Forums » Suggestions

Remove a GOOD sized chunk of the debris in the unrat sector.

Dec 24, 2018 IronLord link
Okay. This is pretty self explanatory. It looked cool at first. But.

Its more of a annoyance now.
Makes it harder to deal with unrats, I wouldn't mind them being harder. But it should affect gameplay. Not performance.
There's no way in the universe that the unrats did that amount of damage to that many ships, even if it was a large battle of any kind. Nor are the colors of the ships there any less confusing. It was a cool idea to making the sector looks more lively and such. But jumping in on unrats and being frozen for several seconds while my device tries load in all of the resources. Either lower the amount of objects in sector. Or remove it completely. It doesn't help anything.
Dec 24, 2018 Aryko link
The debris isn't there for some back story, it's there to for testing. The sector only lags on mobile devices, you should send in a ticket so the devs can improve it.
Dec 24, 2018 We all float link
-1

This exact suggestion was made in August. Inc replied and wrote this:





IL wrote:
"There's no way in the universe that the unrats did that amount of damage to that many ships, even if it was a large battle of any kind.

I have watched unrats eviscerate connies and capellas. Why wouldn't they drag the hulks back to their hidey hole?
Dec 25, 2018 incarnate link
Yup. Like the link above says: Higher density sectors are coming. (Much, much higher density sectors. These test sectors are "trivial", compared to our goals).

We do suggest that people carefully analyze their game's performance without plugins, before raising concerns.. but once that's been well-established, then we welcome feedback on performance issues.

Like, for instance, you could open a bug on "jumping in on unrats and being frozen for several seconds". That seems like a pretty big problem, right? One that could probably be technically addressed in a variety of ways, while keeping all the sector content.

But again: Please carefully review your own client's performance, without plugins, and any changes based on your graphical settings, before posting a Bug. And then, also be sure to include a lot of device/hardware and platform details in your report.
Dec 25, 2018 Heini link
It will get increased? Oh well I guess I won't be able to kill Unrats in the future
Dec 25, 2018 Whistler link
Or, you could wait until you have trouble, submit a detailed bug report, and perhaps help to optimize the experience for yourself and others.
Dec 25, 2018 incarnate link
It will get increased? Oh well I guess I won't be able to kill Unrats in the future

Yeah, it's like you're not reading anything I'm saying.

We just invested a year in re-writing the engine, for this exact purpose. Chances are, your hardware is capable of rendering a whole hell of a lot more content, a lot more quickly, than it is right now.
Dec 26, 2018 Heini link
My potato PC would probably still not be able to handle that. But then again it's my own fault for using such an old PC and I'm probably the only one anyways.
Dec 26, 2018 Nick_9137 link
Incarnate, you're trying to blame poor perfomance issues on the client and a players plugin usage. In reality, a lot of people have weak computers/devices. Which is why I made this suggestion in August, because my tablet simply could not keep up with the amount of entities in the sector. It's not a bug, it's a performance issue on weaker systems that can't handle thousands of dynamic objects, regardless of plugin usage, or client mishaps or whatever. It's like saying "But why can't your moped drag this trailer? My pickup truck pulls it without a problem."
Dec 26, 2018 A-Dawg link
My 2015 MacBook Pro that has a potato-powered lightbulb for a graphics card can handle anything that's been thrown at it so far with relative ease. I expect it'll still be able to handle what is coming in following years. Listen to the devs, check your plugins and graphical settings.
Dec 26, 2018 Heini link
PC from 2015? Try using a Windows Vista from 2006 hehe. But I never said that I was against making the game look better. We shouldn't stop going forwards just because of a few weak PCs.
Dec 26, 2018 incarnate link
Incarnate, you're trying to blame poor perfomance issues on the client and a players plugin usage.

What I'm saying is entirely accurate. There are plugins that enumerate every object in the sector and completely slow the client down. I need to separate those people who claim "lag" because of bad plugins, from people who are experiencing slow framerates due to their actual hardware.

We get a lot of spurious (false) reports of bad performance, from players using plugins, and we waste a lot of time on this. So yes, I do make it very clear that I want to eliminate those possibilities before any further reports.

