Those Little Hateful Things...

[Galdethriel]

So I've decided to check up on how my ol' game's doing and bought myself a one-off Gifted Sub. I really should've got a Basic because my lair's been torn down anyway, and I instantly regretted wasting that precious tenner when I felt the first metaphorical tumbleweed roll past, but it's a tenner I intend to at least partially use.

Anyway, I have been trying out WoW (dun dun duuuun) and maybe it's that I've gotten comfortable with its simple graphics, but the first thing I noticed upon logging into HZ was the death of my framerate. It seemed a bit out of order when it was an empty Bristugo (honestly, it was like Silent Hill in Istaria) and when I'd been running around Silvermoon in WoW (major Blood Elf city as far as I'm aware) there had been no drop in framerate at all. I know WoW is a bit notorious for its simple graphics and last I checked we were working on the efficiency of HZ's graphics, but it just highlighted the big difference. I had to kill all my graphic settings just for a decent framerate, and my computer's brand new.

It got me and my friend talking a bit. The conversation was more or less like this:

Me: 'HZ's graphics seem really wierd after playing WoW. Inefficient sorta.'

Friend: 'That's HZ for you,'

Me: 'Some of the models need fixed. Seen the trees? They have roots... why, I'll never know.'

Friend: 'Well depending on where they're placed you can sometimes see the roots.'

Me: 'Why not just have two models? We've got all these trees with roots you'll never see,'

Friend: 'Maybe they have a limited number of models?'

So, completely randomly, but... why DO the trees have roots? I mean, all of the trees. I thought it was wierd.

Another thing that immediately began to bug me was my own character. Stupid thing she is. My main, Galde, is an ancient and she's actually too big or too slow for the world around her. Her running animation is slow as out and yet her feet slip across the ground when her speed doesn't match her animation. Also, you fly and get that daft hummingbird effect but you're going nowhere fast.

I have to setscale her down so that she's smaller than an adult just to make her movement match the world around her. >.<

Sigh. Just little things.

Are there any minor/graphical/fluff things that bug other people? I just needed to blab this somewhere because it's... irritating. D:

Thanks for reading my whinging anyway. I'm such a whinge. XD

<3

[Dhalin]

I know WoW is a bit notorious for its simple graphics

Wouldn't call them "Simple".

See all of those tables, chairs, see-through silk curtains, brooms sweeping the streets in Silvermoon, etc?

A lot more environmental things to glue your eyes to, than in Istaria...

Anyways, Istaria has a very old graphics engine. If we had something newer, we could add a lot more of that fluff into the game, and such... but the problem is, that kind of technology doesn't come cheap.

Blizzard is a developer who has assets with a combined worth ten-digit figures. Heck, I read somewhere, that Blizzard's net worth rivals the GDP of some small third-world countries. They, of course, have the money/man-power to develop/purchase the technology that runs WoW.

Here in Istaria, VI is a lot smaller, and don't have that kind of dough. I will give them kudos though, for taking the game as far as they've taken it (and continue to take it) with the resources they have available to them. They've assured us multiple times that they're in the black, so they must have someone good at the helm who knows what he's doing to run a profitable game off of the old software that we're using.

[Galdethriel]

Wouldn't call them "Simple".

See all of those tables, chairs, see-through silk curtains, brooms sweeping the streets in Silvermoon, etc?

I didn't mean simple as in plain/low in number but more sort of... they use less to do more. The point I was making was that there's a big difference in how they run, and I can't understand why random things you can't see in HZ are being kept when chopping back a bit could maybe improve performance.

Besides, you can do wonderful things with textures, I hear. :P

Blizzard is a developer who has assets with a combined worth ten-digit figures. Heck, I read somewhere, that Blizzard's net worth rivals the GDP of some small third-world countries. They, of course, have the money/man-power to develop/purchase the technology that runs WoW.

I know about the differences in management and I've considered it. I was just trying to think about what could be done with what we've got. Otherwise it's easy to start going on about how we need a new graphics engine, physics engine, everything engine. Heck, let's not stop until we have an Oblivion-Call of Duty graphics cross. XD (I'd actually love Oblivion-style HZ, but that's irrelevant XD )

[Dhalin]

Well, see, thing is...

