Caves should be dark as fook again.

Thoughts on the further development of Haven & Hearth? Feel free to opine!

Re: Caves should be dark as fook again.

Postby Granger » Mon Sep 17, 2018 1:22 pm

MagicManICT wrote:
Granger wrote:While the server can't enforce what the client does with the data it gets (and culling the objects in an area is too CPU expensive)

Culling is a relatively inexpensive operation in 3D processing. It's been a few years since I've messed with a rendering engine, but it's a relatively simple formula to calculate, even more so when it's a 2D map. For our purpose here, it'd be a single distance calculation relative to the bounding boxes of the object and light range. In a fresh world with little player clutter, this wouldn't be a huge issue. Later in a world filled with stockpiles and such, it might be something that could slow the server significantly. (Good reason for bigger stockpiles, better object management.)

The server already culls objects by not sending everything on the loaded maps in sight, yet those objects are in memory and being managed. What's the difference between a 91x91 tile area (or somewhere around there) vs a 10 tile radius?

The problem is not with doing the culling, but the bandwidth of sending the updates to the client. Also you can work around that as it is no problem to hack the client to ignore object deletions (that get send when objects leave your render range) to extend the range you see after you have seen the stuff in the first place.

My suggestion is to make avoidance (through a light hack) not beneficial, as it won't help you to mitigate the effects - or even be contra productive as it'll make it less obvious that you are entering a zone with a higher accident probability.
⁎ Mon Mar 22, 2010 ✝ Thu Jan 23, 2020
User avatar
Granger
 
Posts: 9263
Joined: Mon Mar 22, 2010 2:00 pm

Re: Caves should be dark as fook again.

Postby SaltyCrate » Mon Sep 17, 2018 2:32 pm

Granger wrote:My suggestion is to make avoidance (through a light hack) not beneficial, as it won't help you to mitigate the effects - or even be contra productive as it'll make it less obvious that you are entering a zone with a higher accident probability.

Thing is, your suggestions will not make players stare at the dark screen. Everyone will still turn on nightvision. Yes, mechanically characters will have reasons to carry light source with them (and they will), but visually nothing will change, and thats what the original complaint was about. As for it being less obvious that you are entering a dark zone - clientmakers will find a way to notify users of it somehow and making entire screen dark will not be it. That said I am not particularly opposed to the "enforce players to have a light source in dark areas" ideas, its just it is tangential to the whole "nightvision ruining aesthetic" thing.
User avatar
SaltyCrate
 
Posts: 160
Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2016 6:34 pm

Re: Caves should be dark as fook again.

Postby Granger » Mon Sep 17, 2018 3:19 pm

SaltyCrate wrote:visually nothing will change, and thats what the original complaint was about.

The implications of my suggestion go deeper than the visuals (though inspired by them and quite related), should anyone want to ruin it visually for himself... no one can stop that (see skynet tactical view client modes).

If you think that my view needs an own topic though...
⁎ Mon Mar 22, 2010 ✝ Thu Jan 23, 2020
User avatar
Granger
 
Posts: 9263
Joined: Mon Mar 22, 2010 2:00 pm

Re: Caves should be dark as fook again.

Postby Finigini » Mon Sep 17, 2018 5:20 pm

Darkness should def give a big perception penalty scaling to -100% in pitch black.

Edit: The rebuff could also just as well lower the other stats and make scary things come after you. Maybe add some new cave foragables to flesh out the mechanic too.
User avatar
Finigini
 
Posts: 222
Joined: Sat Mar 19, 2011 5:03 am

Re: Caves should be dark as fook again.

Postby Lunarius_Haberdash » Mon Sep 17, 2018 6:28 pm

Finigini wrote:Darkness should def give a big perception penalty scaling to -100% in pitch black.

Edit: The rebuff could also just as well lower the other stats and make scary things come after you. Maybe add some new cave foragables to flesh out the mechanic too.


Mechanical solutions FTW... The more I hear about ideas like this the more I like it. I would at least like the option to have the world be as dark as 2D was without the light hacks on. And culling sounds like an option that should be available, at least for other players and critters if not general clutter.
jorb: I don't want *your* money. You are rude and boring. Go away.
Sevenless: We already know real life has some pretty shitty game mechanics, it's why we're here instead.
Avu: The end is near it has finally come to pass: I agree with Lunarius...
Shubla: There are also other reasons to play this game than to maximize your stat gain.
User avatar
Lunarius_Haberdash
 
Posts: 1478
Joined: Tue Jul 05, 2011 5:14 am

Re: Caves should be dark as fook again.

Postby SaltyCrate » Tue Sep 18, 2018 10:30 am

Granger wrote:The implications of my suggestion go deeper than the visuals (though inspired by them and quite related), should anyone want to ruin it visually for himself... no one can stop that (see skynet tactical view client modes).

