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Let's do a quick reality check..
HerculesSAS
Member Posts: 1,272
Epic Games is in the business of creating and licensing game engines and development tools for game developers to more quickly put together games without having to "recreate the wheel". They have sold the engine in its various incarnations MANY, MANY times over.
Their MMO solution, Atlas -- is also being used widely. Who would have thought? Where? Global Agenda. There are other titles that have press releases, so you can Google for those -- they aren't released yet. Games like A.P.B, Blade and Soul, and others I'm sure you will find.
When SV says "Epic and us are working on the problem" -- it does *not* mean that Epic is fixing the problem for them. What SV is doing is similar to what YOU would do when your Dell has a problem -- you call technical support and try to get it fixed. But if Atlas technology is working fine in other games, even a launched one like Global Agenda, what is the problem?
The problem is that SV does not know what they are doing. And to that point, so you don't consider it a troll -- look at the Atlas Technology homepage: www.epicgameschina.com/tech/tech-atlas_overview.html
What is the most important line in there?
Lobby-Session Game Type Support – Atlas provides full support for persistent lobby session based games.
What does that mean? It means that Atlas technology was designed to support (and you can figure this out if you read the EpicGames.com forums) INSTANCED GAMES.
Now ask yourself? Is it Epic's fault if SV decided to take their technology and use it in a manner that it was not meant for? Look at the games using it -- ALL INSTANCED. APB, Global Agenda, Blade and Soul... And now SV is trying the same "pin the blame" technique that has happened in countless other failed MMOs (Mourning, Dark and Light) on Epic Games. Unfortunately for SV, all the information that negates their blatant and utter lies about the problem being with Epic and not with them, is easily discoverable through a simple google search and reading a few articles.
Now a reality check -- whose fault do you think it is? Epic Games, who has a history of releasing game development tools and a history of having successful launches with their technology, OR a company whose development team whose only relevant experience is their CEO spamming people with poker sites, and has never been a part of a product launch of ANY kind in their lives? It's an easy answer folks -- pick the logical one.
Comments
That's what I have been hearing recently on the MO forums and on their IRC. Fans are blaming all of the problems (mostly the lag/desync) on Epic and saying that Starvault is working with Epic. Epic sells licenses for an engine that was created for small "instanced" games, it was not created to make a huge MMO. Mortal Online is a bunch of small maps connected together, but it is still not Epic's fault for Starvault using the engine to create something it was not meant for in the first place (small instanced games) If Starvault does not know how to code Epic's engine correctly, how is that Epic's fault? Hint: Its not.
(most of this is what I said in one of my other threads)
When has SV said that the fault lies with Epic games? I was unaware they made such a statement.
I'm not sure if you're posting this in reference to the questions I was asking or not. However where I got this information from was in an article on this site.
The exact quote was "there are still some desync issues to work on, which they've got the folks at Epic Games hammering on to fix (Mortal Online runs on Unreal Engine 3). The solution for the desync issues is as expected as soon as next week."
This is all I have seen stated in any official manner in reference to this issue.
I understand what you're saying in that the tech is being applied in a manner in which it is not meant to be. Which yes that is SV's responsibility.
It still doesn't explain why anyone associated with Epic would be working on the issue. Unless they are offering advice or troubleshooting information. That would not be them "hammering" on the issue though. That would place the hammer in SV's hands, which this does not state as the case.
Sorry even though what you said makes a lot of sense, and yes other companies have seemingly used the tech to a degree of success. The reality has still yet to be "checked".
Maybe it's more so that Mikeb's facts weren't straight and his wording is off. However if Epic has hands working to fix an issue in mortal online, they would have no reason to do so if the issue has nothing to do with their code.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Well let us see.
Atlas supports "instanced and public world setups." As well as "seamless public world streaming."
Looks to me like it does both types equally. Overall Atlas looks like a great system for use with the unreal engine.
Perhaps something else could be going on other than the blame game.
Epic is still obligated to provide SV with technical support. Like I said, it's like you calling up Dell, and they work with you to troubleshoot the problem. That's what SV is doing here -- they are calling up tech support and trying to get the problems sorted, but by the looks of the last patch, and every patch before -- the problem lies more on the side of SV than Epic. And I only mention it because all the MO fans are already starting on that road that "Well it's Epic's netcode that sucks", when in fact the likelihood of that being true is almost zero considering their respective expertise in game development.
Just wanted to remind that desync problem showed up only twice in whole 2009 - for less than 2 weeks (patches were arriving mostly once per two weeks)
Second thing is that epic provides UE, netcode, and works with SV on serverside software.
Who should be blamed ? For me its fifty-fifty.
If I were Epic, I'd do my best to prove that my own product owns every similar thing on the market in every way. Seems that Epic's "seamless worlds" using atlas is just a fairy tale.
