2012-01-12, 18:48 | Link #1081 |
OC Belka Scriptor
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Germany
Age: 40
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I'm strangley reminded of this one talk in Umineko no Naku Koro ni, in wich was stated that the same thing can be seen totaly different, depending if you have "love" or not.
I for once like the game even with all it's faults, so I'm a lot more willing to take what Reid said as the truth, while someone who is totaly hates the game would believe that Reid is simply lying to our faces. Anyway... One way or the other, we will not be smarter, as no one figured out what said second exe does. All we have is Reid's word so we can now choose to believe this or not. Especially as it won't change anything. They stated they will go and try to make the graphics better, so they will do it some way or the other. Even if they still lie and all they do is to switch off the "anti-theft programm" and load all the textures on the clients for the next patch, as long as it results into better textures I don't care what the real reason was.
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2012-01-12, 18:57 | Link #1082 | ||
Adeptus Animus
Author
Join Date: Jan 2007
Age: 36
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Quote:
Bioware always has had a bad reputation for optimization. It was actually a big concern in 2008 when the forums launched. Quote:
Still makes me go "wait, what?" every time. Even though I should be used to it by now. |
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2012-01-12, 19:17 | Link #1083 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Sep 2009
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Essentially, where I am confused is if there is no anti-theft or remote rendering coming from the second exe. how is high textures causing stress on the servers? How are high textures linked to server stress if all textures are produced client side? I am not attached to the remote rendering speculation, but it would it seems to explain a lot more than Reid's answer. Furthermore, what does the second exe. do if not at all related?
My issue with Reid's response is that I feel like he gave a lot of assurances, but not much else. A better way to put it is that Reid did nothing to stop the speculation, because he has yet to explain what the second exe. does or why server performance and textures are linked. I do not know how to put it, Reid may have plugged one hole, but there is still speculation arising so long as no one knows what it's function is. At this point, I would not buy into that it is just a "bug." |
2012-01-12, 19:23 | Link #1084 |
Adeptus Animus
Author
Join Date: Jan 2007
Age: 36
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Just because the textures are generated client-side doesn't mean no data gets transfered across the server. Your client has to contact the server to know what you look like, the more textures a character has, the more the server has to tell your client. Likewise, your character is constantly telling the server what you look like so the server can tell other clients, while at the same time telling you what other characters look like.
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2012-01-12, 19:30 | Link #1085 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Sep 2009
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Quote:
Ultimately Keroko, what worries me is that it appears that the HeroEngine that runs TOR seems to have been a mistake. A crappy engine, well, just plain sucks. Assuming it is the HeroEngine that is causing the drag, I think BW should look into another if that is possible. edit: Just to be clear, I have no knowledge of PCs or servers, so this all seems more like sorcery for me at this point. |
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2012-01-12, 19:35 | Link #1086 |
Adeptus Animus
Author
Join Date: Jan 2007
Age: 36
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Like I said, Bioware has always been bad at optimizing their games. Mass Effect had crappy load times on a console of all things, Dragon Age didn't even run properly on my somewhat older PC despite still meeting requirements, and now TOR. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just calling it as I see it: Not entirely unexpected.
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2012-01-12, 19:38 | Link #1088 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Sep 2009
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I do not even know if it is BW's fault this time(can't believe I am saying this). From what I read they bought the Hero Engine, which has never been tested in a largescale MMO. I heard someone state the only other game that used the HeroEngine was shut down.
edit: HeroEngine...the final boss of TOR. |
2012-01-12, 19:38 | Link #1089 |
Adeptus Animus
Author
Join Date: Jan 2007
Age: 36
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And that's the bright side, once Bioware gets some more time to tinker with their stuff, things tend to improve. ME2 didn't have the same problems ME1 did. Given that this is an MMO, support for it will be ongoing for a long, long time.
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2012-01-12, 20:38 | Link #1091 |
Did someone call a doctor
Join Date: Apr 2007
Age: 40
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Second .exe might be their anti-hacking tool, like Warden for WoW, but it seems a little big. /shrug. Or maybe its the renderer.
Whatev, as much as I like high rez graphics (seeing them in cutscenes is nice) I'd rather the random connection maxing the client seems to do fixed. But still they should leave the option of running with high-rez up to the player.