Yes, I realize that. My point was that initially Jorb argued (3rd post) that visually enforcing darckness was impossible and you argued him by proposing mechanical implications of darkness. But that does not really contradict his point as mechanical solution still will not enforce visual effects. Having darkness as mechanic and having darkness as visual effect are two different things, and it appears that they are easily mixed when discussed.
For example:
Lunarius_Haberdash wrote:Mechanical solutions FTW... The more I hear about ideas like this the more I like it. I would at least like the option to have the world be as dark as 2D was without the light hacks on.

You already have that option: turning off nightvision. Or, if it is not enough, modding client to fit whatever graphical preferences you want. Mechanical solutions have nothing to do with your ability to do so, nor the ability of others to not do so.


So I suppose creating separate thread for discussing mechanical implementation might be better?
User avatar
SaltyCrate
 
Posts: 160
Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2016 6:34 pm

Re: Caves should be dark as fook again.

Postby ghozzd » Tue Sep 18, 2018 11:53 am

Though i like the idea of darkness and mechanical implementation of it with server side culling, you have to remember that player is not the only light source that can be here because even when you dont have a torch in your hand you are still able to see the areas which are lit even when you stand in total darkness. That means you will have to do culling for each light source AND another players (because you can clearly see other person in darkness running with a torch in his hand, which other commentors tend to forget and tell bulshit like lighthackers in miners helm appear from nowhere knowing where you are). This is kinda okay since light sources require to be fueled so abandoned bases wont affect server performance but it is still not clear how would server handle so much increased amounts of culling. The idea is great though as it shows how we could enforce at least some of wanted behaviour to custom clients that are literally cheating.
ghozzd
 
Posts: 30
Joined: Thu Jul 11, 2013 6:21 pm

Re: Caves should be dark as fook again.

Postby MagicManICT » Tue Sep 18, 2018 2:23 pm

Granger wrote:The problem is not with doing the culling, but the bandwidth of sending the updates to the client. Also you can work around that as it is no problem to hack the client to ignore object deletions (that get send when objects leave your render range) to extend the range you see after you have seen the stuff in the first place.

Again a non-argument. It might be an issue if we were all still on 33.6k dial-up modems*, and then the data transfers for a "dark zone" would actually be less than for a lighted area (fewer objects at a time to update on). Yes, there could be some hacks that would work around this thing, but any mobile objects (ie wild animals) would be impossible to track this way. You'd not know when they moved.

*Ultima Online and Everquest didn't seem to have any bandwidth issues even at that speed, and you could crowd several dozen mobs and a massive raid party into the scene. Sure, netcode had to be heavily hacked and some fancy wizardry pulled off to do this on such a slow connection, but they were both capable of doing it.
Opinions expressed in this statement are the authors alone and in no way reflect on the game development values of the actual developers.
User avatar
MagicManICT
 
Posts: 18437
Joined: Tue Aug 17, 2010 1:47 am

Re: Caves should be dark as fook again.

Postby Granger » Tue Sep 18, 2018 6:36 pm

MagicManICT wrote:
Granger wrote:The problem is not with ... the bandwidth of sending the updates to the client.

Again a non-argument. It might be an issue if we were all still on 33.6k dial-up modems

Please look at this from the server perspective, which what the direction I looked from when writing this.

As long as the server isn't able to scale over multiple machines on demand (and currently it is, as far as I understood Loftar, single-threaded) while maintaining the illusion of a single, seamless world: there are limits on how much CPU, RAM and bandwidth you can effort per client - the more concurrent clients you want to support the less each can consume...
⁎ Mon Mar 22, 2010 ✝ Thu Jan 23, 2020
User avatar
Granger
 
Posts: 9263
Joined: Mon Mar 22, 2010 2:00 pm

Re: Caves should be dark as fook again.

Postby MagicManICT » Wed Sep 19, 2018 10:28 pm

Granger wrote:As long as the server isn't able to scale over multiple machines on demand (and currently it is, as far as I understood Loftar, single-threaded)

Point still remains that the server is already culling objects from what is loaded into memory to be served to the player client. What's the difference between a radius of 5 and a radius of 40 when a player is at Position (x, y) and all the maps from (x-1, y+1) to (x+1, y-1) are loaded?

This is an interesting factoid, but one that is hardly relevant to the argument as the same pass is made over the player in relation to the object list. Add to it that by culling more of the object list to transmit, there will be less network bandwidth used in any given positional update. Overall, it might mean a slight increase to total bandwidth as some objects might get transfered multiple times if a character is moving back and forth through the same small area vs possibly being updated once (for something like a static object), but I'd have to run some math to figure it out, and would probably require some variables that I'm not aware of.

The one big argument that I can think of against this is the lighting algorithms. Currently one one point light is used by the client, and I'm not sure of the hierarchy of light sources, if there is one. (Could simply be the first light loaded into the client gets the light effect.)
Opinions expressed in this statement are the authors alone and in no way reflect on the game development values of the actual developers.
User avatar
MagicManICT
 
Posts: 18437
Joined: Tue Aug 17, 2010 1:47 am

PreviousNext

Return to Critique & Ideas

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 19 guests