Clive Johnson CIG dispel some myths that get repeated quite a lot...

[Carlos Spicyweiner]

OH NOESSSSSS!!!!!!!! STOP THE BIG COMPUTER WORDS!!!!!!

 

[Lorddarthvik]

Actually this is because it really doesn't take much CPU power for a multi-threaded cpu to sort through the big ass RAM chunk that is paging your 40Gb file, It just takes time. The consequence is, your GPU is spending most of the time between frame rendering, wondering when the CPU will finally find the objects it's requesting. That alone can reduce the frame rate, because it's inefficient use of the GPU and CPU's time. All they need to do to fix that is complete the very onerous task of object optimization. (There's a LOT of objects to optimize) It won't go away completely, but it'll become more efficient.

Here's a concrete example, well maybe not concrete as in cement, but it's something I noticed in game. The hab doors, aren't door objects, they're composites. You'd have to check with CIG, or dig through the Data file to find out if this is right, but this is what i think:

• 1 object for the door itself,
• 2 frames for the Open/Closed plackards (one each side of the door),
• 2 plackards (one each side of the door)
• 2 Item 2.0 highlight objects which are inverted copies of the frame I think. You just invert the normals, then color the inverted faces when the user hovers the cursor over a sensitive spot.
• That's 7.
• But the sensitive spot seems to be able to offset. That might mean 2 more invisible prims that instruct their respective highlight object to light up. That's 9

You also have the text display and respond to the user's click, but that might be shared with the sensitive spot things. So that's potential for an object made up as a composite of 11 other objects. Now there are I have no idea how many doors, but in Port Olisar alone there are well over 100. so potentially well over 1100 objects - just for doors.

How'd I figure this out? At first I didn't give it any thought at all, then I noticed things don't quite line up all the time, and sometimes they simply don't all rez. More than once, the plackard bit, the piece that says Open, is only half inside the frame, or some part is missing. You get the highlight, but nothing is there to say, "Press" when you hover over it. Sometimes if you search around you can find it elsewhere on the surface of the door. That's weird if it's only 1 object, but not if it's a composite, and my system is trying to figure out where all these overlapping objects should be rezzed.

Yep, makes perfect sense, thanks!

Everything seems to use this composite system (which is basicly ITEM2.0 I think), and thus guns won't rotate with the Hornets wings, door panels get left behind while the door moves, and your pipboy gets left behind hangin in mid air after using it... Seen lots of stuff like this happen.

Spoiler: offtopic rant

My biggest fear regarding SC is that these underlying systems can't ever be fully fixed, because they operate on principles that inherently carry these errors or are just not scale-able enough for a game of this scope. Proof of this is how they had to rewrite half the engine code already just to make physics and the item system barely work. It took well over 2 years to just to make the physics grid work in a way where you won't fall through your ship or the ground every single time a network packet got lost, or the server yawns for a moment or sumthin... And if you have a slightly misaligned animation, you still do fall through stuff regardless.
You still can't get out of the seat in a 300i without going through the canopy glass and falling to the ground... How can you expect ppl to believe that this system, that feels messed up on the basic principle level, one day will get perfectly fixed after such a long time without much improvement to show for the time spent? I know that's the least of their problems right now, and I know they did groundbreaking stuff, which I love about this project. Yet, and I know I'm talking like the avarage dumb gamer here, these things are actually worrying on a deeper level. And I'm getting kinda tired of this.
Now they are telling me that it's not network issues on their end, it's my PC that's lacking... The reason I bought a new PC back then was to have a proper work and gaming computer that could run SC perfectly fine. 5 years ago this was a decent enough build that still runs everything fine with my new 1060 on Ultra or at lest High. Now they are telling me I should spend another x thousand bucks in a few years cos otherwise I'm fucked. Great... I know I should've known better, but I didn't exactly expect a 10 year dev cycle...
Well anyways, I guess I'll have to wait 2-5 more years to see something stable and fun, and I'll have time to figure out which bank to rob for that pc money...

 

[Radegast74]

Yep, makes perfect sense, thanks!

Everything seems to use this composite system (which is basicly ITEM2.0 I think), and thus guns won't rotate with the Hornets wings, door panels get left behind while the door moves, and your pipboy gets left behind hangin in mid air after using it... Seen lots of stuff like this happen.

