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Chris' Release 7 brain dump!

Discussion in 'Announcements' started by Chris, Jul 3, 2014.

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  1. Sindariya

    Sindariya Avatar

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    We were never rivals, it was more mentor and student , and yes it was my intention to break the game. I'm really happy that I found so many willing helpers in this release and we had much fun torturing the server. After having over 1.000 items on a city lot, I tried to figure out how many items we could place on a town lot. How should we know that there wasn't a limit :oops:
    But I'm really satisfied with my stress test, never thought we would really overcome the 5.000 item border *YEAH* but I like the 105.000 draw calls even more. Did I made it in the book of records of New Britannia?:p
    I'm glad that the maze helped^^ and we will test you again in R10. Promised. Then in Owls Head to make the things go worse.;)
     
    Sindariya, Jul 3, 2014
    #21
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  2. Duke Lorimus

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    Thanks @Chris

    A full Size Dippy Bird just earned a place in my Yard,,,,,,,, Full Avatar Size of course... what ? Not created yet ? ..*sighs* ok , but I must insist on the first one for free ..then :)

    Thanks for the update .

    Lor
     
    Duke Lorimus, Jul 3, 2014
    #22
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  3. mike11

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    Are you guys opposed to ditching the vertical layer and moving straight to AI encounters and other special features?
    I would prefer that at this point.

    ;)

    Sent from my GT-S5690M using Tapatalk 2
     
    mike11, Jul 3, 2014
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  4. Lord Lonn

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    Thanks Chris Awesome Awesome. Can't wait again of course


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
     
    Lord Lonn, Jul 3, 2014
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  5. Bow Vale

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    Yes thank you for another fabulous update. Its great to get your technical autopsy after the release is dead. Great to see we have a tech lead dedicated to perfection and also glad you are to be involved in giving us pvp and combat updates.
     
    Bow Vale, Jul 3, 2014
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  6. Ronan

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    *worries the GeForce GTS 450 will be outside the 98%* :(
     
    Ronan, Jul 3, 2014
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  7. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

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    This was just a bug. This was working at one point and broke somewhere along the way. I thought we got a fix in on Friday for the weekend but not 100% sure if it made it.
     
    Chris, Jul 3, 2014
    #27
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  8. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

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    The plan is that a few more creatures will get wrapped up during the next two releases while people are focused on PVP and then after these two PVP releases, we'll be hitting the AI stuff hard. We just felt that the best test for polishing combat and making it fun was other players. No matter how smart we make the AI, it will never be as good as another passionate person. No worries though, AI work will be going during R8 and R9, it just isn't the focus. :)
     
    Chris, Jul 3, 2014
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  9. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

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    Honestly, as long as you have a dual core something and at least 4GB of RAM and a DX9 compatible card with 1GB, you should be able to turn the shadows, AO, and AA off and get decent results. BTW, I have intentionally kept myself on an nvidia 550TI so I never forget to watch performance. 550TI clocks in about 30% higher on performance than your 450. By the time we get done optimizing you should be fine. Though you are correct that you are definitely behind the curve. :O
     
    Chris, Jul 3, 2014
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  10. Joviex

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    That is a very old card at this point (working on six years). Generationally it is 4 generations behind.

    Yes, the 4x series still has D3D 12 SM5 support, but... that particular series actually dropped on-board SRAM per ALU compared to the 200 series and ended up being a more general purpose processor instead of a solid focused GPU card.

    I had a 450, then got a 570, then a 770 over the last five years.

    Granted, you don't need to update like that, but I'd seriously consider even a low end 700 or a mid range 600 series upgrade.
     
    Joviex, Jul 3, 2014
    #30
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  11. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

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    For future releases we'll have some limits to how many times can be placed but also better items for making maze like structures with fewer items! The number should be high enough to reproduce the maze MINUS the the 4000+ objects placed on every shelf. :p

    Also, another tech tidbit on this topic is that this inspired our server engineer to finally tackle moving lot serialization from text based to binary. The text bases stuff we had was easy to implement and easy to debug, which is what we needed for the start of the project. The text based stuff was also HUGE compared to the equivalent binary version and worse, it was slow to pack and unpack on each side. We were spending a large chunk of time converting floating point (stuff like 4.731) to a text format on one side and then converting the text based version back to the binary version on the other side. Likely fixed in R8 which will mean MUCH faster load times for big city maps with lots of player houses!
     
    Chris, Jul 3, 2014
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  12. Koldar

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    Killer update. Thanks, Chris!
     
    Koldar, Jul 3, 2014
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  13. Drocis the Devious

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    I also have an nvidia 450 that I've posted a few bug reports about (crashing). I haven't even tried using that computer for the last two releases. Instead, I'm upgrading to dual nvidia 770's and 32 mb ram with an overlocked i7 cpu. So I don't expect to have any more crashes. :)

    But I'd still REALLY like to use this computer with the 450 for my kids. It would be really nice to have three of us in-game at the same time, so I hope the "behind the curve" cards find a way into viability by release.
     
    Drocis the Devious, Jul 3, 2014
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  14. Ronan

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    I really have not had many issues playing so far with that card. A few drops, mainly while running around Owls Head, but nothing I'm not used to ;)
    Other computer has the GTX 460 which is better for online games, but I have not been using that one.
    I figure I'm the champion for old timers...the folks living on a pension check and really can't afford, or don't know how to install a new card. I'll stick with this set up and see how things go. I don't think I have to worry.
     
    Ronan, Jul 3, 2014
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  15. Floors

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    Don't forget about us on laptop GPUs. Even the best ones suck compared to GTX and HD equivalent desktop cards
     
    Floors, Jul 3, 2014
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  16. Dorham Isycle

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    YES, let us scale down to stick figures :)
     
    Dorham Isycle, Jul 3, 2014
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  17. Link_of_Hyrule

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    Chris I have a laptop with an Intel Core i5 2410M Sandy Bridge with Intel HD 3000 graphics and 8GB of ram do you think I'll ever be able to run the game at like 30 FPS or so once it's optimized? Right now I get between 7 to 12 FPS.
     
    Link_of_Hyrule, Jul 3, 2014
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  18. Mercyful Fate

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    PvP players world-wide nod their heads in agreement.
     
    Mercyful Fate, Jul 3, 2014
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  19. MulGirtab [BEAR]

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    Duel System! So we can have One on One fights without any out side interference!!!
     
    MulGirtab [BEAR], Jul 3, 2014
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  20. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

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    Link, the integrated card on my box is an HD 4000 and I plan to test extensively on it. My guess is that in final form, you'll get good frame rate in most dungeons (easy to optimize), decent in overworld map and outdoor adventure zones, and probably be in the 15 fps range in big city stuff. We'll get in tons more performance stuff before the end of the year but there are limits to what we can fix. After all the performance fixes go in we're left with the choice of dumbing down city and decorating rules or making the weakest machines suffer with 12 fps. My advice is don't pick a fight in a busy town or buy a new machine. :/ We'll do what we can though and we have LOTS more improvements to make.
     
    Chris, Jul 3, 2014
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