SV is doing great job in optimising their game lately, but desync problem may become unsolvable.
And that saddens me very much, as the only quite similar game to MO & DFo which is going to show up in this year is Xsyon, which I'm not interested in at all.
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/thread
Remember, your advantage lies in your opponent's weakness (J)
It does not help when Starvault is adding more features and mobs to the world on top of a broken system that is having desync. Maybe fix the desync first THEN build up?
Nah. I can't speak for SV but that is how software development works. You have different teams working on different things so yes, you still keep working on other content/features while something is broken.
Very often allocating more resources to one task has no bearing on speeding up of the process.
It does not help when Starvault is adding more features and mobs to the world on top of a broken system that is having desync. Maybe fix the desync first THEN build up?
True.
I don't know thing one about writing a video-game's code, I would assume desync refers to a problem in the piece of software that reads both the server side and client side information and "syncs" them together so they appear to be running simultaneously? If I'm off don't shoot me, as I have no real clue.
It would seem adding to that information would only help in creating more of an issue.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
There are some people, who don't whine about lack of the content, empty world, lack of the content again, too few mobs, too few armour types ... bitch about lack of everything.
Consider yourself as one of them.
Afair desync showed up for the first time, when they started working on advanced AI.
My thoughts about desync aren't complicated.
Since everything player does has to be confirmed serverside, and
seamless world with twice or thrice that amount of players online, compared to instanced mmorpgs (every instance = different server node) leads to problems with packet queueing.
Hmm... maybe I think wrong, but I supposed novaday server hardware is able to live up to requirements judging by EVE's records in max online players in mmo game. But EVE's hardware requirements cannot be compared to MO's.
Ehh... hope SV solves desync before subscriber's amount gets too low to maintain MO.
Things done by SV in April are going to be crucial.
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/thread
Remember, your advantage lies in your opponent's weakness (J)
It's unclear to me whether you are indicating that "seamless worlds" is a fairy tale because Epic never stated that Atlas could do it or because they stated it could but have yet to prove it. Regardless, here is the link and a quote, since its clear Hercules thinks that the first option is correct.
http://www.epicgameschina.com/tech/tech-atlas_example.html
Implementations of many standard MMO game features are provided, including (but not limited to):
Private (instanced) & Public zone setups
Teleport zones
Seamless public world streaming
Since we're discussing SV/Epic, blame and what not.... Others have blamed them, not entirely sure for what or how it ended though:
http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/123989/epic-games-being-sued-for-faulty-unreal-engine-3
Aaaand Epic Games then counter-sued:
www.gamespot.com/news/6176435.html
Seems like a quite a messy affair.
I was under the impression that also TERA does use Unreal 3 -engine. Don't know how instanced or anything it is, but from the previews after GDC it seems that they are going rather seamless with it. Hence, I'd say that the technology will most certainly atleast have an intention to work with seamless, large-scale content. Who then it is to blame that there are hiccups in Mortal Online is impossible to tell as we can be pretty sure that neither party will admit being the ones responsible.
Desync problem is solvable. If logging out and logging in again solves it, it means that it's just a bug. It doesn't mean that lag will disappear completely - but client not being in-sync with the server for 20 mins is not simply networking or server load problem.
Here's little theoretical background how multiplayer or MMO games work:
www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2948/distributing_object_state_for_.php
Basically server wants to sent to the client as little data as possible, assuming that client has information about all objects within close distance, and is interested only in latest changes to these objects. It requires "synchronization" between client and server - so server should be aware what client already knows.
Atlas is capable of supporting persistent, seamless world - it's just a question how complicated this world is, and how good the network communication is designed. Of course implementing seamless world with large viewable distance, 10 hitboxes, player houses in random locations, advanced mob AI and persistent pets is HARD. I hope they know what they're doing
I'm wondering if placing 2 players, who had always desync problems, in the same zone (only those 2 players on server) would still have desync problem.
I've got a feeling that server software isn't capable of sending data between all players nearby.
The tricky question: is it a fault of bad data transmission between player -> server -> another player, or just server mess data packets leading to desync problems.
--
/thread
Remember, your advantage lies in your opponent's weakness (J)
Im wondering where the OP get all this tech knowledge from, how his reading the stuff wrong all the time, and why he focus so much energy in bashing all of Starvaults decessions.
Please come back to reality, if they think ATLAS is the right thing for their game, then mby it is.
Let them try and have a impact on how the future is shaped, if all we do is bash every company who tries everything new, all day. We end up with windowsME or Vista.!!!!
In fact if we are against all kind of development for PCs why not just play on a console! and get over with it?
/applaud............
For someone that had their help rejected by SV, he sure holds a grudge thats for sure.
