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Camelot Unchained - 500 Player Battles - Possible?

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Comments

  • GavyneGavyne Member UncommonPosts: 116
    Gdemami said:
    Gavyne said:
    I still have my doubts about smooth 500 players gameplay
    Why?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvgjEMPfkYs

    Like I said before, it is a question whether it is worthy because it comes with a price - graphics, animations, combat system etc.

    Regardless, this is mostly a design problem.
    I was in those pre-alpha tests, I know how things run ingame.  I also know most of the spells & combat abilities systems MJ promised were not in place yet, neither are new animations and VFX.  They are the real taxing part of client & server-side computations.  

    Anyways, may seem like I don't like CU but it's the opposite.  I've funded CU, I'm a founder, and it's the one game I'm most looking forward to.  But as MJ just confirmed, their ambition for bigger and larger has slowed them down in development.  They promised 500+ players smooth combat, so now they have to deliver.  For me personally I would love for the game to come down to Earth and deliver smooth and amazing combat with 150-200 players.  It would've speed up the development process, allow them to polish the game even more, and do more with combat & abilities, but I know that's not going to happen.

    When it comes to zerg vs zerg, there does come to a point where you feel it's too much.  I use GW2 as an example often because not many games followed DAOC's concept of tri-realm setup, but GW2 does with its WvWvW.  Seeing 80 vs 80 vs 80 happens ingame, and it used to be 100+ vs 100 vs 100 but they scaled the limit down since the last expansion due to server-side lag.  But there are times in GW2 where you just feel it's too much, the zergs are too big, things are too laggy, and it actually stops being fun.  That's what I'm afraid of for CU once people get over the honeymoon phase.
    JamesGoblinmeddyck

    Played: EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-LOTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO-BDO
    Waiting For: CU & Vanilla WoW

  • SEANMCADSEANMCAD Member EpicPosts: 16,775
    GUYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    GODDAMNIT

    Excession

    Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.

    Please do not respond to me

  • GavyneGavyne Member UncommonPosts: 116
    SEANMCAD said:
    GUYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    GODDAMNIT

    Cool, a bunch of people swinging swords.  Thank god CU isn't building a gameplay like this.  Apples to Oranges, that game isn't comparable not even slightly to what CU is going to be.  Please stop posting it.
    JamesGoblin

    Played: EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-LOTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO-BDO
    Waiting For: CU & Vanilla WoW

  • SEANMCADSEANMCAD Member EpicPosts: 16,775
    Gavyne said:
    SEANMCAD said:
    GUYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    GODDAMNIT

    Cool, a bunch of people swinging swords.  Thank god CU isn't building a gameplay like this.  Apples to Oranges, that game isn't comparable not even slightly to what CU is going to be.  Please stop posting it.
    the game has full blown combat as you would expect a battle like that to be including horses and catapults.


    guys at least make an effort to be somewhat informed on this and stop going out of your way to stay ignorant.

    500 person battle is not being unrealstic.

    Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.

    Please do not respond to me

  • GdemamiGdemami Member EpicPosts: 12,342
    Gavyne said:
    They are the real taxing part of client & server-side computations.
    Those have nothing to do with server or networking, it's processed purely client side. For the rest of your post...ugh...
    [Deleted User]
  • GavyneGavyne Member UncommonPosts: 116
    SEANMCAD said:
    the game has full blown combat as you would expect a battle like that to be including horses and catapults.


    guys at least make an effort to be somewhat informed on this and stop going out of your way to stay ignorant.

    500 person battle is not being unrealstic.


    Please add spells and CU-style counter & reactionary spells, let's see how the game runs with 200, let alone 500.
    JamesGoblin

    Played: EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-LOTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO-BDO
    Waiting For: CU & Vanilla WoW

  • SEANMCADSEANMCAD Member EpicPosts: 16,775
    edited June 2017
    Gavyne said:
    SEANMCAD said:
    the game has full blown combat as you would expect a battle like that to be including horses and catapults.


    guys at least make an effort to be somewhat informed on this and stop going out of your way to stay ignorant.

    500 person battle is not being unrealstic.


    Please add spells and CU-style counter & reactionary spells, let's see how the game runs with 200, let alone 500.
    yes not a problem and that was done almost 10 years ago




    GdemamiExcession

    Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.

    Please do not respond to me

  • TamanousTamanous Member RarePosts: 3,025
    edited June 2017
    Head to https://www.twitch.tv/citystategames/videos/all and find some the engineer vids that explain the engine very well.

