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Massively & CU's rendering engine + Andrew Meggs chimes in...
NegativeX
Member Posts: 100
Andrew Meggs adds in a couple more detailed pieces of information and rebuttals in the comment section.
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Appreciate the link Negative, thank you.:)
I don't think you are understanding correctly. This shouldn't be a problem
I think what the developer is saying is something akin to this example:
Suppose you have a green helm, red torso, blue pants and yellow boots. That's 4 different "mesh" patterns that would ask the computer to draw 4 different things when it moves. Instead, think of it as outfit #2310, which is an outfit predefined as a green helm, red torso, blue pants and yellow boots. Thus, the computer is asked to draw outfit #2310, which is simply 1 drawing. As a result, you've decreased the workload to 1 draw versus 4 draws for the same character.
Now, that's like a super duper simplified example, but that's what he means by having the whole thing as a unique mesh. Hence, people will still look different, but from a computer point of view they are just changing outfits.
Also, you have to remember that in an early update about a month or so ago they said that they going with performance first, so initial testing is being done with very basic landscape, textures, etc. They will then add as much of that stuff as possible but performance (FPS) has to remain above a certain threshold once you have around 150-200 players in a select region. So, you might have detailed characters and less detailed landscapes or vice versa. Every level of detail reduces FPS, so it's a tradeoff.
The other big tradeoff they have to deal with is how much to put on the client and how much to put on the server. People can't be trusted, so most of this has to go to the server. So, even if they have a good engine, crappy server code will cause ability delay lag, which is just as bad as low FPS. That's why he also addresses the way the server has to change how it calculates things like AoE effects and such.
^ SBE1 is close to the target.
Mesh instancing has been within the industry for years and every game uses it. The most common use is through environmental objects, like trees, fences, brush, crates, etc.
No reason for alarm.
I am, however, glad some people are asking questions rather than spouting off misinformation and pretending they have experience and knowledge of the technology behind the system(s).
DAOC Live (inactive): R11 Cleric R11 Druid R11 Minstrel R9 Eldritch R6 Sorc R6 Scout R6 Healer
Technically DAOC was that type of game too.
8vs8 worked out just fine
I don't think Andrew was trying to clarify anything at this point, just to show you how he plans to build a game engine that works within an rvr situation.
The server size (max of 3000 to 4000) and fact that ~80% of the population was doing PvE at any given time made it much easier for DAOC to support soloing and group vs group fighting. If CU will have 10,000 player servers where you get 3,333 vs 3,333, vs 3,334 fights and there's no PvE, that's an entirely different situation.
DAOC Live (inactive): R11 Cleric R11 Druid R11 Minstrel R9 Eldritch R6 Sorc R6 Scout R6 Healer
For sure. You should hop on IRC if you're capable, but basically, I think everything will be OK
The same point could have been made by showing 1,000 characters running around instead of 10,000 which is way more than other RvR games handle well. That they decided to show 10,000 suggests but doesn't prove that they want fights of that scale to happen in CU. Hence why I would like them to clarify what the scale of combat they are shooting for is.
DAOC Live (inactive): R11 Cleric R11 Druid R11 Minstrel R9 Eldritch R6 Sorc R6 Scout R6 Healer
I'm not sure it does. Consider that is just pure rendering, not of the effects/data processing that needs to go on.
You want to rendere to be as high performance as possible, regardless
I didn't get that from the video (intent to have 10k person battles). I got that they were using a pretty simple model and, knowing the actual game models might have a bit more, just loaded a bunch of them as a means to show "we can do this simple scene to this scale so think a more complex scene at a smaller scale should be fine". Just my take-away though based on an extremely early presentation.
I do agree that'd be nice to know what their "sweet spot" is intended to be for large battles. Given all the thought they've put in to the design thus far, I imagine they would have defined this though maybe they were waiting to gauge the potential population (using KS as a factor). I guess it would also be a "damned if you do, damned if yo don't" scenario though. If they stated "we're shooting to handle 1000 v 1000 battles smoothly", and then revise that down at all based on technical or design considerations, I could see the criticism pouring in. :P
-mklinic
"Do something right, no one remembers.
Do something wrong, no one forgets"
-from No One Remembers by In Strict Confidence
It's a balancing act. There's the maximum possible characters to render like in this 10,000 model demo. Then there's the target number of what they realistically would like the numbers in big fights to be. And there's what the numbers could be if they made the graphics state of the art; this would be a lot lower than the others but still might be high enough to be perfectly fine for me. Then they tweak the engine to find the right mix of performance and beauty. I just want to know roughly what that second number is that they are targetting.
DAOC Live (inactive): R11 Cleric R11 Druid R11 Minstrel R9 Eldritch R6 Sorc R6 Scout R6 Healer
I don't think that is what they are trying to imply. Think of it this way, showing 10,000 units on screen is more impressive than showing 1000 units on screen. Since the models used were pretty low quality and showing 1000 units would not really impress many people. I think this is why they went with 10,000.
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