/applaud............
For someone that had their help rejected by SV, he sure holds a grudge thats for sure.
wait, what kind of help did he do?
Actually Hercules posts tend to be spot on. He does seem t bash on SV a lot, but as a person who has developed numerous hardware & software networking products I can say he is spot on technically.
One of the most common failures of any design team is to eliminate risk by saying that someone else will do it. This have been the mode of operation from the beginning for SV. However.....
Now that the train has left the station there is nothing to do but fix the issue. From the videos I have seen it is almost certain that there is more than 1 cause of the issues. Typically de-sync issues of any nature will require changes to client, server and middle-ware. They are complex to resolve and this does not happen over night.
Others are correct that when you fnd an issue of this magnitude you MUST freeze features and fix the issue before moving on to anything else. It is not only about uisng the same resources it is about moving the problem around and hiding the original one. In a perforect world the dev team would have built a PC farm and tested the server architecture using hundreds of bots to capture these types of problems before the beta ever started.
the dysync is starting to get better now but its still there for osme people im thinking its a client to server issue but honestly at least we are seeing some improvemeants
IIRC, Hercules works in helping design and implement financial services software. He posts here during his workday, because apparently they have alot of downtime and his boss doesn;t mind him surfing these forums during that downtime.
As for him helping out Starvault, he was working (as a volunteer) with them redesign their forum. Part of the way through the redesign, they decided to not change over to the bulletin board software he had been working on. It's hard to say how much this contributes to his attitude of SV being unprofessional, but that was about the time that his attitude towards Starvault shifted.
Why do you defend this game with such zeal? It blows my mind.
This thread is full of massive quantities of delusion.
That's quite an interesting post. (And also the previous one you made regarding Hercules and SV). It's an issue that I was not aware of, but regardless, quite interesting. Wonder what the fellows on MO's IRC would say should they see this post.
That's said, given his impression of DarkFall, I'm rather curious to know Hercule's opinion regarding the current state of DFO, but that's a bit out of subject I guess.
That's quite an interesting post. (And also the previous one you made regarding Hercules and SV). It's an issue that I was not aware of, but regardless, quite interesting. Wonder what the fellows on MO's IRC would say should they see this post.
That's said, given his impression of DarkFall, I'm rather curious to know Hercule's opinion regarding the current state of DFO, but that's a bit out of subject I guess.
Osmunda is right, I started out enamoured with the ideas that SV was putting in and because it was "inspired from UO" and this idea was pushed continually as a "core design philosophy", I was honestly, a very easy sell. I'll admit it --- I am waiting for the next UO, but I realize more and more that in the current market that the way UO was when I loved it, simply won't be financially viable. It doesn't mean there can't be a PvP sandbox game, but it does mean that you have to design the game differently now than you would have more than 10 years ago, and that's a simple fact. It's something I learned with Darkfall, and when I saw the defects in MO, I didn't hesitate to start pointing them out.
To elaborate a bit -- yes, I'm a project manager/systems engineer for a financial firm. I don't just manage software, but "enterprise systems", most of the time it happens to be software, but it could be a hardware strategy just as easily. It requires the ability to have broad knowledge, but not always deep -- and my depth is great some places and not as much in others. And from this experience I was able to view MO on a purely technical aspect, looking at them using the Unreal engine as a great shortcut to making this MMO. I wasn't sure about first person view, but I knew that the amount of work it takes to create an engine requires a LOT of planning, expertise, intelligence, and above all -- math/logic/computational skills. So having them buy something pre-made was a good idea, because not all programming shops have the expertise to build an engine, it's not a small task. And as an aside -- I don't think I said U3 was a bad idea for an engine for MO, just that SV doesn't seem to know how to use it. We'll get back to that later...
Let's jump to DFO -- it's still not the game for me. The combat does not have the depth I want even today, even though its 'mass scale' PvP appeals to a LOT of folks, many of whom are in my guild. I have a constant nagger of a guildmate who tries to get me to play
DFO is more a successor to Shadowbane than it is UO. Supports a lot of big scale war engines, seiging, etc. I preferred a game that emphasized on individual player skill (this comes from competitive Quake 3 Arena play, and UO dueling) than it did on just having humungous battles. And with that, I moved from DF to the next developer who promised "UO Part 2", MO.
Early on with MO it was a great feeling because there basically was no information about the game, so you would get a chance to talk with the game designer (Mats) and Henrik about their vision, about things that they were developing for the game. Epic monsters, herbalism, and a whole host of features I had posted about before that we know now, are not in the game at all. I read some explanations on why they were doing things and it was nice to see that they took some things into consideration. As I look back now of course, I can see it's a certain type of person that I'm very used to dealing with -- those that think they have the knowledge, and talk like they have it -- but really don't.
