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moving cargo |
Aaron Lienhardt
Fleet Admiral
Joined: December 18, 2009
Posts: 76
|  Posted: 2011-07-10 13:40
this must be said before and its a simple suggestion but can u make cargo move through space?
when u jettison something it appears near ur ship and it just stays there.
if cargo can float around in space it would make things abit more real u know?
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apate
Fleet Admiral
Joined: March 21, 2010
Posts: 205
| Posted: 2011-07-10 13:58
More work for no gain IMO.
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Aaron Lienhardt
Fleet Admiral
Joined: December 18, 2009
Posts: 76
| Posted: 2011-07-10 14:05
may i ask what the purpose of the game?
to have fun with friends?
or to gain money and do nothing with it?
half the stuff in EVE is useless but its there for players to enjoy and makes the game more realistic
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Yes!!! we got here before the damn luthies!! who wants to celebrate?
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SpaceAdmiral
Grand Admiral
Joined: May 05, 2010
Posts: 1005
| Posted: 2011-07-10 14:07
How to crash the servers: have 10 people all mine and jetison every 2 seconds, the server will have to track the movement, position, etc of the pods even when they float several hundred thousand gu's away.
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apate
Fleet Admiral
Joined: March 21, 2010
Posts: 205
| Posted: 2011-07-10 14:09
Quote:
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On 2011-07-10 14:05, Alan star wrote:
may i ask what the purpose of the game?
to have fun with friends?
or to gain money and do nothing with it?
half the stuff in EVE is useless but its there for players to enjoy and makes the game more realistic
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The purpose of this game, is to build teamwork and tactics, not stare at pretty scenery. I get your point, but it has little to no place in darkspace, considering we had to turn off orbiting planets because of server loads.
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Pantheon
Marshal
Palestar
Joined: May 29, 2001
Posts: 1789
| Posted: 2011-07-10 15:20
We're not going to be wasting precious server performance by tracking non-critically important objects through space.
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CM7
Midshipman
Faster than Light
Joined: October 15, 2009
Posts: 1812
| Posted: 2011-07-10 15:22
id rather have textures updated anyway.
Does or can, DS support normal mapping?
Get rid of polygonal shaped planets FTW
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MarineKingPrime
Marshal
Exathra Alliance Fleet
Joined: October 04, 2010
Posts: 239
From: CSS CheezyBagels
| Posted: 2011-07-10 15:34
DS supports normal maps, we just have no normal maps. I'll volunteer to make them though
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Ravendark
Marshal
Sanity Assassins
Joined: July 01, 2010
Posts: 443
| Posted: 2011-07-11 04:09
question for green space goblins!
-is it possible to palestar to upgrade their servers? better preformance, handles more players.
-how much does it cost for palestar to upgrade it?
-does palestar even have any interest to upgrade or get better server hardware or whatever i dont know how things go, but im trying to say if you guys have in your interests to get better preformance and use ds engine to its potentials?
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CM7
Midshipman
Faster than Light
Joined: October 15, 2009
Posts: 1812
| Posted: 2011-07-11 04:35
The server hardware it top notch.
The limitations for this game come directly from its engine.
As this game tracks many many objects in real time, it tends to be really processor heavy.
The only fix?
The path we are currently on.
Reduce number of projectiles
Reduce number of objects in server that need constant tracking.
Move all components you can to a dice roll system, and still maintain the ds play style.
(see and you guys thought I did not pay attention in the meetings)
Basically Games like EVE that support thousands of players, Have really low CPU usage due to dice roll systems in place. (never are their servers trying to track an object to detect if there is a collision or not)
Other online games more akin to DS, IE Call of Duty, only allow limited players onto the field, so there are a limited number of objects to track at any given time. Also, Number of sentry type systems in place are extremely limited, IE - gunships, sentry guns. In DS, at any given time the server is trying to keep up with however many planets there are in server. These planets can be viewed as sentries. They constantly ask;
1. Is enemy in range of me?
2. if so, what type is it?
3. how many?
4. Is it still in range?
5. is friendly in range of me?
6. If so, what type?
7. Is he hurt?
8. is he still hurt?
9. is he still in range?
(yes, i know this is not exact. Could Defiance sit down and map out the logic of planets in DS? YES he could. Does he want to? NO. no he dont)
This load has been reduced by allot. Used to every Defense base in the server would ask the server these same questions, however many times a second.
If you take this logic, and apply it to other aspects of DS, you quickly start to understand why the limitations are what they are.
Just in the time I’ve been here, I’ve seen the TEAM do amazing things to reduce the amount of server load in DS. The only way to continue this, that I can see, is to continue giving up "skilled" tasks in the place of auto ones.
Just consider this, next time you (DS Players) gripe at the devs for ruining the game, and turn around and ask them for better server loads.. Notice how hypocritical you seem.