    CU has tested 1000 man battles so 500 is considered an easy target for them. One of the core features is having a full server side physics engine. Having it run entirely from a server is what most or all other mmos have not done before. It's actually this that adds a level of security that all other games could not have. If you client hack you will only see the hack result on your own client while others in game will see your character limited like anyone else and likely pwn you because you will think you are elsewhere when you actually aren't.

    Along with 500-1000 man battles the game also has a nearly unlimited view range. You can literally see other characters miles away. This is also nearly unheard of in other mmos. Real physics means that if you shoot projectiles (magic, arrows, ballista ammo, etc, which are real objects in game that can interact with each other ... with interesting results) from a tower, it will go much farther.

    Why such large battles? Because siege warfare is the main part of the game. Players themselves build their cities, keeps and castles. These buildings are restricted by real physics and materials used. An army of players can arrive with materials, construct their siege weapons and destroy structures the same way they were built ... brick by brick.

    Of course there are other elements to the game that creates the now overused term "emergent game play" but the engine is meant to support a massive, fully seamless world with 100% non-instanced and siege'able player built city/housing using real physics that allows objects to interact with other objects. In fact the engine is fully capable of being a FPS game (although it will be a hybrid target game due to it's design concept), have ships and flight but the game scope will determine what is done vs what can be done.

    How this can all be done is best researched but (if I remember correctly) things like the physics engine, VFX systems and each large landmass run on entirely separate servers than player elements. The net code offers a ridiculous amount of pipelines independent from each other and each component of the game is built with performance in mind from the very beginning.

    End result is a game built entirely to support such large battles in a new and unique way. That is what's impressive about it ... not how pretty it may end up being.

    (lol. I read Mark's reply not knowing it was actually Mark)
    JamesGoblinlaserit

    You stay sassy!

  • ShadanwolfShadanwolf Member UncommonPosts: 2,392
    From what I have read and seen  discussed ,the game has already demonstrated an ability to handle far more than 500.
  • illeriller Member UncommonPosts: 516
    I'm pretty tech-ignorant, so I'm looking for some expert opinions.  The Kickstarter for Camelot Unchained states that their goal is to "Maintain an absolute minimum of 30 FPS in battles of up to 500 people."  That's why they're building a custom engine:  no one else, apparently, has built an available engine that can do this.  My question is, is this even feasible with modern technology?
    It sure is, but all of your Cores will eventually MELT if you don't have an amazing Cooling setup.  ...the reason for this, is that no other MMORPG's are built from the ground up to 100% max out all 8-16 cores but CityState's Q&A vloggers assure us that real multithreading is one of their top priorities.

    It will probably still suffer Hitching issues related to SSD limitations and some projectile/collision lag between players in different Sectors (server-clusters) but it should no longer be the case that we're just sitting there watching an absolute slideshow while half of our CPU cores sit at 20% capacity
  • GavyneGavyne Member UncommonPosts: 116
    Nevermind, I'll just wait until they show me they can do it.  I'm a founder so I'll get to see it first, no point in arguing over it.  If we're sticking to the facts, which is what MJ likes to do, then no they have not successfully tested CU with 500 players running the latest spells/combat abilities, VFX, new animations, and player character armors/weapons.  

    CU as promised by MJ is supposed to do much more than what we've seen in the alpha so far.  And a lot of the things still missing are things that would put stress on the servers and the client computers.

    Will they be able to do it?  We'll see.

    Played: EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-LOTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO-BDO
    Waiting For: CU & Vanilla WoW

  • ScorchienScorchien Member LegendaryPosts: 8,914
    Ill believe it when i see it , live in game , Noone has managed this yet without problems .. Very skeptical that they can
  • SEANMCADSEANMCAD Member EpicPosts: 16,775
    Gavyne said:
    Nevermind, I'll just wait until they show me they can do it.  I'm a founder so I'll get to see it first, no point in arguing over it.  If we're sticking to the facts, which is what MJ likes to do, then no they have not successfully tested CU with 500 players running the latest spells/combat abilities, VFX, new animations, and player character armors/weapons.  

    CU as promised by MJ is supposed to do much more than what we've seen in the alpha so far.  And a lot of the things still missing are things that would put stress on the servers and the client computers.

    Will they be able to do it?  We'll see.
    its kind of like saying 
    'we are sticking to the facts and they have not tested that multiple people can be on the server at one time'
    we know very well that server technology exists and works, just like we know massive battles with lots of things going on works as well.

    graphic quality might be a concern on that but generally speaking it should be zero problem, the only question is how many polygons to do you want on your models.

    Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.