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2012-01-15, 19:54 | Link #1092 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Sep 2009
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I do not believe this article.
http://www.heroengine.com/2011/11/he...eets-starwars/ “It’s not productized yet,” we told Gordon. “There are whole sections of code that is only roughed in and not optimized for performance or security. And there are very few comments and very little documentation.” He didn’t care. “We are going to have tons of engineers. We can finish it ourselves. We’re going to want to modify your source code for our special project anyway.” Maybe I am cherry picking lines and relying on a unverified account of how BW decided to buy the HeroEngine for TOR, but this made it look like a terrible, terrible, terrible idea. Maybe I am overreacting, but this did not inspire confidence. Also, one other update on the second exe. The HeroEngine apparently does not work with multicore processors (not sure on the details), which is why the game can have performance troubles even on high end computers. However, BW or the HeroEngine makers found a work around by having a second exe. running. The second exe. allows the game to at least use/function with more than one core. I do not know if this is confirmed by BW or another round of speculation, but this seems plausible. edit: I realize I have been railing of the HeroEngine and so I may need to give a little more context. I am convinced that a lot of the bugs, glitches, and poor optimization that TOR can suffer from results from the HeroEngine being rather poor. From what I have read the HeroEngine was (1) never finished, (2) never tested, and (3) does not easily work with multicore processors . And now, from what this article states the HeroEngine was possibly bought on impulse. If HeroEngine does prove to be TOR's greatest obstacle, it just seems that the rest of the BW team got shackled to a shaky engine because the Project lead went on an impulse shopping spree. I am starting to believe that Bioware's design decisions concerning the server sharding, the flashpoint/raid player limits, the exclusion of capital raids, and essentially anything that would put too many people in one spot all revolve around Bioware having to dance around the inadequacies of the HeroEngine. It looks like the HeroEngine may have dictated TOR's design and not Bioware. Let me state that this is conjecture and I know jack shit about PCs. edit 2: One other tidbit of info I found, the only other MMO to use HeroEngine was Faxion, which shut down (not saying TOR will at all). It suffered from the exact same optimization hazards as TOR with random lag and messy framerates. Last edited by Nixl; 2012-01-15 at 20:54. |
2012-01-15, 21:35 | Link #1093 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Jan 2006
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Well, none of Bioware's own engines could handle an MMO any better, so it's hard to criticize them for taking the HeroEngine as a starting point.
The only MMO that manages to be more flexible while having somewhat good graphical fidelity (for its time) is the WoW engine, which was customized from the Warcraft 3 engine. And while there it's somewhat possible to have several hundred players and mobs on screen, the hits on performance and server stability are still huge problems. So how to make an MMO that would really incorporate the word "Massive" in its features? Nobody knows.
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2012-01-15, 22:34 | Link #1094 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Mar 2007
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They should have just used the Unreal 3 engine. Lots of Korean MMOs are using that engine so it's definitely useable for a MMO. It's also pretty scaleable so people with lower end machines would still be able to run it.
I really don't get why MMO devs keep on trying to re-invent the wheel when it comes to engine technology, especially when they have no expertise in that area. |
2012-01-15, 22:41 | Link #1095 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Sep 2009
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Quote:
To bring up WoW, how is it that Blizzard designed their own engine under the same time constraints(about 5 years?) and with a far cheaper budget than TOR ( I do not think inflation alone did it)? Is there something special about WoW's engine? I guess it feels as though Bioware tried to cut a corner and thus save money, but in this case it really came back to bite them in the ass, especially if they did have to design TOR around keep the engine from exploding. Where did the money go.... Spoiler for the answer:
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2012-01-15, 23:05 | Link #1096 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Oct 2010
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Quote:
Though to be honest I can't think of any mmo developers outside of blizzard that were particularily good at that sort of thing and lets be honest WoW at launch was in far worse shape than SWTOR is currently though that is to be expected with with the vast strides in technology made in that time and swtor's signifant budget. Probably A-Net are are the only other mmo developers with most probably very good coders (ironically the founders were major blizzard developers). While GW1 wasn't an mmo it still had the same amount of strain and traffic as an mmo and for 6 years the servers weren't closed down for maintance and was only closed down for some server maintence in regards to gw2 (which is a very impressive feat). They boasting a 800 server vs server vs server battle for one of their pvp modes and it'll be interesting to see how that turns out. But yeah SWTOR's launch problems while annoying aren't that bad in comparison to most mmo's. |
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2012-01-16, 13:08 | Link #1097 | |
Logician and Romantic
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Within my mind
Age: 43
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Quote:
Sounds like Bioware has a history of just deleting features when they run into performance issues.
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2012-01-16, 19:29 | Link #1099 |
Adeptus Animus
Author
Join Date: Jan 2007
Age: 36
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No, that one has been changed.
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2012-01-16, 19:35 | Link #1100 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Sep 2009
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Oh man, ever since beta BW has gotten flak for that scene, but I think it was eventually corrected. A nice find Xion, pretty funny.
This one is still my favorite alongside Bro Team Pill's video review of TOR. http://youtu.be/xoOQdU3zMzM?t=10s whoops, did not put the time in the link, best line is at 10 second mark. |
Tags |
bioware, lucasarts, mmorpg, star wars, windows |
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