without causing file corruption or game errors.

2. Game can only be upgraded from central computer. (Best through user security?)

3. Clients can not delete the game files.

Tricky parts
If the game was not updated from the central computer/server, i would assume the game would not play due to write restrictions, this may also cause other issues if it needs to write something to the game folder. Is it possible to create a write back temp folder? Or Is there a way to have a game folder froze like deep freeze or shadow defender that would allow changes to be made then restart would put it back or same clicks of a button would return it to a snapshot state?


Performance
I know someone is going to say that it will be bad performance for game load times. But most of the time it's going to be 1-2 people on at the same time and not worried if it takes a little longer to load since they are not always played either. I do have gigabit network too.

It looks like iscsi connection would cause file corruption.

SMB might be an option but not really sure.

If you guys have any methods I can do or something for me to google I would really appreciate it.

Thank you!

 

[captaincharisma]

best way is to to create an ISO of the game and copy that ISO and mount it using software like daemon tools on all the computers being used. as for security on all the computer create one user account with admin privileges that is password protected and one that is a standard user which will prevent any major changes like deleting files

 

[Wolfshadw]

1. Max of five or so computers can read from the drive and play the same game at the same time without causing file corruption or game errors.

This is illegal. If you want multiple players to play the same game, you must purchase a game license for each and every player.

Tom's Hardware does not support software piracy in any form and discussion of which is strictly prohibited.

Wolfshadw
Moderator

 

[Mister_MO]

What u are asking is possible to some games, because they save settings and user data outside game folder, but others inside. Just simply sharing folder without write permission is easiest way and in many cases work just fine, you just need test it. Biggest problem is drive performance while loading, you would need to use ssd, as hdd cant support more than 2 users without significant slowing of read speeds.
Other option would be installing games normally and have some syncing/backup software do work of updating, that would need you to automate it or check every day for updates on central pc and from there sync it.

To Wolfshadw: Dont assume this is piracy, most online games need your own account and simply sharing game files between computers is nothing illegal.

 

[Wolfshadw]

To Wolfshadw: Dont assume this is piracy, most online games need your own account and simply sharing game files between computers is nothing illegal.

Which is why I left the thread open as opposed to closing it outright. I gave the OP the opportunity to respond back with clarifications.

As to your point, while what you state is perfectly legal, what would be the point? If every player has their own account/license, why not just install on each computer instead of trying to share the files?

-Wolf sends

 

[kevincolby650]

Yes these are free online games that have there own account like the Ran Online games. And also some fps like unreal tournament, paragon are all free to play with account. But in my shop only a couple people play the Ran Online games and similar games like that. I don't really care for them but I would like to have it accessible for when they want to play it. But I don't want to go through all the hassle to install every game on each computer. Most store the info in my documents so I did test one with no security just to see if it would work and it did with two computers. I like the folder option best if I could get it to work. The ISO option is interesting idea. Would I be able to have all the game folders mounted into one ISO and then just sync the ISO with a program that does block sync instead of the whole thing. If so can anyone recommend sync program for that?

 

[kevincolby650]

I don't want to install on each computer because let's say there are 10 of these games on 20 computers, that would be 200 games to install and maintain.

 

[captaincharisma]

Yes these are free online games that have there own account like the Ran Online games. And also some fps like unreal tournament, paragon are all free to play with account. But in my shop only a couple people play the Ran Online games and similar games like that. I don't really care for them but I would like to have it accessible for when they want to play it. But I don't want to go through all the hassle to install every game on each computer. Most store the info in my documents so I did test one with no security just to see if it would work and it did with two computers. I like the folder option best if I could get it to work. The ISO option is interesting idea. Would I be able to have all the game folders mounted into one ISO and then just sync the ISO with a program that does block sync instead of the whole thing. If so can anyone recommend sync program for that?

with the ISO option it would just copy the game disk into an ISO image you can mount. if you wanted to add any other folders to the ISO you would need an ISO creator to edit or create one to add more files and folders. but an ISO image acts like the game disk so it would be read only

 

[bill001g]

Your requirements have changed. 1-2 users is much different that 20 computers. I would hope you would not have 20 computers and only have 2 active.

Still that is mostly just building a machines that can actually deliver the 1g network speed. High speed disks or raid will likely solve this.

I suspect you are going to have mulitple shared directories depending on the game. You will have to also very carefully configure the games because they need to store user data either locally or in different directories on the main file server. It can be done it just takes careful setup.

I do this on a much smaller extent because I do not want steam to download huge patches multiple times if I play games on different machines. It does not take long when you have a bandwidth cap with some games.

 

[Wolfshadw]

I don't want to install on each computer because let's say there are 10 of these games on 20 computers, that would be 200 games to install and maintain.