Go to Tazoon.

Note the HUGE drop in FPS (even my computer, that can do 70 FPS, drops down to 35-40). That's because of the sheer amount of objects the engine has to render.

The problem is, to get it down to the sheer efficiency that you see in newer games, a lot of stuff needs redone, and I'm wondering just how efficient we can get this current engine to be honest.

I'm sure that VI is doing what they can, but they can only do so much without a total revamp, which would take lots of time and manpower.

Players are hungry for new content, so they can't just set everything on a back burner while they spend months (years?) to upgrade the graphics and the client, meanwhile no new content gets released, and players get bored and quit...

[Galdethriel]

Go to Tazoon.

Note the HUGE drop in FPS (even my computer, that can do 70 FPS, drops down to 35-40). That's because of the sheer amount of objects the engine has to render.

The problem is, to get it down to the sheer efficiency that you see in newer games, a lot of stuff needs redone, and I'm wondering just how efficient we can get this current engine to be honest.

Believe me, I have been to Tazoon and I know exactly what you mean. XD

I know the old engine's always going to be a drawback, but there must be little things that can be done for it, y'know? If I had more experience in doing 3D (and didn't just wing everything XD) I'd experiment myself. It's just the tree example was one of several instances where there were things that were loading that didn't need to be there.

Players are hungry for new content, so they can't just set everything on a back burner while they spend months (years?) to upgrade the graphics and the client, meanwhile no new content gets released, and players get bored and quit...

Yeah, I hear that too.

I just wish a dev would win the lottery already. XD

[Shian]

I hate stupidly large trees XD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry__pKsSEcw

Edit:

This video is still being processed. Video quality may improve once processing is complete.

Hurry up and finish your passes! *kicks youtube*

[neva]

Honestly I never seen a Problem with istaria-- expect for the Biped races. The engine rendering on them drives me nuts, since I look at FFXI which is an older game.. and its bipeds look far better then Istaria's.

Admittedly.. I hate wow's graphics, mostly cause they are to bright and hurt my eyes(along with give me a headache after awhile).

As for has FPS issues.. I never have any and run the game at max settings with everything full bore.
The only time I get FPS lag is when I am on my dragon and on my biped at the same time and my Dragon is flying. Then the Dragons is like: "Can't... keep.. up.. with two.. graphics of this standard.." though my biped screen is like, "I'm happy! Oh so happy!"

and if I have on another biped or a hatchling, both are lag free.

But, my computer.. is also an odd system, as it is designed to crunch the numbers and do massive digital work. Not a store built unit, if you get what I mean. ^^;
So maybe that is why I can't see any difference of FPS on this game, vs WoW(at full settings) and FFXI.

Oddly, i actually got more /lag/ on WoW then I do on Istaria. O_o

[Steelclaw]

I hate stupidly large trees XD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry__pKsSEcw

Edit:

Hurry up and finish your passes! *kicks youtube*

Seconded on the trees! A few here and there are fine, but dang, when they form a giant canopy (or block of green), the area becomes very dragon-unfriendly.

As an aside, the computational cost of giant vs small vs normal trees is the same. They have the same textures and same number of polygons.

[Galdethriel]

Admittedly.. I hate wow's graphics, mostly cause they are to bright and hurt my eyes(along with give me a headache after awhile).

I know, they do take some getting used to. (Blizzard seems to love its saturation XD ) but I wasn't on about so much how the graphics look style-wise, moreso how they look detail-wise and how they effect the framerate.

As for has FPS issues.. I never have any and run the game at max settings with everything full bore.
The only time I get FPS lag is when I am on my dragon and on my biped at the same time and my Dragon is flying. Then the Dragons is like: "Can't... keep.. up.. with two.. graphics of this standard.." though my biped screen is like, "I'm happy! Oh so happy!"