Spoiler: offtopic rant

My biggest fear regarding SC is that these underlying systems can't ever be fully fixed, because they operate on principles that inherently carry these errors or are just not scale-able enough for a game of this scope. Proof of this is how they had to rewrite half the engine code already just to make physics and the item system barely work. It took well over 2 years to just to make the physics grid work in a way where you won't fall through your ship or the ground every single time a network packet got lost, or the server yawns for a moment or sumthin... And if you have a slightly misaligned animation, you still do fall through stuff regardless.
You still can't get out of the seat in a 300i without going through the canopy glass and falling to the ground... How can you expect ppl to believe that this system, that feels messed up on the basic principle level, one day will get perfectly fixed after such a long time without much improvement to show for the time spent? I know that's the least of their problems right now, and I know they did groundbreaking stuff, which I love about this project. Yet, and I know I'm talking like the avarage dumb gamer here, these things are actually worrying on a deeper level. And I'm getting kinda tired of this.
Now they are telling me that it's not network issues on their end, it's my PC that's lacking... The reason I bought a new PC back then was to have a proper work and gaming computer that could run SC perfectly fine. 5 years ago this was a decent enough build that still runs everything fine with my new 1060 on Ultra or at lest High. Now they are telling me I should spend another x thousand bucks in a few years cos otherwise I'm fucked. Great... I know I should've known better, but I didn't exactly expect a 10 year dev cycle...
Well anyways, I guess I'll have to wait 2-5 more years to see something stable and fun, and I'll have time to figure out which bank to rob for that pc money...

So, regarding the spoiler, I guess nobody has the answers. However, remember that running just Arena Commander or Star Marine (or the PU offline) shows what your system is capable of, if it didn't have to worry about calculating all the other players stuff...

Optimization is always the last thing that they work on. With all the other systems they are working on, they likely are no where near looking at optimization yet. The neat thing is, as the hardware advances, the optimization will pay off even more. So, I would guess that every year we will see a steady progression (as long as feature creep doesn't outpace everything else).

 

[Vavrik]

My biggest fear regarding SC is that these underlying systems can't ever be fully fixed, because they operate on principles that inherently carry these errors or are just not scale-able enough for a game of this scope.

I just want to be clear about where I stand on this. I absolutely LOVE where they're going with this game. I'm critical of CIG, because what I do for a living closely resembles what they do for a living so I can be, but I am not negative about it. I'm also not insinuating anyone else is.
There are going to be growing pains, and at times it's going to hurt. There are going to be times when the full vision can't be realized quite like it was envisioned, and they're going to need to compromise here and there. That's the nature of software development.

 

[Richard Bong]

I just want to be clear about where I stand on this. I absolutely LOVE where they're going with this game. I'm critical of CIG, because what I do for a living closely resembles what they do for a living so I can be, but I am not negative about it. I'm also not insinuating anyone else is.
There are going to be growing pains, and at times it's going to hurt. There are going to be times when the full vision can't be realized quite like it was envisioned, and they're going to need to compromise here and there. That's the nature of software development.

I did 3D Graphics Software QA for 9 years. Their QA and release process drives me absolutely nuts. Especially since the servers are not the same and they still haven't figured that they have to test on both production and dev, not just dev.

So yes, I feel your pain. LOL

 

[Xian-Luc Picard]

Q: Can I fly awesome spaceships?
A: Yes.

All I need to know.

 

[Bambooza]

I did 3D Graphics Software QA for 9 years. Their QA and release process drives me absolutely nuts. Especially since the servers are not the same and they still haven't figured that they have to test on both production and dev, not just dev.

So yes, I feel your pain. LOL

True but its the end result of this trend to embed QA with development as part of the Agile process and have QA testing task and forgetting its only testing iterative and not final builds. Great you've ran my junit test and it still passes, how about seeing if i broke anything else.

 

[Richard Bong]

True but its the end result of this trend to embed QA with development as part of the Agile process and have QA testing task and forgetting its only testing iterative and not final builds. Great you've ran my junit test and it still passes, how about seeing if i broke anything else.

And that is just part of what should be going on. Like I said, CIG drives me nuts on this.

My favorite is getting smacked by bugs I watched them fix on bug smashers.

 

[Bambooza]

Sometimes I wish I went into game development instead of accounting software that has been bastardized in java.

 

[Vavrik]

Sometimes I wish I went into game development instead of accounting software that has been bastardized in java.

That is absolutely hilarious! So you get it in Financial software too? We used to say, "The light at the end of the tunnel is actually the headlight of the freight train carrying the next change request"

 

[Bambooza]

I believe it has effected all software development. Right now we are in the process of trying to utilize Jira by putting everything in as issues and tasks while triplicating it in starteam and bugzilla. The software has become so customized and unmanaged that each customer has their own unique version with no upgrade path between releases. In fact upgrading your software is guaranteed to be buggy and remove all of the features that they paid extra for and mostly worked in the prior version. Its a good thing I'm not in charge of the sales team as I would redirect their skills towards taking over whole countries.