I don’t have much experience in networking, but for my upcoming game, I hope to incorporate multiplayer through servers. What I want to know is:
How much would a server that can handle, say, 32 players on an fps game cost
And the cost for more high end or low end servers.
It depends. A server can handle anything between 0 and 1,000,000,000 concurrent players.
As for how much a server would cost that would handle 32 players: anything between $0 and $100,000, I presume.
Without any meaningful information, nobody can answer your question. It depends on your code, what you do and don’t simulate on the server, and the algorithms that are used.
It really would depends on what you want to do with it. I personally run a dedicated minecraft server which runs on a computer with less than 1 gig of RAM from circa 2001. Mine would probably go for about $100.
I would start off running on a virtual private server to test and save money. Otherwise as others have said it depends on how much resources your game uses. Try to optimize.
You would need to find a good data center that has good network connectivity to your players. This will require some research.
You will need to see what is important for your game - memory, cpu, io or all and decide on a budget. I’d say $100-$500 per month would do the job for now.
If you were thinking of hosting this on your own computer at home, I’d refrain from doing so.
You can rent space on servers, a good one that I use is:
Very reasonable prices, full access to your server or directories, it’s great for testing things.