But if your computer handles them both to perfection, you'll never be able to see how they compare because... they're both handled to perfection. XD My computer deals with WoW perfectly, but it just can't manage HZ nearly as well. Fair enough, though, out-of-date graphics engine and that, it's understandable. Still, those trees and their sinkin' roots. How many other polygons are stuffed in places we're never supposed to see? D:

But, my computer.. is also an odd system, as it is designed to crunch the numbers and do massive digital work. Not a store built unit, if you get what I mean. ^^;
So maybe that is why I can't see any difference of FPS on this game, vs WoW(at full settings) and FFXI.

*green green green* XD

Oddly, i actually got more /lag/ on WoW then I do on Istaria. O_o

Yeah, that might happen if there are lots of people wondering about (which there probably are on WoW). I'm no expert though, could be more reasons.

I hate stupidly large trees XD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry__pKsSEcw

Edit:

Hurry up and finish your passes! *kicks youtube*

Seconded on the trees! A few here and there are fine, but dang, when they form a giant canopy (or block of green), the area becomes very dragon-unfriendly.

Ooooh, I'd love to have giant trees everywhere. D:

I think Istaria's too flat. I enjoy gliding between the trees in WoW and it's not something you can really do on HZ. It's a tad barren.

Maybe there's a way to make all dragons permanently smaller. Mwahaha.

[Wirevix]

Another thing that immediately began to bug me was my own character. Stupid thing she is. My main, Galde, is an ancient and she's actually too big or too slow for the world around her. Her running animation is slow as out and yet her feet slip across the ground when her speed doesn't match her animation. Also, you fly and get that daft hummingbird effect but you're going nowhere fast.

I have to setscale her down so that she's smaller than an adult just to make her movement match the world around her. >.<

I just wanted to pop into inform you that this issue, with the slow-motion running and hummingbird flight, is totally fixable client-side.

Check out this thread for fixing the flight speed animations:

http://community.istaria.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=19167

(Fixing running is exactly the same, just edit dragon_u_anim_movement > //run)

[Galdethriel]

I just wanted to pop into inform you that this issue, with the slow-motion running and hummingbird flight, is totally fixable client-side.

Check out this thread for fixing the flight speed animations:

http://community.istaria.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=19167

(Fixing running is exactly the same, just edit dragon_u_anim_movement > //run)

Oh, I wasn't aware of that. Thank you

I just tend to setscale Galde down to 0.5 and stop her from flapping by angling the camera down constantly. It's a pain though. D:

[AmonGwareth]

So, completely randomly, but... why DO the trees have roots? I mean, all of the trees. I thought it was wierd.

They have roots so that there is more flexibility when placing them on uneven terrain. You can get interesting effects, such as the large tree south of Kion you can run beneath, or places such as the road leading up to the Blackhammer Farmstead where you can see roots sticking out of the sides of the canyon walls. The roots are fairly low resolution in most cases.

[SinOfSuns]

Time to put my game developer knowledge to use! XD

As far as I understand, the issues you're referring to are related to two things - a scene management system, and polygon count on models. Note that the former can actually deal with most issues of the latter, but there's a whole world of graphics hurt you to open up on yourself when you delve into either.

Firstly, there's the models. Both the models and their animations are handled by Granny 3D, if I recall. Now that's an old, old system, and these days we likely have much more efficient model formats and compression, which Istaria can't use. Needless to say, old methods mean slower rendering speeds. The animations are of course a model thing, and the "slipping" of dragons suggests that animations do not blend with the game's set movement speed very well.

Included in the model side of things is the polygon count. High polygon count objects mean increased processing time and slower visual response. It's possible that some of the models are not optimized for quick viewing and are instead designed just to look pretty - at the expense of valuable CPU cycles. This of course leads to issues when they are grouped together in large numbers, meaning painfully long processing time.

And of course the biggest issue is usually with the graphics engine itself. Personally I think that this is likely to be the real kicker, as particular things can be done to greatly decrease or increase performance, depending on the way the graphics engine operates. Examples of optimization which may or may not be involved include not displaying the tree roots when there's ground in the way, and not drawing objects which are behind other objects, outside of the player's view etc.