    Please do not respond to me

  • illeriller Member UncommonPosts: 516
    SEANMCAD said:

    graphic quality might be a concern on that but generally speaking it should be zero problem, the only question is how many polygons to do you want on your models.
    Polycount isn't main cause of the bottlenecking, it's just the leading contributor to all the other Bells and Whistles which make up "Eye Candy CREEP" in modern games.  ...Variables like:   Deformation, Particles, dynamic physics, attachments, particles attached to the attachments that attach to your model; and the reason for this is that all of the variable for various ways that Light can interact and be emitted and/or refracted off these Eye Candy effects has to be communicated through the CPU's lower level cache.   This is because MMORPG designers are LAZY about things they don't understand and among all the things they deal with on a daily basis, this is one the the things they understand the least.  ..they don't go about designing world aethertics & grouping encounters or anything else in a way that tackles these issues at their foundational levels.  They just throw demands to make "pieces of flare" at the Art departments and cross their fingers that everything will run at 30 frames when they get 20-30 ppl on the same screen together.   SCALING has never been one of their strong points and it never will until MMORPG'ers become a bit more discerning about choosing performance over flashy traillers and fancy looking horse armors
    GdemamiJamesGoblin
  • GdemamiGdemami Member EpicPosts: 12,342
    Tamanous said:
    CU has tested 1000 man battles so 500 is considered an easy target for them. 
    No, it is not an easy target. All the tests so far were backend focused, with barebone graphics and limited network testing capabilities.

    They still have very long way to go....
    Distopia[Deleted User]Kyleran
  • DistopiaDistopia Member EpicPosts: 21,183
    Gdemami said:
    Tamanous said:
    CU has tested 1000 man battles so 500 is considered an easy target for them. 
    No, it is not an easy target. All the tests so far were backend focused, with barebone graphics and limited network testing capabilities.

    They still have very long way to go....
    I'm sure even they (Mj and CO) would agree there. 

    For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson


  • TamanousTamanous Member RarePosts: 3,025
    edited July 2017
    Gdemami said:
    Tamanous said:
    CU has tested 1000 man battles so 500 is considered an easy target for them. 
    No, it is not an easy target. All the tests so far were backend focused, with barebone graphics and limited network testing capabilities.

    They still have very long way to go....
    You clearly haven't followed the game's development closely. They are already testing near release triangle and particle counts. You likely confuse textures with graphics that impact server side ... they do not. They impact the client pc.

    On top of the current updates to the VFX that runs more efficiently than when they even ran those bot tests, the land mass the 500 player battle is on runs on it's own server, the physics system runs on it's own server and the vfx system is separate as well hence why the pet classes use it instead of standard models like mobs and characters. They don't impact the game's performance on the same network layers. So many of the things you likely believe impacts the 500+ player counts in fact do not. This is the point of the custom engine.

    The net code is what is being tested already. It is why they took 2 years to make the engine. It is why they test with up to 1500 bots that run like clients logged into the game to emulate real player connections along with real players. This is not "backend". 

    Mark and the main engineers have no troubles believing they can run 500 player battles. Not one worry at all.
    meddyckGdemami

    You stay sassy!

  • GdemamiGdemami Member EpicPosts: 12,342
    Tamanous said:
    It is why they test with up to 1500 bots that run like clients logged into the game to emulate real player connections along with real players. This is not "backend". 
    ...right.
  • MarkJacobsMarkJacobs CEO City State EntertainmentMember RarePosts: 649
    iller said:
    I'm pretty tech-ignorant, so I'm looking for some expert opinions.  The Kickstarter for Camelot Unchained states that their goal is to "Maintain an absolute minimum of 30 FPS in battles of up to 500 people."  That's why they're building a custom engine:  no one else, apparently, has built an available engine that can do this.  My question is, is this even feasible with modern technology?
    It sure is, but all of your Cores will eventually MELT if you don't have an amazing Cooling setup.  ...the reason for this, is that no other MMORPG's are built from the ground up to 100% max out all 8-16 cores but CityState's Q&A vloggers assure us that real multithreading is one of their top priorities.

    It will probably still suffer Hitching issues related to SSD limitations and some projectile/collision lag between players in different Sectors (server-clusters) but it should no longer be the case that we're just sitting there watching an absolute slideshow while half of our CPU cores sit at 20% capacity
    Yeah, we do have to be smart about our CPU/GPU usage but we haven't melted anything yet except grilled cheese in our toaster oven so that's a good sign! :) You're right about the impact on multi-threading if we do our jobs right. Multi-threading is a giant PITA, which is why most engines aren't multi-threaded. There are languages out there that make multi-threading easier, but they aren't ready for us to use in this project. As multi-cores has become a must-have tech, I expect that will change over time.
    Gavyne said:
    Nevermind, I'll just wait until they show me they can do it.  I'm a founder so I'll get to see it first, no point in arguing over it.  If we're sticking to the facts, which is what MJ likes to do, then no they have not successfully tested CU with 500 players running the latest spells/combat abilities, VFX, new animations, and player character armors/weapons.  

