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Old 2012-01-12, 18:48   Link #1081
Kyral
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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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Old 2012-01-12, 18:57   Link #1082
Keroko
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Originally Posted by Nixl View Post
Not going to lie, that sounds like a load of bull from Reid. Why would it stress the servers instead of the player's pc?
He did say it stressed the player's PC. It stresses both, since it's still data that needs to be transmitted.

Bioware always has had a bad reputation for optimization. It was actually a big concern in 2008 when the forums launched.

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Originally Posted by Nixl View Post
Also, the thread I posted was locked with the mod shutting it down since they did not like the speculation.
Considering the swtor forum community has a three year history of making up bullshit and pretending it to be fact, which is then assumed as such and incredibly hard to bust by Bioware, I'm not surprised. Even in that thread it was already happening. Someone tossed up the "bioware does this to prevent texture thievery" idea and suddenly it was a fact.

Still makes me go "wait, what?" every time. Even though I should be used to it by now.
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Old 2012-01-12, 19:17   Link #1083
Nixl
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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."
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Old 2012-01-12, 19:23   Link #1084
Keroko
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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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Old 2012-01-12, 19:30   Link #1085
Nixl
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Originally Posted by Keroko View Post
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.
That is valid Keroko, but I just do not see how high textures alone are causing such an increase in server load. Simply put, I thought BW had the infrastructure to deal with this issue. Maybe I am being naive, but are there not other games with even greater graphics demands that do not suffer to the same extent as TOR? There is lag in other games, but TOR seems to suffer more so if that makes sense.

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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Old 2012-01-12, 19:35   Link #1086
Keroko
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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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Old 2012-01-12, 19:36   Link #1087
Kyero Fox
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Well they promised that their gonna do a graphics update for people who can handle it.
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Old 2012-01-12, 19:38   Link #1088
Nixl
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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.
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Old 2012-01-12, 19:38   Link #1089
Keroko
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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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Old 2012-01-12, 19:40   Link #1090
Nixl
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Given that this is an MMO, support for it will be ongoing for a long, long time.
I hear the distant scream of Warhammer Online players.
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Old 2012-01-12, 20:38   Link #1091
Mr Hat and Clogs
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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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Old 2012-01-15, 19:54   Link #1092
Nixl
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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.
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Old 2012-01-15, 21:35   Link #1093
Jaden
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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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Old 2012-01-15, 22:34   Link #1094
Xion Valkyrie
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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.
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Old 2012-01-15, 22:41   Link #1095
Nixl
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Originally Posted by Jaden View Post
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.
I see what you are saying Jaden and it is valid, but it just seemed impulsive for the Project lead to buy an untested, unfinished product that does not support multicore processors on default. Sure HeroEngine may have some nice features, but it was unfinished and untested. If buying an engine was the only option, was there no alternative to the HeroEngine?

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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Old 2012-01-15, 23:05   Link #1096
Tenchi Hou Take
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Originally Posted by Nixl View Post
I see what you are saying Jaden and it is valid, but it just seemed impulsive for the Project lead to buy an untested, unfinished product that does not support multicore processors on default. Sure HeroEngine may have some nice features, but it was unfinished and untested. If buying an engine was the only option, was there no alternative to the HeroEngine?

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:
It's not really rocket science, blizzard at that time simply had far better programmers than, than Tor most likely ever had. The majority of Biowares mmo experience and expertise came from former Mythic developers which while ok weren't exactly outstanding programmers. Heck Blizzard even warned Bioware with the issues of making an mmo and stanted the only reason they could do it was because of their previous knowledge of online infastructure and coding from Battle net. Also combined with the fact that Bioware's primary focus on swtor was making a story focused mmo of which the the vast majority of the funding most probably went.

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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Old 2012-01-16, 13:08   Link #1097
Vallen Chaos Valiant
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Originally Posted by Keroko View Post
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.
Well, yeah... But then, ME2 had the live radar map disabled for "performance issues". Forcing you to pause in order to see if there is an enemy sneaking up behind you. Even though there was no such trouble with ME1.

Sounds like Bioware has a history of just deleting features when they run into performance issues.
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Old 2012-01-16, 19:12   Link #1098
Xion Valkyrie
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Originally Posted by Nixl View Post
All I know is that the money better have been blown on hookers, cocaine, and life sized Ewok replicas.
After seeing this, you really have to wonder:


Is that SWTOR cutscene in the final build?
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Old 2012-01-16, 19:29   Link #1099
Keroko
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No, that one has been changed.
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Old 2012-01-16, 19:35   Link #1100
Nixl
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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.
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