These principles (culling, occlusion, clipping) SOUND like common sense, but it's quite a complex process to determine which of the available graphical objects actually falls under which category. There are many highly complex formulas and algorithms used to determine this sort of thing, which is precisely why games companies tend to buy graphics systems instead of making them personally.

I suspect that the engine's partitioning system - sort of an invisible grid used to determine where everything is located relative to everything else - is not very well made. Back in the day it was probably awesome, but compared to today's graphics engines it's most likely quite inferior, and thus the difference in frame rate is felt. Changing the graphics engine would be a huge task, and require a lot of re-inventing the wheel, eg remaking models or porting them over to a newer format, as well as changing all coupled programming systems to work with a new engine.

In other words, several months/years of work later and the only difference you'd see is the frame rate. I doubt most people would feel it was worth the time taken... such is the sad tale of games development XD

[Galdethriel]

*applauds* Insightful!

I guess as systems get faster and faster it won't be that much of a problem... I suppose anyhoo. But then again, we had a pretty rubbishy computer which had about 1/3 the specs of my current one and they are quite similar... would it get to the point where no extra RAM or anything would help?

~Galde

[Dhalin]

*applauds* Insightful!

I guess as systems get faster and faster it won't be that much of a problem... I suppose anyhoo. But then again, we had a pretty rubbishy computer which had about 1/3 the specs of my current one and they are quite similar... would it get to the point where no extra RAM or anything would help?

~Galde

I have a 2.42Ghz Quad-Core CPU and 8GB of RAM and I normally get 60-80 FPS except Tazoon, where it can drop down to about 40-ish. I don't have the graphics settings jacked up to max, but they serve their purpose well-enough.

Teleport times are usually fairly short, about 10 seconds or so to an area I've been to already.

[Frith-Rae]

I think system speed will help to a certain extent; but after a point it won't matter as the load times and limitations are engine side and not "our system" side.

For example, no matter how fast my computer gets (much like Dhalins - nor do I have the graphics jacked up simply because engine side it won't allow it to do so and run very well), it won't effect the fact that the terrain and esp. mobs take several seconds to load up for me (terrain is more based on how fast I'm going, but mobs always take a bit).

My teleport times are usually pretty quick, but I doubt my system will ever get so fast that they are much faster than they are now. Hence why even with quad core and RAM out the butt, I still can't turn up graphics to the maxx - it would just make the game crawl lol.

[Dhalin]

I think system speed will help to a certain extent; but after a point it won't matter as the load times and limitations are engine side and not "our system" side.

For example, no matter how fast my computer gets (much like Dhalins - nor do I have the graphics jacked up simply because engine side it won't allow it to do so and run very well), it won't effect the fact that the terrain and esp. mobs take several seconds to load up for me (terrain is more based on how fast I'm going, but mobs always take a bit).

My teleport times are usually pretty quick, but I doubt my system will ever get so fast that they are much faster than they are now. Hence why even with quad core and RAM out the butt, I still can't turn up graphics to the maxx - it would just make the game crawl lol.

Mobs appearing is a server-side issue.

It takes the Server awhile to realize someone exists in the area to "wake the mobs up". Hence, you enter an area, and there are no mobs, and suddenly they are all around you. That's server-side, and no amount of computing power is going to do anything about that. The mobs aren't _there_, unlike a game like WoW.

In WoW, if you go to Dalaran, you won't even see half of the people standing around as it takes time for the game to download and draw everyone's armor/etc, but yet they _are_ there, you just can't see them.

That's not the case in Istaria, though. For all intents and purposes, the mobs aren't there until the server realizes "someone's here, we gotta make the mobs appear!"

For some odd reason, Undead appear MUCH faster than anything else -- the devs probably did that on purpose. They didn't want someone sprinting through the deadlands and not meeting a single undead, but yet they don't mind this happening if it is a popular XP mob like Ruxus, Golems, or quest mobs like those red Spiders near Aughundell, where you can walk around for 5, 10, 15 minutes and only see 2-3 mobs.

[Raeshlavik]

Wouldn't call them "Simple".