"the more you know"
[ This Message was edited by: Defiance*XO* on 2011-07-11 05:45 ]
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Defiance and Opposition, a tribute to teamwork. I will remember always
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Ravendark
Marshal
Sanity Assassins
Joined: July 01, 2010
Posts: 443
| Posted: 2011-07-11 05:01
wait....are you saying im whining about server loads or something? i just asked about how things are...
im just curious, i dont read ppls mind and have no idea what are devs standing on. the point of my prevoius post was that if the case was hardware i would try to do something about it. and if i had coding capabilities i would love to help with anything about DS.
[ This Message was edited by: Ravendark on 2011-07-11 05:16 ]
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CM7
Midshipman
Faster than Light
Joined: October 15, 2009
Posts: 1812
| Posted: 2011-07-11 05:44
no, I did not direct it at you.
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Defiance and Opposition, a tribute to teamwork. I will remember always
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Pantheon
Marshal
Palestar
Joined: May 29, 2001
Posts: 1789
| Posted: 2011-07-11 07:51
Quote:
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On 2011-07-10 15:34, Sir PancakeMan de McBigMac wrote:
DS supports normal maps, we just have no normal maps. I'll volunteer to make them though
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Check UGTO in beta.
[ This Message was edited by: Pantheon on 2011-07-11 07:51 ]
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Pantheon
Marshal
Palestar
Joined: May 29, 2001
Posts: 1789
| Posted: 2011-07-11 08:06
Quote:
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On 2011-07-11 04:09, Ravendark wrote:
question for green space goblins!
-is it possible to palestar to upgrade their servers? better preformance, handles more players.
-how much does it cost for palestar to upgrade it?
-does palestar even have any interest to upgrade or get better server hardware or whatever i dont know how things go, but im trying to say if you guys have in your interests to get better preformance and use ds engine to its potentials?
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To expand on what Defiance said:
1) Is it possible to palestar to upgrade their servers? better preformance, handles more players.
It would be possible, but we're running on pretty high-end stuff (dual quad core Xeon @ 2.7Ghz). The limitation comes from how the game actually works. Games like WoW, as defiance stated, roll a dice to see if a projectile hits, this takes but a millisecond to calculate and the engine handles drawing the result. In DarkSpace we track all objects in real time (a requirement for how the game works). This means when you intercept a projectile, it hits you, and doesn't fly straight through you.
DarkSpace is more like a FPS in that sense. Now if you take Battlefield, the game with the most tracking of projectiles, you'll find that they limit their servers to 38. We limit ours to 500. Tracking projectiles and their collisions in real time is one of the most processor intensive things you can do, and we do a lot of it so that you guys have a more skill-based game.
2) How much does it cost for palestar to upgrade it?
I'm not privy to this information, but a top of the line server (8 cores, etc) would cost in the region of several thousand.
3) does palestar even have any interest to upgrade or get better server hardware or whatever i dont know how things go, but im trying to say if you guys have in your interests to get better preformance and use ds engine to its potentials?
Even if we upgraded to the top of the line servers (either the new Intel Xeon's, or the soon to be released AMD Intergalos Opterons) we'd gain perhaps maybe 10%~, which is not a huge amount. We can gain far more from refining what we need to process in real time.
For instance, we recently changed how planets deal their damage by removing the direct-fire ability from defence structures. This used to cost A LOT of processing power by scanning the space near the structure for enemy projectiles that they could fire upon. Since moving over to the new system we've seen a drop of 20%+ in server usage, which is why you don't see the server dying so much when you spam missiles anymore.
There's always more we can do to refine the engine, for example, we tried to enable basic multi-threading on the engine earlier this year, but it had some odd effects due to the QPC timing between cores (a value on processors that tells us how many cycles the processor has gone through). I'm not quite sure if we're actually running the code on the server at the moment, but I shall inquire.
We're always looking for budding and experienced programmers with experience to help us develop the game and improve the engine. If you have experience in C++, send me an email and I'll forward your application on to Faustus (backslash[at]palestar[dot]com).
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CM7
Midshipman
Faster than Light
Joined: October 15, 2009
Posts: 1812
| Posted: 2011-07-11 15:22
Even FPS don’t track projectiles on a level DS does.
(speaking of how unreal works, and assuming COD and other FPS still use the same technology)
In order to see if you hit your target, the engine takes the point you were aiming at, and throws some math at it (ie. were you moving, was he moving, ect) and dice rolls on probability of a hit. After it determines if you hit or not, it draws a projectile on the given path. (though it don’t have to track the projectile. It was determined rather it hit or missed before it was ever generated).
DS is truly a marvel of engineering!
Put that with the fact that its an indi game, and you get why im so hooked on it.
Thanks Dev team, for a wonderful experience. Ill continue to support DS until servers no longer function. 
[ This Message was edited by: Defiance*XO* on 2011-07-11 15:24 ]
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