    CU as promised by MJ is supposed to do much more than what we've seen in the alpha so far.  And a lot of the things still missing are things that would put stress on the servers and the client computers.

    Will they be able to do it?  We'll see.
    Well, we have done some of that (player characters with weapons and armor) but not with the VFX/new animations. But, as you know, I've been saying the same thing myself. Getting 1.5K Bots to run around a tiny space with almost all of them in your viewing frustrum is a major accomplishment because of the networking code to support that. On the rendering side, once we add VFX we expect to see an FPS drop (duh right?) but we also haven't begun to really optimize the engine yet nor give players the kind of options we expect in terms of graphic settings. Have we accomplished something special with the code so far? Yes. 1.5K networked Bots is something relatively unique when you pair that number with a server-based physics system (which was active at the time) and a renderer that can handle that. On my machine (GTX970, standard PC, nothing special) with vsync off I was at 60 FPS with 644 Bots in front of me. With 1361 Bots, I went down to 30 FPS. Now, again, does that mean we're there yet? No, 1361 times, no. :) But what we have accomplished is not too shabby, not too shabby at all.
    Scorchien said:
    Ill believe it when i see it , live in game , Noone has managed this yet without problems .. Very skeptical that they can
    Don't blame you one bit. I've said the same thing to people. Skepticism is not a bad thing when it comes to new technology and/or Kickstarters. And since we are making both a KS-ed game and new tech, folks have twice the reason to be skeptical. That's one of the reasons you've seen so little in terms of hype/marketing/ads from us. As always, time will tell.
    iller said:
    SEANMCAD said:

    graphic quality might be a concern on that but generally speaking it should be zero problem, the only question is how many polygons to do you want on your models.
    Polycount isn't main cause of the bottlenecking, it's just the leading contributor to all the other Bells and Whistles which make up "Eye Candy CREEP" in modern games.  ...Variables like:   Deformation, Particles, dynamic physics, attachments, particles attached to the attachments that attach to your model; and the reason for this is that all of the variable for various ways that Light can interact and be emitted and/or refracted off these Eye Candy effects has to be communicated through the CPU's lower level cache.   This is because MMORPG designers are LAZY about things they don't understand and among all the things they deal with on a daily basis, this is one the the things they understand the least.  ..they don't go about designing world aethertics & grouping encounters or anything else in a way that tackles these issues at their foundational levels.  They just throw demands to make "pieces of flare" at the Art departments and cross their fingers that everything will run at 30 frames when they get 20-30 ppl on the same screen together.   SCALING has never been one of their strong points and it never will until MMORPG'ers become a bit more discerning about choosing performance over flashy traillers and fancy looking horse armors
    FYI, we're not that lazy. Slow? Maybe, but not lazy. :) These are the things and kind of discussions that we have here at the offices. And our VFX artist is highly technical so we are pretty good on that front. And fortunately for us, we're not focusing on eye candy on the way some other games are because that's not our target audience. But as always, time will tell. ...continued
    ExcessionJamesGoblinlaserit

    Mark Jacobs
    CEO, City State Entertainment

  • MarkJacobsMarkJacobs CEO City State EntertainmentMember RarePosts: 649
    edited July 2017
    Gdemami said:
    Tamanous said:
    CU has tested 1000 man battles so 500 is considered an easy target for them. 
    No, it is not an easy target. All the tests so far were backend focused, with barebone graphics and limited network testing capabilities.

    They still have very long way to go....
    Actually, you are wrong about the network testing capabilities and barebone graphics, though you are right that we aren't there yet. Our network testing stressed the network traffic the way that 1.5K players/Bots who were running around, colliding with each other (handled by the server, not client) would have stressed the game when it goes LIVE. FYI, the Bots stressed the system more than 1.5K players who were just running around but not fighting. OTOH, as per above, we need those Bots firing off abilities to really stress the system of course. And in terms of the barebone graphics, they were running on the Autumn Biome forest which was being rendered behind them. We don't cheat on tests. :)
    Distopia said:
    Gdemami said:
    Tamanous said:
    CU has tested 1000 man battles so 500 is considered an easy target for them. 
    No, it is not an easy target. All the tests so far were backend focused, with barebone graphics and limited network testing capabilities.