If done properly (install the games on one computer, create a system image, install that image on all other computers), then it is a far simpler task than trying to get this up and running in the first place (dealing with permissions, local accounts) as well as software upgrades.

Here, your only problem is restoring local account data and you should be able to figure out how to do that using an Internet Cafe as a model.

-Wolf sends

 

[kevincolby650]

I do have 20 computers but only 1-2 people will be playing at the same time most of the time since they are not popular. In my original post I said max of 5 users or so incase they being a friend, but never has happens at the same time. Some games like A.V.A. Or first assault are only played by one person.

I do have 2 accounts already setup on all the computers so setting user permission might not be to bad.

All the big online games sync with the server. I just would like to free up HDD space on the computer but still have these side games available. Plus I can just run the game to update then no syncing is what I would really like to do.

I was thinking of putting them on there own HDD. I get 80-90mb transfer speeds to the computers with my WD Blue. That way if the server is doing something then at least the 2nd drive would be free to spin up.

 

[PhysX_HW]

1. Max of five or so computers can read from the drive and play the same game at the same time without causing file corruption or game errors.

This is illegal. If you want multiple players to play the same game, you must purchase a game license for each and every player.

Tom's Hardware does not support software piracy in any form and discussion of which is strictly prohibited.

Wolfshadw
Moderator

Why would it be? I think it would be more like mapping multiple users' steam folders to a shared folder, so that only one copy of the game is being downloaded and updated, which makes sense if there are a lot of users.

Though the problems are the game save folders. Some games may contain system specific settings or information in the game folder itself, so they will overwrite it every time the game starts on that PC. If they can't, they will always start with default settings, or won't start at all.

I was going to suggest iSCSI, but I haven't tried it before with multiple PCs in a configuration like this. The only reason why I'm using it is because Origin doesn't like shared drives, it cannot install games there, even if it has a drive letter and mounted permanently.

So, there might be a way to store a different version of a folder for each user, i.e. if a user modifies a file, the server saves it as a -different- file and the user will get that file next time when he requires it, but if a user just reads it, it will be read from the common folder that everyone can see. So, this way, some files will have multiple copies for every user, but the game files will only be stored once. It could also solve the save file problem.

Though unfortunately, I don't know how you could implement something like what I described above. You might find something that does exactly that, but there may be nothing at all.

 

[Wolfshadw]

Why would it be? I think it would be more like mapping multiple users' steam folders to a shared folder, so that only one copy of the game is being downloaded and updated, which makes sense if there are a lot of users.

The OP was implying a single license for multiple users at the same time. That (in the US anyway) is illegal (fraud/theft) unless specifically stated in the terms of use that it's ok (never seen it).

-Wolf sends

 

[kevincolby650]

The OP was implying a single license for multiple users at the same time. That (in the US anyway) is illegal (fraud/theft) unless specifically stated in the terms of use that it's ok (never seen it).

-Wolf sends

The first paragraph in my post said online games. I never implied a single license for multiple users. All online games I know of you have to have an account, and then sign in. You can't sign in multiple times either. You where the only one who was thinking that. The rest had the understanding that I was trying to perform an update on a game once and use those files across the network rather then syncing and eating up disk space for games that are not in demand. I'm surprised you wrote that even after I explained what I was trying to accomplish. I'm just trying to get some options and ideas so I can research them on my own and see what would work best for my situation.

 

[kevincolby650]

I looked into iscsi but it can cause curroption if accessed by multiple computers at the same time.

I'll try some of the other options that you guys have suggested and try to google some more if those don't work out. I'll keep you updated incase it can help anyone else trying to do something similar.

 

[Wolfshadw]

The OP was implying a single license for multiple users at the same time. That (in the US anyway) is illegal (fraud/theft) unless specifically stated in the terms of use that it's ok (never seen it).

-Wolf sends

The first paragraph in my post said online games. I never implied a single license for multiple users. All online games I know of you have to have an account, and then sign in. You can't sign in multiple times either. You where the only one who was thinking that. The rest had the understanding that I was trying to perform an update on a game once and use those files across the network rather then syncing and eating up disk space for games that are not in demand. I'm surprised you wrote that even after I explained what I was trying to accomplish. I'm just trying to get some options and ideas so I can research them on my own and see what would work best for my situation.

I was simply replying to the question posed to me.

Somebody asked why I thought what you were doing was illegal. Your initial post implied (to me, anyway) one disc, one license (my mistake), multiple concurrent users. which is why I replied as I did.You have since clarified that I was in error and I obviously realize and accept that, otherwise, I'd have closed this thread long ago.

-Wolf sends