In reality, a lot of people have weak computers/devices.

I make and ship a cross-platform MMORPG and benchmark, and I've been doing this stuff for over two decades; let's just assume, for the sake of argument, that I know more about device performance (slow and fast) than all of the rest of you, put together. (I'm not trying to sound arrogant, I'm just trying to move on from "you don't understand that we have slow machines!", when there's little I understand better).

So, please just listen to me. Your "ancient" computers and "slow" devices are probably not as slow as you think. There are a lot of efficiency changes and improvements that we're doing, which will likely make it possible to run large quantities of "debris" on your screen, at high framerates. There are techniques, like geometry instancing, that make it possible to render thousands of similar objects in a scene, with no additional overhead (frame-rate impact) versus a dozen of the same objects.

But, we benefit from feedback, reports, and information on how things are impacting you, to make it better. Different hardware, different OS versions (even ancient), different driver versions, they can all react in different ways.

So, seriously, stop asking me to reduce the amount of debris, and instead report the specific problems on Bugs, the way I asked back in August.

THE TEST SECTORS EXIST, SO WE CAN TEST THINGS.
Dec 27, 2018 IronLord link
Alright. Fair enough
Dec 27, 2018 peytros link
Inc i have a question about the unnamed plugins you are speaking of. I can hazard a guess that one of them is rather popular plugin that many players think improves the "quality of life" and playability of the game. Is there any consideration to replace this plugin with a built in version that would be more streamlined and effecient? I know you guys did this with auto route from the pirates tool kit which IIRC was accepted by the community positively.
Dec 27, 2018 starblazzz link
If it's for testing remove it from the unrats base because we HAVE to kill them.
Dec 27, 2018 PaKettle link
Heh. the only plugs that look at everything in the sector are player in sector lists and
asteriod cataloggers like mine which should be only active on player command.

They do have a history of conflict with each other due to both attempting to use to radar at
the same time but only occurs when both are on.

Most of the issues I have seen in the dense sectors are more bandwith issues the anything else.
To date the devs dont appear to be catcheing the data but to be fair the positional data would still
need to be updated each time the sector gets loaded. I assume they decided it wasnt worth the effort.

In the end its a lot of data to be passed and there will never be a guarantee for proformance so it will
always be an issue beyond the devs control.
Dec 27, 2018 incarnate link
Is there any consideration to replace this plugin with a built in version that would be more streamlined and effecient?

Sure, we did this with a lot of plugins, a lot more than just auto-route. But, some of these plugins are fairly complex, and there's a bigger lift of development time to replicate them. At that point it's not really about "replicating plugins" and more about "re-working the default game interface".

If it's for testing remove it from the unrats base because we HAVE to kill them.

We had that for quite a long time (Latos F-12, etc), before I added the unrats. And generally, people didn't test or fly around in the debris-dense test sectors; especially if they had bad performance, they would simply avoid it. So, creating a situation where players are more likely to confront (and report) the existence of a problem is completely intentional.

Most of the issues I have seen in the dense sectors are more bandwith issues the anything else.

There aren't any "bandwidth issues" after the sector has actually fully loaded, so all problems beyond that point are completely unrelated to bandwidth. There are problems with the sector continuing to load after people have flown into it. But, different people are having different issues. Some are draw-calls, some are load time, some are "other". Hence the value of bug reports.

In the end its a lot of data to be passed and there will never be a guarantee for proformance so it will
always be an issue beyond the devs control.


Not really, there are a great many optimizations and architectural tweaks that would likely mitigate or eliminate some, or all, of the issues people are encountering. That's why it's more useful that people stick to reporting the issues on Bugs, and leaving the technical decisions up to us.
Dec 28, 2018 PaKettle link
Have not seen any issues in the ship debris sectors once they are fully loaded.
Just serious loading delay and control issues during the initial load .
I am sure the effects could easily be reported as something else but in the end....

sorry but its clearly a bandwith issue for me.
You really need to compress the data a lot more or store it locally somehow.
I am quite aware the data is dynamicly generated but something as to be done or this type of sector
will forever be a sore spot with the playerbase. Denial will not solve the issue. Its simply too much data
to reliably send over a 4g connection.

btw... im on wifi / oculus go so my bandwith usually is a little better then the 4g mobile guys.
Dec 28, 2018 Whistler link
My money is on the guys who have ISP industry experience, good relationships within the gaming and hardware industry, and 18+ years of experience with this game.

