And what happens when more players than one instance can handle assemble in one place? Will you be able to shoot at players in another instance? Which server will handle that? Will every projectile be tracked by both servers? Will it be handed off from one to the other mid-shot? You can use all the CIG-approved buzzwords you like, the fact is it's a simple idea, Roberts didn't invent it, but there's a reason there aren't countless games supporting thousands of players in a unified space.
Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12
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And what happens when more players than one instance can handle assemble in one place? Will you be able to shoot at players in another instance? Which server will handle that? Will every projectile be tracked by both servers? Will it be handed off from one to the other mid-shot? You can use all the CIG-approved buzzwords you like, the fact is it's a simple idea, Roberts didn't invent it, but there's a reason there aren't countless games supporting thousands of players in a unified space.
Sadly, since CRobber is stuck in the 1990s, we will never experience the joy of seeing them rollAh, but iCache can be improved upon by adding an upper case "X" at the end.
iCacheX. See?
Don't you know anything about whatever all this is about?
Maybe they should do like Andy Fastow — one of the key personages in the Enron case — and make a big deal out of blue M&Ms and the clever marking opportunities this (at the time) innovation generated.
This begs the question, how can ED do this, actually much more, because there are systems in ED over 100 bodies, which is significantly greater than Stanton.
Regardless of the exact tech used, ED has seamless systems just like SC, and yet somehow, can hold so much more without taking years to invent a magical tech.
ED does dynamic bubbles as well.
And what will happen if let's say you start getting 100 or 200 or 400 players all together in the same location. Will server meshing help with that? I'd suggest it won't.
No, they don't. Stop relying on the regurgitated pigswill CI¬G is feeding you. To do that, they simply need some very classic session management as seen in every MMO for the last two decades. Server meshing is not a factor — hell, server meshing as it has actually been described by the devs themselves doesn't even address the problem, but I suppose you can chalk that one up to their never having been all that clear about what the meshing is actually supposed to do or how it will work.
Not much higher, no, since players are vastly more demanding than any other entity. Even right now, when the whole system is incompetently being loaded, they can already cull a bunch of the entity processing based on whether anyone is actually around to witness those entities (c.f. the “doors don't close if you're not looking” bug they had a while back).
The limiting factor is the number of players. Cutting the system in different instances so that more players can fit into the system does not mean that each instance can handle more players. In particular since that would defeat the whole purpose of the exercise, which is to free up some spare overhead into which they can cram even more entities.
…and also for SC since it is no different from any other multiplayer software. They will still be classic old instances even in SC, even if they (like everyone else ever) also have to slice the system up in smaller subsections that will be instanced as well.
Well… almost everyone. EVE doesn't have instances, but it's a very special case to begin with and deals with the issue in a number of different ways.
Those “server bubbles” would be what is commonly referred to as “instances”. They do not get rid of any need to use loading screens because the two are wholly unrelated. It is entirely possible to transition between instances without showing any kind of loading screen. Server meshing is also not needed to manage instances — that is a job far more suited for a load balancing system — and its purpose so far has more been described as a way to ruin the work of the load balancer by feeding data from one instance to the next.
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When you go down to a planet and hit the "glide" portion, you are in a well disguised loading screen.
Disguised loading = no seam = seamless. Hyperjump, on the other hand, is not seamless. But given that ED can have loads of landable planets in one star system, that means loads (several dozens easily) of landable planets rendered seamlessly down to lack rock. Eat that, SC.
Dear sir, you are lying. Neither instances nor "bubbles" have anything to do with number of planets rendered. Holy Roberts himself said that.
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Without having seen the code you can't say for sure, but from what I've seen CiG are grasping to try and understand a technology that was spawned by Spectrum Holobyte in the early 90's, rushed out of the door in Dec 98 and fixed in a subsequent release in 2005 :cough: toot horn :cough:. Elite Dangerous is the only other title that has managed something similar (and not with all the features of the former, but also vice versa). Its way more complicated than probably a single post on a forum will allow.
The fundamental mistake "laymen" make when looking at ED's "Islands" and Falcon 4's (Allied force included) "bubbles" is to conflate game location, player avatar location, player rl location, environment, static entities and mobile entities, when in fact they need as much abstraction from each other as possible with only what needs communicating between them, when its needed and have a core networking layer that underpins the whole thing (the term instances has been well abused imho and shouldn't be used in relation to ED/Falcon).
