gareth is in work but he also said option 3
Well, I can understand the logic and case for limiting game-play options in a multiplayer server. But I would be quite against this for single player or small co-op play private servers.
Iâm all for option 3 !! performance first and i dig out to mainly reach the bedrock to have better protection for PVP as OP is still not good.
With better protection for pvp we donât really need to dig, except for the legendary mole Thranir who like digging for fun 
This option 3 seems a great idea 
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option 3 for me, better performance = better gameplay
There is also 7 Days to Die. The devs of that game recently said the same thing where if they could remove digging, etc they could have much better network code. They hinted if they do another survival game they wouldnât include voxel digging.
It is no coincidence that Ark and Rust the biggest survival PVP games donât have digging. It is a cool feature but it wrecks network code and performance. The good it brings is far out weighted by the bad.
Frankly from my perspective I think digging gameplay is tedious and time consuming. Nothing like getting lost under ground or trying to dig up a base. Or if you want a good PVP base you have to dig out dead zones. It really is an annoyance and waste of time. I hope we get rid of it.
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Perhaps it is possible to perform a check during every server reset that resets all ground unless it is within X distance of a structure. I remember multiple surface wipes on Arma that required we redig our bases, so just do that but exclude any terrain w/ blocks. That way people can still dig their bases, but you can eliminate all surface damage, tunnels, and mining. In fact I know that you can flag a BP to auto dig terrain. Why isnât this an option for players to use?
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Iâm not a fan of any of these optionsâIâd prefer to keep the drilling, but I donât have too much of a problem with the performance as Iâve experienced it. I get it, but Iâm going to miss the sandbox feeling of being able to dig around.
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I did vote for option 3⌠But then we need a working OP, or some strong shielding. Also need new meteors, that can provide with some rock dust (for builders)
Maby a mix? 2d planets, and 3D moons? but really small moons? Or meteros floating in space of just plain rock (dust)
I never dig tunnels anyway⌠Always seem to get stuck in them
Would it be possible to maby get the AM`s to work on meteros on PVE planets as well?
just my thoughtsâŚ
dQ
I remember in 2.0 the homeworld planets had deposits hovering over bedrock which menât they could only be dug to 40% or something, its still possible to have AMâs working on these.
Hello @RexXxuS.
I have devoted some time to this matter back when managing SE server, and I want to share with you. Please note that I havenât worked deeply with terrain data, so Iâm making some assumptions that hopefully arenât wrong.
SE having no instances (just 1 big universe) had you load all the modified voxel files each time you connected to the server. This was a big drawback because there was a time that you had to reset all planets or no one was going to wait for the download. Still, the benefit of loading everything at startup was that you wouldnât have problems of areas not loading fast enough when you reach them.
What I suggested at the time was to use caching. I.E. do not discard all the info you have at the moment of disconnection, but leave it stored on a folder that you could have for each server you join, or your favorite servers.
You would need to work a little in the format of storing voxel delta info. You could store the data in 5 mb files and store in the DB the file name, block ID (autonumeric up), date, and HASH (hash of the 5mb block and HASH of the resulting terrain file). when a client connects, only update him with the missing data.
Example of player entering the playfield:
Client enter playfield.
He has a snapshot of how the planet was at 2017-04-03 13:00. (playfield block 147)
Server is now at 14:00 and people modified terrain to make 2 new files. Server sends only the last 2 blocks (148, 149)
Client updates his playfield snapshot file to #149, compare hashes with server and then receives the data between #149 and the latest modifications that are still not in a file.
So if this client drop in a battle, and logs again, he will only need to download again less that 5mb of changes.
Ok so this may sound overly complicated so another option could be to separate the planet in many small areas (hashed) and only send the player the areas that had changed since the last time he was there (like how bittorrent file transfer works).
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Youâre essentially describing a wan acceleration or even a data deduplication process algorithm that exists in many technology domains today.
The process of establishing baselines and delta files is how most of our enterprise infrastructure works today â even in the cloud. You windows image on azure is really a deduplicated VM that only stores deltas when you pause the VM. Network data across a WAN is accelerated by caching commonly accessed assets and updating deltas - as a rudimentary reference. Backup and restore systems deduplicate data across the data store to reduce total image size.
We already know that the plants and playfields are split into area files which are loaded on demand. If the unity engine could employ a caching method, I could see this being a big improvement in playtime at a small sacrifice of initial load time.
It would be great
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I love you @hopscotch. I just replaced 8 Riverbeds.
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Option 3 is good for PVP. But PVE planets⌠What if I want to build my house somewhere but need to alter the terrain a tiny bit to place it properly? Yeah with option 3 + size 4 class means no PVE building.
I 'd vote for something like:
- Option 3 for all PVP planets and super crowded planets like origin planets and starter planets (no choice really).
- Option 2 for lesser crowded PVE planets (which sadly can only be donator planets right nowâŚ) or planets that wipe regularly so that the segments get reset again.
- Option 3 also if this would allow us to build size 9-10 BAâs again on PVE. We lose the terraforming option to plant our neat bases but at least we can actually build something with windows & lights! (did anyone else notice that lights sometimes get rendered even though you are miles and miles awayâŚ). But I fear that this wonât be enough to make larger bases perform well. We still need some BASIC optimization for lights & windows & devices & etc. Why do I have to lag/FPS out just because a large ship is being spawned 500.000m away from me or a big base with tons of lights behind a mountain 2000m away or etc.