See all of those tables, chairs, see-through silk curtains, brooms sweeping the streets in Silvermoon, etc?

A lot more environmental things to glue your eyes to, than in Istaria...

Anyways, Istaria has a very old graphics engine. If we had something newer, we could add a lot more of that fluff into the game, and such... but the problem is, that kind of technology doesn't come cheap.

Blizzard is a developer who has assets with a combined worth ten-digit figures. Heck, I read somewhere, that Blizzard's net worth rivals the GDP of some small third-world countries. They, of course, have the money/man-power to develop/purchase the technology that runs WoW.

Here in Istaria, VI is a lot smaller, and don't have that kind of dough. I will give them kudos though, for taking the game as far as they've taken it (and continue to take it) with the resources they have available to them. They've assured us multiple times that they're in the black, so they must have someone good at the helm who knows what he's doing to run a profitable game off of the old software that we're using.

WoW originally ran on the Chaos Engine, a commercially available renderer, which came out right about the same time as Intrinsic Alchemy if memory serves. I believe Blizz bought the engine and has since turned it up to '11'.

Nuts to bolts comparisons, I.A. is actually the better renderer as it can do refraction and other effects that just aren't possible in Chaos. Blizzard 'fakes it' with some *very* cool surface animations and a literal ton of textures (the fire animations in Wrath are an example).

Where WoW really shines is the use of textures, animation, and color pallet. The models for the original WoW races are lower poly count than Istaria's models, if I remember right, but the textures trick the eye into seeing more detail than is really there. And the animations are brilliant - it is very hard to get a proper 'weight' to a movement animation, where the animated figure appears to have mass when it moves.

During a panel at the first Blizzcon, the animation team talked about the work that went into matching strides to ground and weapon impacts to sound effects - it's not easy stuff apparently.

Performance wise, WoW is a static world. Your 'location' in WoW is a pointer in a database file on your HD that is occasionally (in computer time) updated with the server - the inherent 'lag' is the milliseconds required to physically access the data and run it though the bus to be rendered... And, being as your location in the world is a pointer, it's easy for the client to 'preload' content just before you get to it. So all the server has to know is where you are and where the critters are, and with a good predictive movement algorithm, client sync is good enough to have PvP. Even collision is handled client-side to speed things up.

Istaria is more of a live world, very similar in most respects to Second Life, and it streams a lot of content and/or content checks to you via the Internet. Then the client has to interpret the data, go get the model file out of a flat windows file system, and render it. So the lag time can be longer simply due to ping times or network speed.

Istaria also seems to have some database access issues, probably stemming from the lack of funding you mentioned... One can only reference the database so fast when it's on platters and lots of people asking for inventory will tax things. Newer MMOs use memory based I/O engines such as RamSan systems to handle the hundreds of thousands of I/Os per second required by game architecture - these are unfortunately quite expensive.

Of course, all of this is just my observations - there is no guarantee any of it applies.

[Steelclaw]

The "engine" isn't so much a bottleneck in client performance as the way it's being used right now.

Everything you see in game, except for the UI, is part of an abstract, hierarchical structure called a "scene graph". (Think of a graph in terms of computer science or information theory with verticies and edges, not a grid.). Before every frame is rendered, the scene graph is traversed to build the list of commands to send to the GPU. This traversal is currently the most time-expensive part of the render loop (besides I/O). Why? It's complex (lots of nodes) and probably overly so. Decreasing the number of nodes will reduce the time cost of a traversal. After having seen a scene graph with 40,000 nodes, I'm surprised that the client runs as fast as it does.

There's an ongoing effort to reduce the node count of the scene graph, however it's pretty much an all-or-nothing process due to the way everything ties together. Don't expect anything soon on this front. :/

In other news, "self documenting" code does not exist.

[Raeshlavik]

In other news, "self documenting" code does not exist.

Amen. I'll add; idiot proofing assumes a finite number of idiots.

I had no idea the traversal system was the root cause of the issues. I'm not up on my traversal theory as we have other guys here who spend hours discussing the proper way to reach a leaf node and the benefits of instanced data, but if you are wrestling with this, I feel for you.