The worst thing CiG could do is tie networks to game locations (which is what LittleAnt is suggesting if I haven't misinterpreted), as you will hardly ever be able to predict player avatar locations (nor possibly entities dependant on implementation). The proper way of doing this kind of thing is to make everything bound as much as possible to the player avatars location and kind of "forget" its moving about (you may use centralised arbitration amongst other duties). You can also abstract the npc (and possibly other players) into very efficient data tables, which you can then compress and uncompress as required based on proximity.
The real trick is to have the underlying networking figured out first (and that isn't necessarily LAN/WAN, but on the same machine) and to work out what the maximum time between state updates can be for everything in the game/sim (and code it so you can differentiate). The other is to properly use multi-threading/multi-core CPU's from the ground up (I used a dual PIII system for development back in my day for just such a purpose), so you can offload non critical functions t some threads whilst keeping others going at full chat for stuff like collision detection, avionics etc.
I wonder how many entities CiG has managed to get within their one game coord system so far? I know what I could get VU2 to handle in 2003....
I didn't know that ED have already dynamic bubbles. How it works ? For me, what CIG want to do is pure utopy.
I don't know how CIG intend to manage the max server cap and what this max capacity will be. Server meshing will be the mechanism that handle bubbles and it should have a max count of entities AND players preventing the bubble to be a slideshow. I have no info on what they plan to do when they exceed this capacity.
How ED manage overcapacity in a system ?
No. You're in a pretty well signalled session handshake.
The answer to your question is in my post above and its absolutely doesn't involve tying networks (P2P or CS) to in game locations.
That's because you don't understand what they are actually doing.
No, they don't. Just as ED doesn't. Loading resources has nothing to do with number of players.
Even Christopher isn't that stupid, he clearly distinguishes amount of planets and player cap in his Letter.
It's just LittleAnt decided that lack of Server Meshing is a good excuse for SC not having the promised 100 planets, but it is not.
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Not at all. You can fly down to planets without doing the glide thing.
You do go through an instance change as you drop out of SC, but when you are in glide you are already in a planetary instance. You can see other ships as you are in glide and as you drop out, you'll still see those ships if they are in range.
It is far from being a loading screen.
Viajero
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Indeed. That loading screen misconception has been proven wrong multiple times with commanders travelling in normal speeds from surface of planet A to surface of planet B or station orbiting nearby. No loading screens at all. What we see in that glide portion is a network handshake for the server to decide with whom if anyone, you instance with when you change from gliding to normal speed and viceversa; as you disengage from previous players/NPC and meet new ones and create a new netcode session. But it is not an asset loading screen, assets in Elite are procedurally generated in real time without loading.
The only real "loading", if you can call it that, is when you jump to hyperspace to change systems, since the stellar forge needs the new seed to procedurally generate the new system (plus the new network handshake).
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sorry but you are wrong
FD did a good video on it once. Sorry, you'd have to hunt it down yourself unless someone else supplies it.
Basically as you fly around, your bubble can overlap with those of others. As you do, the instances merge. As you fly apart, the instances separate. Same as when you drop in and out of supercruise.
This can lead to some wonky stuff at times though with instancing, like when you start getting lots of players together, although that is often blamed on it being P2P connections between players rather than C/S. I have no idea if this is the real cause or not.
What ED tends to do with over capacity is split people into different instances. So, if for example, there are 50 people at the same station, this might be split into 2-3 seperate instances.
However, this is very much depdentent on how those people come together. ED has (IIRC) a soft cap of 32 players in an instance. However, through the use of wings and friends, you can push things over this limit. It also helps if there are no NPCs around because that's less network traffic.
That's how you get expeditions where you have up to 100 or more players all in the same instance. Although things can get janky with that. However, i think that's because people are forcing connections that the game would normally try and avoid (because it will try and avoid connecting people who have bad pings in relation to each other... but by winging or being friends, you can push the game into instancing you).
Woah! Never expected to see you here!
I'd ask about the next episode of SCG, but you already explained in a reddit post
Still, waiting for it with baited breath.
EDIT: Oh wow, just checked. You've made 3 posts here in 6 years! Your post development is slower than CIGs!
Sunk post galaxy.
The “glide portion” isn’t a loading screen. It’s basically there to determine instancing. If there’s a pre-existing instance(s) at your destination, the brief “pause” you experience right before the glide is complete is the main server determining if you’ll be a good “fit” with the instance(s) host(s), or if you you’ll be spawned in your own instance.