I will test and report with all of my devices.
Dec 28, 2018 incarnate link
Have not seen any issues in the ship debris sectors once they are fully loaded.

Yup. But, that's because your device is fast enough to not have drawcall issues, or any of the cache-miss problems related to the usage of octree data structures being expanded past their performant intended scale, and various other issues we're already well aware of and working on.

But you are not the center of the universe, and the fact that you haven't seen these issues, does not mean they do not exist for others (who have been complaining about them for some time).

Just serious loading delay and control issues during the initial load .

I just wrote, above: "There are problems with the sector continuing to load after people have flown into it." That is a known bug. It is not a surprise, or exciting new information you're supplying to me.

All sector data is supposed to be loaded by the client, before the sector places you and instantiates your entrance into the sector. This is not happening in some of the new sectors. We know. And that's something we'll obviously fix. It's so ****ing obvious, that continued discussion of the subject is a waste of my time. I certainly don't benefit from your "vast knowledge" of the subject. I just need reports on Bugs about which people are seeing which issues, which is all I keep asking for.

Why did I suggest opening a Bug report on "jumping in on unrats and being frozen for several seconds", when it's something I'm already aware of and know the cause of? Because the report specifics are helpful, and may help illustrate other ramifications or secondary issues, as well as correlating the parameters of the people most effected (like their negotiated MTU size, avg/min/max latency, and other time-specific and logged content).

The reports are useful, unlike the rest of this conversation..

sorry but its clearly a bandwith issue for me.
You really need to compress the data a lot more or store it locally somehow.
I am quite aware the data is dynamicly generated but something as to be done or this type of sector
will forever be a sore spot with the playerbase. Denial will not solve the issue. Its simply too much data
to reliably send over a 4g connection.


(Facepalm).

Yes, you clearly need to explain the value of bandwidth to someone who built an MMORPG that ran over 28.8kbit modems at 250ms. "Denial will not solve the issue."? Are you freaking kidding me? I just explained the issue in my previous post.

I would just ignore your posts, but you keep making these dire pronouncements about how "there will never be a guarantee for proformance so it will always be an issue beyond the devs control" and "Its simply too much data to reliably send over a 4g connection", which are ****ing wrong, and I keep having to respond so people understand that these are not scary issues to us at all.

I already had to weigh in on this thread, to alleviate fears, because Heini thinks that any increase in debris will make the game permanently unplayable for him. And now you're making more statements to give people false fears and concerns.

Why aren't these issues scary? Because WE AREN'T IDIOTS. I have 20 different architectural changes, that we haven't implemented, that can specifically resolve issues like this. The changes all have different ramifications and development times attached to them, and improve things in different ways, but none of them are "new". I've known about these challenges for decades.

The fact is, it only makes sense for us to implement architectural changes that best suit the particular issues encountered, which is why I keep asking for people to just make reports.

The data we accumulate from player reports helps to inform our development decisions. That's the whole point of real-world testing. Oh, we have our own latency/bandwidth/randomized-loss simulator, which is why the game works reasonably well already, but it's genuinely helpful to get real-world reports.

The value is not to receive opinionated, un-informed analysis of game architecture from people who clearly don't know anything. Telling an MMO dev that "bandwidth will always be a problem" is like telling Honda that their car tires should be round.

Of course, the real irony is none of the crazy architectural tweaks I have available are even necessary in your particular situation. If we just fix the stupid sector-loading bug, your dire "bandwidth" problem will go away. But.. I'm trying to look ahead, past "wheels should be round", because I actually know what I'm doing.

So, please, for the love of god and all that is holy, just do what I ask? There are plenty of times when the player-base is super well-informed, like emerging tactics or relative game balance ramifications. This is NOT one of those times. Help me in the way that I need, and then let me do my job?