    They still have very long way to go....
    I'm sure even they (Mj and CO) would agree there. 
    500 players is an easy target for us network-wise, 500 players all firing off abilities is our next big test. We had that before with our old ability system now it has to work with our new ability and VFX system.
    Tamanous said:
    Gdemami said:
    Tamanous said:
    CU has tested 1000 man battles so 500 is considered an easy target for them. 
    No, it is not an easy target. All the tests so far were backend focused, with barebone graphics and limited network testing capabilities.

    They still have very long way to go....
    You clearly haven't followed the game's development closely. They are already testing near release triangle and particle counts. You likely confuse textures with graphics that impact server side ... they do not. They impact the client pc.

    On top of the current updates to the VFX that runs more efficiently than when they even ran those bot tests, the land mass the 500 player battle is on runs on it's own server, the physics system runs on it's own server and the vfx system is separate as well hence why the pet classes use it instead of standard models like mobs and characters. They don't impact the game's performance on the same network layers. So many of the things you likely believe impacts the 500+ player counts in fact do not. This is the point of the custom engine.

    The net code is what is being tested already. It is why they took 2 years to make the engine. It is why they test with up to 1500 bots that run like clients logged into the game to emulate real player connections along with real players. This is not "backend". 

    Mark and the main engineers have no troubles believing they can run 500 player battles. Not one worry at all.
    You are correct about the tri-count on player characters, armor, and weapons. The new VFX system is currently in testing right now, we had our first test of that with players yesterday and last week and more are coming next week.

     ----

    All,

    Thanks for your responses here, including the skeptical ones. FYI, I don't blame anyone for being skeptical. I said that during the KS and I'm still saying it. We are trying to do something nobody has had been able to pull off. So, as always, time will tell.  
    Thanks!  

    Mark
    Post edited by MarkJacobs on
    ExcessionJamesGoblinlaseritcameltosisPhry

    Mark Jacobs
    CEO, City State Entertainment

  • TamanousTamanous Member RarePosts: 3,025
    As always, thanks for the direct feedback Mark.
    JamesGoblin

    You stay sassy!

  • MarkJacobsMarkJacobs CEO City State EntertainmentMember RarePosts: 649
    Tamanous said:
    As always, thanks for the direct feedback Mark.
    And, as always, you're welcome! :)
    JamesGoblin[Deleted User]ExcessionlaseritCecropiaKyleran

    Mark Jacobs
    CEO, City State Entertainment

  • TamanousTamanous Member RarePosts: 3,025
    Tamanous said:
    As always, thanks for the direct feedback Mark.
    And, as always, you're welcome! :)
    lol, that is entirely why I said "as always". I stole it from you. :)
    JamesGoblincameltosis

    You stay sassy!

  • MarkJacobsMarkJacobs CEO City State EntertainmentMember RarePosts: 649
    Tamanous said:
    Tamanous said:
    As always, thanks for the direct feedback Mark.
    And, as always, you're welcome! :)
    lol, that is entirely why I said "as always". I stole it from you. :)
    Nice! Was wondering about that. :)

    There's something inherently awesome about the guy running the company regularly answering questions himself on a gaming forum.  I really, really want this game to succeed.
    Thanks, I really want this game to succeed as well. As a matter of fact, I have lots of reasons, millions of them. And thanks for the kind words, I do appreciate them.

    I've almost always posted on forums whether back in the old times on BBSes or then on GEnie and other networks. The only times I really stopped posting entirely was for a while at EA, when I just need a break or if people are just being really rude/nasty/threatening. Most of the time, and on most places, I really enjoy posting, even when it comes to talking to folks who might be a tad cross with me. As long as it stays polite, even with criticism, I try to stick around. During our KS I posted here and a number of folks said that I'd be gone once the KS ended and never return, that I was only doing it to get more Backers. Well, I'm still here and not begging for bucks so I must actually enjoy this. In truth, I wish I had more time to post about other things but not happening, unfortunately. 

    [Deleted User]JamesGoblinlaseritKyleranMadFrenchie

    Mark Jacobs
    CEO, City State Entertainment

  • GavyneGavyne Member UncommonPosts: 116
    I have to admit, after logging in over 4th of July I see the game has improved by quite a bit.  Really impressed with the looks of new armors & weapons, animations are better, and general graphics look good with new shadow effects.  I know I can't say much so I'll just say, I want to play this game.  I wish we could see the end of the tunnel and get the game done, because I want to play it.  But it's just not quite there yet.

    Hopefully the hard parts are done or close to being done.


    JamesGoblin

    Played: EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-LOTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO-BDO
    Waiting For: CU & Vanilla WoW

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