So overall I lean towards: performance, performance and performance first! Without performance there can be no PVE (serious restrictions that kill it) and no serious PVP battles anyway for obvious reasons.
- Option 3 (again) if we can instance our houses so that it does not drain performance for others and no server performance AT ALL (zero %!) when nobody is in your house. But this probably wonât happen.
Autominers are stupid anyway the way they are now. They are much much better than manual drilling for every resource (except gold) and on top of that we also have the HWS autominers. AFK-ing should never reward more! Just boost meteorite ore/hour gain and get rid of autominers and deposits all together imo (especially for iron&cobalt). They also cause FPS issues in large packs because, still not optimized right?
There are a lot of things in this game that are not (properly) optimized. And maybe the devs will some day. Or maybe they donât and they will be like:
âYou can multiplayer with 4 players in big ships without issues and we wonât optimized anything anymore because we donât aim to be an MMOâ. Which is somewhat of a fair point because HWS is really pushing it with the playercount to limits that were never intended. And games like these never get 100% polish&optimization anyway they are always (without exception) abandoned or labeled âv1.00â with tons of performance issues and several to many bugs still left in it. Itâs commercially not viable to polish it all the way I guess and it would take over a decade to do so.
P.S. I didnât vote.
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And perhaps get rid of building-SI on PVE planets as well. Itâs annoying, very buggy, prevents certain designs, is too simplistic implemented and costs performance.
@Obsey if you loved me youâd spell my name rightâŚ
Iâm a Cisco shop - No riverbeds â But feel free to tell me how you like them offline. Iâve often wondered if its worth the effort to convert.
I actually agree with this *(except the âstupidâ comments because, well, not every idea comes out the oven perfect.)
I think that we could survive just fine on meteorites if they had sufficient QTY and fell often enough to meet the needs of the population. Its an ACTIVE thing and puts people in a position to need to be out doing stuff. I have a mess of AMâs on PVE, but never go get them because it not much of an enjoyable part of the game fo rme⌠I do, however, still pop a Ere met or Sath met while looking for gold. Even iron if i didnt already have so muchâŚ
Anyway, I would be in favor or removing AMâs, keeping the HWS VAM, and boosting mets to be the exclusive way to get mats without going toa POI or raiding.
Yep - i know, people will get mad because how else will they maintain 100 slots of 700k materials, but honestly, thats not surviving or even succeeding, thats just poor balance over time creating a nestegg that will never go away (almost adding creedence to @Obsey s suggestion to nuke OCDâs. and start fresh.). Dont get me wrong, i have a nice nestegg, so i have plenty to lose â But the AMâs kind of make it too easy to literally FILL your OCD. And who needs to do work after having 5M iron & Sath ingots?
That said, RE the rest of this â I think that there may be some assumptions that heâs saying NO TERRAIN ALTERATION â where heâs saying NO TUNNELLING. I could be wrong, but i see this as being a non destructable bedrock planet with a dusting of manipulable dirt crust. You would potentially be able to build some minor terrain up and down, but no more absolute infinite meshing to have intricate land bridging and warrens. No horizontal digging/filling.
and one last thing:
I think this is primarily due to the aforementioned perf drain due to Area files which impacts ALL PERFORMANCE everywhere. When those big ships render, its already working hard on managing a 225gb planet file across the network.
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[quote=âhopskotch, post:58, topic:5206â]
its already working hard on managing a 225gb planet file across the network.
[/quote]Thatâs exactly what I mean. Is the server transmitting all of this data to ALL clients in that orbit including the ones 500km away? Because it feels like âallâ. Or is it only draining CPU/RAM to move it spawn it and then synch it with just the clients within range of that new ship?
[quote=âhopskotch, post:58, topic:5206â]
except the âstupidâ comments
[/quote]Erm I didnât mean to insult the devs I just meant⌠Yeah what you said :P. Letâs say that some ideas need improving. But oh well at least I got a full OCD from it and an overly full bank account by not playing. I think I may actually have become the richest player since 5.0 on all servers, when all of my credits were to be combined.
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I like option 2 the most, but i donât want to see deposits/autominers gone, so i guess option 1 
Couple Questions from someone not savvy with how it all works.
-
POI are often underground. Would no digging affect them as in we lose those that
have areas below surface? -
IF there is no digging and POI with underground areas are still in game, could
Players have bases underground on Donor worlds? -
Is this something that can be turned on an off by admins to allow digging on donor
Planets?
- A full option 3 could go one of two ways for POI, either they redesign some to exist only on the surface, and make ones like the drone base obsolete, or they utilize the existing mechanic for POI that pushes the bedrock down to allow the base to exist. This does create a permanent divot in the bedrock though, and is very exploitable by players.
2/3. Option 3 would be no digging period. None. Not on donor worlds, starter, anywhere. The most you could do was take a poi that went down a ways, clear it out and use that small square of underground. It turns the entire game into an above ground game, with no possibility of digging more than a foot or two in any given location. If it is fully embraced, it would become the standard for the game, and would also apply to single player and creative games. If it is not, and is only fully applied in HWS, new people will enter the server, find out they cannot do half of the building that the game offers, and leave.
There is a reason no one builds on lucifer or gabriel, and it is not the taxes.
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