But forget that for now -- how did I come to find that all out? Early on in the game development process, I noticed that Henrik didn't have anything set up for beta forums, and I suggested he make a change in order to facilitate bug tracking and beta forums as one -- plus having an extensible API so that he could create a 'portal' for all MO users. He asked me to give him some details on the implementation, so I did. He told me that he was going to go this route, and thanks for all the help. No problem, I said. It wasn't until a few days later that I saw a post on the forums about StJudas basically saying that the opposite is true -- that my idea was not under consideration. Mind you, I spent some time giving them an outline for the migration (among other technical questions they had about server hardware, which distributors to deal with, etc) and was happy to do so. Not everybody has the experience I have, and in that realm I didn't mind giving it. Remember -- broad, not deep
This was the beginning of my seeing the unprofessionalism of SV. Henrik never bothered to inform me that my idea wasn't going to be used (which honestly, I don't care -- it was ultimately their forum) but if he asked me to invest some time into giving them all an explanation, it would have been courteous to tell me "hey, we are going another direction". That's just a simple link into professionalism. At that point, I realized that I wasn't dealing with a professional -- and I started to research and look at how SV came to be, where the money came from, and who their team members were. It's not hard, and you can verify my findings on the internet yourself. Beta block B dropped soon after this, and I was excited to see what the game was about. I logged in, crashed a few times. Finally, I got the game up and running after installing countless extra software that should have been done by the patcher. I started to make note of all the design flaws, even the patcher. Hell, I even GAVE THEM CODE on how to fix the patcher so that it worked better and more reliably. But the more I played the game, the more I realized that the research I had done indicated that the team behind it was basically inept, and just one Unreal modder trying to make an MMO with middleware he's never used before (Atlas), and didn't have the training to really understand. Being an Unreal modder is quite different than working with a breathing API, which is what something like the full Unreal engine provides, and Atlas too. And it showed -- errors in Swedish being thrown, no event log entries during debug, no log file writing, and an unhardened client susceptible to DLL injection without any server authentication. Not to mention, most of the important parts of the game were client side. Yea, I tried to hack the game, and using a simple hex editor I made quick work of it -- and even injected DLLs into the client (they weren't "hack" dlls, just harmless ones) to see if I got out of sync errors with the server. This sadly, is true until today.
Having learned the lesson I did from DFO, I realized that MO was going to be a failure early on. I gave my account away to a friend, and emailed SV for a refund for my pre-order. They never responded. And to this day, they still have my money and it's the reason I continue to be here. If they had given my money back months ago like I asked, they could have saved themselves the embarassment from me, at least. I suspect many others as well. But if they wanted to keep my money, then they could sure bet that I was going to tell folks how bad it was, and not because I had a grudge, but because it really is a terrible, terrible game that is full of problems and has a bunch of amateurs with ZERO experience developing it. It's a classic example of "gamers wanting to make a game", which doesn't work if the gamers don't have any experience or idea what they are doing. For those of you full of hope, I feel sorry for you -- the game simply will never be anything to be that engaging because the design itself is entirely flawed, as I said earlier. Even if every bug in the game was fixed, the desync was gone -- the game still would be a bore to 90%+ of UO players. DFO does a better job at EVERYTHING, including combat, so it's almost a waste to even bother with MO. And I don't like DFO either.
In the end, it will come to launch and we will see who is right, and who is wrong. I use my own experience to try to gauge whether a game has a shot -- and it's true I misjudged on the part of DFO, but I wasn't judging that on its technical merits, but rather its "fun" factor. I think a lot of people liked Shadowbane and moved over to DFO, much more than I thought would. But MO is unique, because it tries to be much of what DFO does in terms of combat and fighting, house building etc... but fails on multiple levels and isn't even as fun. The bugs, crashes, memory leaks, and desync all just add to that fact. But for the fans -- you can keep hope alive because you have 13 days left in the month, and while I know from my own experience that the 'miracle patch' that will fix everything is simply not going to happen, I suppose that people are happy in their ignorance. They invested time and money into the game, and they have to hope for the best, like telling a lie so many times that you believe it yourself. But for the rest of us, who've come to the early realization of what MO is, and that it is no more a "sandbox" than Hello Kitty Online well... we will wait for you to come join us after launch happens. And trust me -- many people will. The defections are already starting on the MO forums. It is only a matter of time before it really gets to you.
Isn't it against the forum rules to post negatively on one game over and over and over again?
I don't really like MO but im not gonna go in each thread and bring up the same shit over and over.
Mods! Wake up and you know... Moderate.
Come on! it's like the same 4-5 guys posting the same negative stuff over and over again.
We get it, You dislike MO and want it to cease to exist lol.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP