Originally posted by Sparre You should really read what CRS post in the "Production Notes" every now and then. It has been clearly said that the RD&P will be broken down to sperate RD&P lines, one for each branch, and proberbly even types. Hence, we will see one standalone RD&P for Aircrafts, one standalone RD&P for Armoured vehicles, and I expect eventually one standalone RD&P for Infantry, et cetera. Eventually will it be a very long list what will be added through RD&P.The RD&P we seen so far is only the beginning, not a final feature.
I think the most operative word in your quote is 'eventually'.
The Rats have never said, "Within 6 months", or "within a year" ..... its just "eventually".
Sparre, you've been around long enough to remember the Rats saying that "eventually" they would control non-direct fire weapons (artillery, high alt bombing, bouncing grenades) using an Ordnance Server.
Four years ago they said that "eventually" we would have visible supply to interdict.
"Eventually" didn't work out too well for those features, did it?
CRS is VERY long on promises and VERY short on delivering them. I don't think anyone who has played WW2OL consistently over the past four years could ever deny that.
I think the most operative word in your quote is 'eventually'. The Rats have never said, "Within 6 months", or "within a year" ..... its just "eventually". Sparre, you've been around long enough to remember the Rats saying that "eventually" they would control non-direct fire weapons (artillery, high alt bombing, bouncing grenades) using an Ordnance Server. Four years ago they said that "eventually" we would have visible supply to interdict. "Eventually" didn't work out too well for those features, did it? CRS is VERY long on promises and VERY short on delivering them. I don't think anyone who has played WW2OL consistently over the past four years could ever deny that.
What, exactly, do you get by trolling this game and bashing it continuously? Only been reading a few minutes and can already identify you as trolling. What do you get out of it?
I think the most operative word in your quote is 'eventually'. The Rats have never said, "Within 6 months", or "within a year" ..... its just "eventually". Sparre, you've been around long enough to remember the Rats saying that "eventually" they would control non-direct fire weapons (artillery, high alt bombing, bouncing grenades) using an Ordnance Server. Four years ago they said that "eventually" we would have visible supply to interdict. "Eventually" didn't work out too well for those features, did it? CRS is VERY long on promises and VERY short on delivering them. I don't think anyone who has played WW2OL consistently over the past four years could ever deny that.
What, exactly, do you get by trolling this game and bashing it continuously? Only been reading a few minutes and can already identify you as trolling. What do you get out of it?
I have to say he is pretty accurate in his statement don't get me wrong I am huge fan of the game but CRS has very limited resources and prolly have not gotten the game to where they would have liked to in the past 4 years. That being said they had a big dream and atleast they made thier game reality just because they made promises four years ago and did'nt come through doesnt make me think any less of them because atleast they tried hard with their limited resources and made a great war simulation.
I really do think CRS does what it can with what little it has and doesnt make alot of false promises. The upcomming release of Battle Ground Europe will probably be the deciding factor in how fast the advancements in graphics and gameplay come that may have been promised long ago but we still await. Hey atleast they are working towards them instead of leaving game as is and collecting a subscriptions.
Yep, CRS has limited resources. We all agree on that.
But when you've got limited resources, you at least TRY to maximise the resources you have. You're building a game, its got bugs. You need coders to fix it.
So what do you do? You fire half the coders whilst at the same time hanging on to guys who, quite frankly, are worse than useless.
Yeah, lets fire Hoof, the guy who developed the ballistics and flight models, and lets hang on to DocDoom, who's never written a line of code in his life and who seems to exist for the sole purpose of pissing off the entire playerbase with an unending series of forum posts which either:
a) fail to answer the question posed in the first place, b) exhibit a bewildering lack of knowledge about the basics of the game (remember his classic post re AI not firing through buildings? - this is one of the DEVELOPERS guys!!)
Sorry, but CRS' limited resources are of their own doing ..... and even with those limited resources they have, think about where they have devoted those resources over the past year or so. At a time when players were asking for SPAA, new tanks, new aircraft etc, geez even another boat or two, what do we get?
Infantry emotes and radial cover and a Mercedes race car
You don't know jack, that's why you aren't in business anywhere. Don't try to run their company, because no one cares what you think. If they didn't know what they were doing they would be bankrupt and gone. They aren't.
Originally posted by PnHobbit You don't know jack, that's why you aren't in business anywhere. Don't try to run their company, because no one cares what you think. If they didn't know what they were doing they would be bankrupt and gone. They aren't.
Pnhobbit, the old saying "the customer is always right" is one of the great untruths of the 20th Century. The customer is very rarely right.
But by the same token, one of the biggest mistakes any business can make is developing a business model based solely on what the business owner 'thinks' should be the core objectives of the business. That becomes a very inward looking viewpoint ...... "oh yeah, lets do this, it'll be great!" shortly followed by, "Those stupid customers, don't they realise how great this is?"
Listen to posts by the Rats, in particular by Doc. "We've got a huge terrain with 450 towns and cities!!!!" The customer says, "So what, I want performance! After all, I can only fight in one town at a time. I don't particularly care that you've got Zundert modelled beautifully whilst I'm trying to fight with 3 fps in Virton".
Doc - "We model muzzle velocity, shrapnel, spall and calculate each piece of the projectile independently. Isn't that fantastic?!!!!"
Customer - "But when I fire an 88mm HE shell, I've still got to HIT that enemy infantry to kill him? And by the way, I'm still getting only 3 frames per second".
Purely IMO, CRS have become so wedded to the trees that they forget the forest they are trying to operate in. As a player, I don't CARE if that HE shell I've fired is modelled with correct weight, muzzle velocity and ballistics. All I care about is that when it hits, the RESULT is within my reasonable expectations.
And that's where CRS has screwed the pooch ..... whilst all the parts of their game might be fantastic, might be epic, might be ground-breaking ....... the result we see in game is so far from our reasonable expectations as players that it fails to meet the criteria set by CRS itself - a combined arms WW2 simulation.
While you raise some valid points Kadesh in this discussion, but I have to disagree with you on many of your points and perspective in that that post.
"But by the same token, one of the biggest mistakes any business can make is developing a business model based solely on what the business owner 'thinks' should be the core objectives of the business. That becomes a very inward looking viewpoint ...... "oh yeah, lets do this, it'll be great!" shortly followed by, "Those stupid customers, don't they realise how great this is?"
I understand what it is your trying to say here, but you say it very poorly. First what you are referring to are not "Core objectives" of the business. They are really not even "Core Objectives" of the game itself which is not the business but a product of it. All I see here is someone trying to pick apart design decisions from an outside view. The developers are in constant contact with the players and know their game better then anyone else, they also are the only ones who know the level of skill and knowledge of their workers, their numbers, how much they can spend on wages, what their building lease costs, power and bandwidth usage/cost, status of their servers etc. But they should definately listen to the directions offered up by the players. When the players demand something they should throw caution to the wind and follow their lead. Because just listening to them, noting what they want and adding it to the list to do when they can is not good enough it seems. Let the development be lead by public opinion and speculation rather then internal knowledge and budget constraints. That'll work great!
"Listen to posts by the Rats, in particular by Doc. "We've got a huge terrain with 450 towns and cities!!!!" The customer says, "So what, I want performance! After all, I can only fight in one town at a time. I don't particularly care that you've got Zundert modelled beautifully whilst I'm trying to fight with 3 fps in Virton"."
I'm a bit confused on this arguement. For starters your not the only one fighting on the battlefield, so it doesn't really matter that your only in 1 town. If that town to the north of your town falls then all of a sudden there being more towns then just your town becomes a pretty big deal because now there is a new flank to worry about. Possible reinforcements etc. The reason Doc is excited about having alot of towns to play in is because they add more depth and ability to see different directions occur in gameplay because of them. Not to mention the battlefront moves and having more towns allows it to move in new ways. Ala, Maneuver Warfare which is coming to the game in time, and then it won't be just about "We have all these towns to fight in" it'll be more about "We have all this terrain to maneuver in, did you see how 1st Panzer Division swept around that northern front and totally cut off that major hole of resistance in those towns! Wow!"
See where I am going with this? Now as for your last point, the FPS is an internal issue, currently beign tracked by coders to discover why its occurring, and what can be done to fix or atleast minimize the issue that seems to be tied with texture calling and likely tied to the displaying of large numbers of players all crammed into these many towns on the front. But I really don't see why Doc can't be proud of his modelling of towns due to the low FPS caused in some instances of battle. They are barely related to one another in the whole scheme of things, and Doc is not likely to be the guy sent to fix the problem, I'd guess that RickB, their best programmer would be.
"Doc - "We model muzzle velocity, shrapnel, spall and calculate each piece of the projectile independently. Isn't that fantastic?!!!!"
Customer - "But when I fire an 88mm HE shell, I've still got to HIT that enemy infantry to kill him? And by the way, I'm still getting only 3 frames per second".
Purely IMO, CRS have become so wedded to the trees that they forget the forest they are trying to operate in. As a player, I don't CARE if that HE shell I've fired is modelled with correct weight, muzzle velocity and ballistics. All I care about is that when it hits, the RESULT is within my reasonable expectations."
Well I guess all I can say to this part is I'd rather play a game that tries to reproduce the effects of the weapons by modelling them as closely as they can rather then, and deal with those WTF moments that seem to occur once in a while as a result of doing it that way, then to have a dumbed down system where every result is the same because X+Y=Z. And lets consider the other guys "Reasonable expectations" and what about that dumb fart over there what does he want? Hollywood, how about little billy over there, can he start destroying tanks with the butt of his rifle now cuz he thinks thats pretty reasonable. Now I realize I am stretching the point here, but its for good reason. Get any number of people in a room and discuss these things and more times then not you'll arrive at a totally different place everytime. But use Math and Data and more times then not you'll arrive within the same vicinity, and the times where it doesn't atleast you can look at the logs and says, Here's the deal, now is that correct or a bug, do we fix it or leave it alone?
I really enjoy the game simply because its not a gaurranteed experience, just like in real life, you will have WTF moments, and issues. That for me is part of the beauty of the game.
And while I understand your position that you feel CRS is in the wrong, but I really don't feel that even if I did agree with what you are saying here, which mostly I don't. Some things I thought were just put poorly or are less significant to me then you think they are. But the result in my eyes doesn't detract any from the overall package.
Just because that guy didn't die this time when you fully expected he would doesn't make this game any more or less a combined arms sim. Because the planes choose to hug the deck instead of escort or intercept bombers most of the time doesn't make the airwar any less complex or vital in the scheme of overall gameplay, its just a decision by players to not join in on it. Because there is no current hydro-dynamic water model for the boats to float through doesn't mean they aren't fun in their own right and useful parts of the game at times. The fact that you've never fought in that town way down south doesn't lessen the fact that it does exist, someone has fought there before, and you might fight there tomorrow for all you know. And thats the rub. This game has the ability to even after 4 years of play for me, come up with fresh new experiences, be it seeing some guys do something I've never seen before, witnessing a huge bomber formation choose a daring new route to attack factories through, or whatever else the game brings up, from the WTF moments, to the "I want to scream bloody murder!" ones it is what it is, and its constantly changing and evolving, either because we as players change and evolve in our play and tactics, or because the rules did, some new element has been added, or some exploit was taken away or nullified.
I just take the game for what it is and find it alot of fun most of the time. When it isn't any fun for me, I just turn it off and wait till I feel motivated to turn if back on again. But it is still the only game service I continue to play for, going on 4 years in a row now, and actively playing when I feel like it and have the free time. All I know for certain is that the game will over time change some more, but no matter those changes, there is no other MMO War-Simulator with anywhere near the scope, and depth, and variation to gameplay and experience available out there.
Originally posted by Demarii Let the development be lead by public opinion and speculation rather then internal knowledge and budget constraints. That'll work great!
Come on demarii. Did I EVER suggest that? Conversely, if you took the entire WW2OL population and asked, "Would you rather work was devoted to performance issues, or infantry emotes?", what do you reckon the answer would be?
Originally posted by Demarii I'm a bit confused on this arguement. For starters your not the only one fighting on the battlefield, so it doesn't really matter that your only in 1 town. If that town to the north of your town falls then all of a sudden there being more towns then just your town becomes a pretty big deal because now there is a new flank to worry about.
Demarii, do you deny that performance is King? New players will not give a flying fig if there's 450 towns in game if they are finding themselves getting 3 fps in battle.
Originally posted by Demarii Well I guess all I can say to this part is I'd rather play a game that tries to reproduce the effects of the weapons by modelling them as closely as they can rather then, and deal with those WTF moments that seem to occur once in a while as a result of doing it that way, then to have a dumbed down system where every result is the same because X+Y=Z.
"The effects of the weapons" is exactly what I'm after as well. The problem is that the method that CRS uses (projectile tracking), contributes greatly to the FPS and lag issues we experience, whilst simultaneously failing to take into account the greatest cause for death or injury caused by explosive weapons, concussion.
Kadesh, who works on the infantry Emotes? Toto. And he's not a programmer, he's a modeller. So how would he help with performance issues, if not working on the infantry models. See thats the big problem I have with people complaining that these guys are not taking the right course, they often say, why are you making new units, or adding new water textures, or working on this or that, they should be focusing on performance. Well they are always working on improving performance, but in a large program such as this things that may give some performance increase don't just jump out at you, you have to crawl through the code, try something see if it works and then see what the ramifications of it are. And you can't put a massive group of coders to work on doing that, often times when your working on specific elements of code you have freeze the code, meaning while they are their the code doesn't change, because a change can and often will have an adverse effect on the work being done.
If they add or change something and are trying to modify it to see if they can improve performance and someting doesn't jive where is the problem, is it in the new addition or in the performance tweaks they've tried. Its also that same kind of mentality that dictates that normally you have a small group of coders doing something, more heads is not always better or faster when dealing with code. When I am bug hunting in code, I can go from one part, then next thing I know I'm following interdependancies into several other files, through multitudes of functions and operations, I have to think my way through them, I can't just hand half the thought process off to another coder without being 100% sure he understands exactly how it works, starts etc. So essentially that other guy would have to go and look at the exact same thing I did, follow the exact same route and think through the problem just as I would. Now does it make sense to have two guys doing the exact same thing, is that really wise use of programmer time? No it isn't. So generally you put your best guy on the job if he's free, and in the case of a client specific bug or issue, for instance if the Mac Client works well, but the windows client seems to have a problem it might be smart to get the guy who knows the windows client code the best to handle the issue.
And none of that has any bearing on wether the rest of the team can continue doing their jobs making models, new sounds, or whatever. They tasks do not hinder or freeze when the coders are going through the code. And while you seem convinced that the projectile tracking code is the problem with low FPS, I am not, the reason I am not is its pretty much been there since the start of the game, and for a long time fps were actually very stable, but then the rats did some Graphics overhaul, changed over to OpenGL, changed and increased their texture sizes, added 3D buildings and the like, and suddenly the fps started to drop again. So while just a hunch my guess is the issue lies with how they are swapping in textures, I think I even heard a Rat suggest as much as that was where RickB was thinking it was or something like that. And given how good he is I'd be willing to go with his guess on the matter.
And to re-iterate, Performance is key, and they've always said its always sitting at the top of the To-Do list. But it takes time to find even the smallest bit of performance, and sometimes they have to knowingly hurt it just to find bug, like putting in some diagnostic code like they did recently, it really hurt my Connectivity but now that they've released the latest patch with the fixes that the debug code helped them with I no longer have the CTHL issue and my connectivity is much better. Was it a bad move to have a week of slightly lower performance to fix an issue that was making the game totally unplayable for parts of the player base?
Doc is not a programmer, there are lots of guys on the team who do not program. And they likely have a few programmers who tend to be more Specialistics, like Client coders, Graphics Coders, Server side Coders. And generally sitting atop that is a Head Coder who works with the Dev Head to coordinate and facilitate work tasks and changes. Now this is all guess work, but its generally how it works, its about delegating tasks so you maximize your workforce and can maintain a decent development timeline.
I'm sure the the projectile tracking does take up cpu cycles, and doesn't help with the fps issues, I'd say your stretching the issue by claiming that it greatly adds to the problem, because as I stated before, its always been there yet I remember quite well the game running with rock solid fps for a long period a while back. I think you would be alot smarter to look at the fact that they just did a major rewrite over a portion of the game, namely the User Interface, not to mention alot of other big changes in the recent past, some of which are more likely bigger contributors to stressing not just the CPU but the GPU.
Now its been a long time since concussion came up so I'm not too sure about the reason given, but I'm pretty sure it falls along the lines, they couldn't get rock solid data, and it would entail further loading the physics engine with a whoel new set of calculations. I remember that one side complained bitterly about this because they bombs and grenades were made to produce a more conussive effect so one of the strengths of their weapons was not taking affect and for that I sympathize, just like I sympathize with the pilots whose planes have rudder issues. I am one of them actually as I fly the 109. But it honestly does not break the game in any major way, its an issue that can be played with and have little to no effect if you take it into accounr. Just like the bombs or grenades, if you know you need a close hit and shrapnel to do the job then place it well for maximum effect. And why on earth would you argue on one hand that the physics of calculating projectiles is hurting the game and then turn around and complain that they haven't added on more calculations to be done. That makes no sense. Perhaps one day when Rickb rewrites the physics engine, which he says is a total mess and he will not modifty for fears of what will occur he will only totally rewrite that system he can add it in especially if he does it cleaner and faster then the other guy did.
Ignorance does not make for a good arguement, it does not lend it any weight or credibility, and you continue to ignore a great many things in your arguements. You simplify things to the point were they no longer make sense to someone who looks at the big picture. And thats just it, those guys have to see the whole picture, not just the things we the players feel are most important.
These guys didn't just wake up one day have a brain fart and make this game out of luck. They designed it for years, the coded for many more years and they know its strengths weaknesses and limitations better then anyone. They have made a game that is light years beyond what anyone else is doing right now, and the result is it pushes our computers further then other game does. You can look at any portion of this game and see how it out performs other games by what it is doing, and in many cases it is doing those things on a compareable level to those other games performance, not in all cases, but like I just said when your pushing the limits you have to expects some issues, but many people seem to feel more then justified in assuming they don't know what they are doing, they could do it better, and they've never seen the code, they have no idea of the dependancies or inner workings, heck I'm pretty sure alot of those people don't even know how to program a game as simple as tetris much less a 3D MMO FPS that uses a physics engine, doppler sound, and a seamless map the size of the 1200 x 1200 kilometers, and communicates using a tight netcode that can send update packets for hundreds of events so small that even a 56k modem can handle them, it was all sheer luck that got them there, honestly thats what I think some people get in their heads when they talk about how easy it should be to fix this or add that.
Ya those guys sure do need our help figuring it all out.
Thought this might be a useful inclusion to this discussion... Its from the latest production update post on the newest patch the released yesterday.
1.19.4 Live
Todays release brings many fixes to performance issues that have been nagging us since the major code rewrites of 119. Hopefully this will stem many of the issues that we have been having with connections and reconnections over the past few weeks. I want to thank everyone who helped us track these issues down.
We also rewrote the plane sound routines to get what we were looking for in the first pass which is hot sounds and nearby explosions (for improved SA) without hearing every plane in the area and all manner of other things. I hope these are well received.
We also added in a new /orders command which is a basic tool for our work on brigade and mission tools that will be coming in 1.20.
Next week our gold candidate is due to the publisher so well likely have one more release so that the live game and the gold are the same code base and from then on its time for 1.20. Well talk more about that once I get these new installers working but you can rest assured that performance is our primary objective in the coming weeks.
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Sounds like they got their eye on the ball to me.
And then there is this reply to a post found in the Hangar Mailbag stick post in regards to the FPS issues while flying...
[KILLER] "It's not so much the detail of the vehicles, it's the process of loading and unloading the data. It has to be read from somewhere, loaded into it's own memory space for each vehicle, and processed for display.
When you fly over you load a wave of them, and unload them again as you go by and are loading new units. This is happening a lot, god forbid a couple of fully loaded para planes flies through.
It causes a storm of queued up vehicles to form in the list of vehicles the program knows you need to load, hundreds at times, that is a real handful to manage loading in and deleting and clearing memory.
At the rate a plane flies over a battle it might require loading a wave of 200+ models (more than many games even have) and then clearing them out in just a few seconds, over and over again. That's just display, there's also processing all the state data for each one, turret position, speed, firing state, visual effects for each one etc. and translating the parts of the models into the correct states.
The largest difference can be made by turning visible players to minimum when your in a plane. It's worst case for pilots like no other vehicle because they pass by so many other players so fast.
We are trying to make the data loading queue more efficient to toss more that you'll never see anyway, the threading of the loading more efficient, and the model data itself more efficient to handle. None of these are fast or easy things to do.
Then there's just straight framerate increases, which if realized would leave more time for that loading, and reduce stutters as a side effect.
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Once again I'd say they've got a pretty good handle on things. Don't you?
Originally posted by Demarii And to re-iterate, Performance is key, and they've always said its always sitting at the top of the To-Do list. But it takes time to find even the smallest bit of performance, and sometimes they have to knowingly hurt it just to find bug, like putting in some diagnostic code like they did recently, it really hurt my Connectivity but now that they've released the latest patch with the fixes that the debug code helped them with I no longer have the CTHL issue and my connectivity is much better. Was it a bad move to have a week of slightly lower performance to fix an issue that was making the game totally unplayable for parts of the player base?
Isn't that what the Closed Beta tests are for?
Originally posted by Demarii Now its been a long time since concussion came up so I'm not too sure about the reason given, but I'm pretty sure it falls along the lines, they couldn't get rock solid data, and it would entail further loading the physics engine with a whoel new set of calculations.
Are you kidding? There are MOUNTAINS of data available on death/damage ranges for HE weapons of all types.
Originally posted by Demarii And why on earth would you argue on one hand that the physics of calculating projectiles is hurting the game and then turn around and complain that they haven't added on more calculations to be done. That makes no sense.
Geez you really don't get it. OK, lets make this simple. There are two ways to do ballistics and explosive effects.
1. You calculate everything down to the minutest detail, shell weight, muzzle velocity, number of shrapnel pieces and their velocity, and then every single time you fire a shell you run those calculations. Hope you have a decent Cray system to do it all though
2. You turn everything over to a probability calculation. Fire a 20mm HE shell at 100mm of armor and the probability of penetration is around 0. Land an 88mm HE shell three feet from a standing infantryman and the probability you're gonna kill him is around 80%. Fire a Mg151/20 round into the wing of a Hurricane and calculate the probability of catastrophic damage. All that can be accomplished with a set of probability tables ... minimal calculation required. But instead, CRS chooses (in the case of the 20mm HE shell at 100 mm of armor) to generate not all the shrapnel, not even most of the shrapnel, but 15 pieces of shrapnel and then see if they will penetrate.
ALL THAT MATTERS IS THE OUTCOME .... NOT THE PROCESS. If I fire a .303 round into a standing enemy infantryman I don't care if the OUTCOME is generated by mathematical calculation, probability, or pixie dust. All I care about is that the OUTCOME is believable. The PROCESS should be transparent in a game like this. Of course, the computer I am running the program on cares only about the PROCESS though, particularly when its spending CPU cycles calculating joule transfer, direction and momentum of shrapnel etc.
Yet CRS continually, frustratingly, thinks about PROCESS, instead of thinking about the OUTCOME. That's why there are issues with grenades, HE shells, air to air cannon etc.
Originally posted by Demarii Perhaps one day when Rickb rewrites the physics engine, which he says is a total mess and he will not modifty for fears of what will occur he will only totally rewrite that system he can add it in especially if he does it cleaner and faster then the other guy did.
It's a telling quote by RickB isn't it? Here is CRS's best coder, and even he says that the current physics model is a complete mess that he will not touch.
And yet you took about two paragraphs to argue the validity of the physics model to me? For what else is the calculation of projectile velocity, mass and energy transfer if it is not a physics model?
Let me tell you a fun story about RickB. It came from his blog, a very interesting analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the WW2OL codebase. A few releases ago ... I think it was the first time air stutters were REALLY bad, RickB went hunting for a stutter fix. He found a section of code he had deleted for that release. Now the particular piece of code did nothing at all. He checked it, rechecked it, looked for dependencies etc, and it was just a piece of junk code ... it did nothing at all. Yet RickB put it back into game because he was so desperate for a stutter fix that he thought it wouldn't hurt anything. That should give you an idea how much control CRS actually has over the game they created.
Originally posted by Demarii Ya those guys sure do need our help figuring it all out.
Read my comment above. The Rats may not need our help, but they sure need someone's. Fer Gawd's sake .... what kind of game is it where the developers decide to lock an aircraft's tailwheel by default and then find that ATG's no longer turn? Do they really have so little idea of how their game actually works that they could make a mistake like that?
Is that the kind of professionalism we now come to expect from Cornered Rat Software?
What if the majority of their beta testers aren't getting the problem? Some things are only really obvious in the live environment.
Big deal there is mountains of data on lots of things and alot of times they don't correlate, so you end up having to spend alot of time just pruning data and trying to come up with something that makes sense of it all, and just having data doesn't mean they either had the time or were able to incorporate it in the game for one reason or anything.
No you obviously don't get it, Probability systems are not the same as a physics system, because they are very simplistic, they only have as much probability as you put into them, and to make a really good one that would come even close to the system they currently use it would be bulky, have huge tables of data assoicated, and still would not have many of the good points of the current one. I'd rather have a system that operated under more of a real world system where it gives an element of chance or change depending on each and every factor being involved interacts. Just like in life no two events are exactly the same, thats what makes their system so special, it shares that philosophy and does the best it can to ensure that while acting realistically that it is still a unique event.
I understand you only care about the outcome, you don't care about the process, but you can not trivialize it done to inconsequential with a simple example and then offer that as proof they've taken the wrong course. And while I'd love to sit here and fence with you on this subject all day long (note: sarcasm) You are still disregarding the fact that while a mess of code as reported by RickB it still functions as expected, they have said so time and time again, they have audited and tested the system over and over and they get the results they want. Sometimes they relook at refactor some of the data, but the actual system which is doing all the work hasn't changed.
No offense to RickB, he is a very smart man and a hell of a programmer, but he should know better then to make blanket statements like that. Now for one, Messy Code does not mean Not Working Code, it just means that if your not the guy who wrote it, you'll have a hell of a time deciphering what it all does and how it all works together. That is why RickB says he won't touch it, he can't or more accurately doesn't care to figure it all out, and he personally believes he would waste more time farting around with the code trying to make it work how he wants then he would if he just rewrote a whole new physics engine that he understood from top to bottom, clearly defined and documented etc.
You see the guy who made that engine isn't around anymore, and coders tend to look very unfavourably on being dumped with some other guys work which is not well formatted, documented, clear or easy to understand, and you look at some piece of this mess of a puzzle a from a Not Complete understanding of the system determine a piece of code does nothing, so you remove it, and then all hell breaks loose... (there is a clue in there, not hard to see it) ... and so you put it back, hoping to get things to return to normal.
Don't confuse, I won't touch that mess because the last time I did all hell broke loose, and I'd waste more time sorting through it and making sense of it then I would to write a whole new physics engine that I completely understand all of from top to bottom, no mysteries, with the belief that the physics engine is broken or not functioning as intended. Because if that were the case, the game wouldn't be playable.
Hehe do you have any idea how easy it is when you are working with something that big of scope to forget or not know that if you do this it might affect that inadvertantly? Especially if some of the original creators of portions of the game aren't around anymore? I could write a book for all the times I have been a part of, or heard stories of someone making some easy little change and all hell broke loose. Code is fickle, you can't take for granted you understand it all, and sometimes you gotta expect to break something to see how it could be done better. It sucks but sometimes some problems or limitations only become obvious under certain instances, and you can't always think for every what if, sometimes you just got to run across them on the way and find a way around it then.
It's all a matter of perspective, and often times its never as simple as having just one.
(Btw, since you seen to be so happy pointing fingers at other peoples work and calling them out on their professionalism, what is it that you do for a living?)
Originally posted by Demarii What if the majority of their beta testers aren't getting the problem? Some things are only really obvious in the live environment.
They are. They get it both in the beta theatre and also in the live theatre when we are running special WW2Online tracking executables.
Originally posted by Demarii I'd rather have a system that operated under more of a real world system where it gives an element of chance or change depending on each and every factor being involved interacts.
Great, you've just outlined how a stochastic probability system would work. Glad to see you've finally seen the light
Originally posted by Demarii No offense to RickB, he is a very smart man and a hell of a programmer, but he should know better then to make blanket statements like that. Now for one, Messy Code does not mean Not Working Code, it just means that if your not the guy who wrote it, you'll have a hell of a time deciphering what it all does and how it all works together.
You want a few more quotes from the Rats as to how screwed up their codebase is? Have you ever looked into the WW2OL code? Messy or merely Not Working???
Originally posted by Demarii You see the guy who made that engine isn't around anymore, and coders tend to look very unfavourably on being dumped with some other guys work which is not well formatted, documented, clear or easy to understand,
Wasn't that my point? When you've got a dire need to improve the game NOW, do you really decide to dump the guy who wrote the physics and flight systems?
Originally posted by Demarii It's all a matter of perspective, and often times its never as simple as having just one. (Btw, since you seen to be so happy pointing fingers at other peoples work and calling them out on their professionalism, what is it that you do for a living?)
Agreed, you should try looking at these issues from a direction other than simply that of a CRS fan.
Sometimes you have to look at the game for what it is - not what it is not.
Taken as a whole right now - compared to other games similar in style - it is the best.
Some twitch shooters would argue diferently, and some hard core role players/simmers might argue differently, but as far as combined arms mmporg simulation goes there is no other game that even approaches this one.
People can argue the finer points of physics fedility or wether the AOs are a good thing but honestly - all the other "good" games out there focus on one aspect - infantry/tanks/sea/air etc.. and do them very well.
WWIIOL is the only game that does ALL of them - and it does them on a scale 10 times larger than any other game in existence today.
So stop with the nitty gritty nit picking and look at the game from a comparative view and you'll see nothing - no game - even comes close to the complete battle feild massive play that WWIIOL provides.
hahahahahahahahaha...its the best??? LOL man, maybe I should create junk and charge people for it as well...seems there is a sucker born every min...WWII online sucks, it has been a continual process for 4 years, it was release unfinished the first time and will be released unfinished again...the UI sucks, the lag sucks, the framerates suck, hell, falling through the map really sucks, memory leaks suck, clippin into buildings sucks, exploding equipment sucks, aaa guns that dont shoot down airplanes suck, censorship sucks but at least they cant delete this post ...WWII online sucks...
They laid off the physics coder because at the time his job was done, that seems to be something you can't seem to get around in this discussion. Yes its messy, but it does work, is it perfect, no, and you'll never find a physics engine that it is, there is no such thing. They have an engine that works very well considering how much it does, and at the time they had a very tight budget considering their starting problems, the did run their servers for free for 6 months until they fixed alot of other glaring bugs and issues with the game, and they were focusing on developing other key elements missing from the game, adding alot of content and the like, so of course they were gonna lay him off. Why wouldn't they.
Now after some time, and experience they realize there are some things they would like to revisit or make better, add, or fix with the physics engine. But none of those things are show stoppers, the game isn't unplayable. If they were they'd be right on it I'd assure you, it would be stupid not to but the simple fact is they are not, because we can still play the game everyday, and have alot of fun.
In the overall scheme of things there are more important tasks for the coders to be doing then tearing into, or rewriting a core engine in the game. One day its turn will come, but before that does there are many other parts of the game which will add alot more value to the game then to simply address some minor issues, and I'm sure you don't consider them minor because of your stance; that is obvious, but just because you feel someway about something doesn't make it right, there is more involved in this game then just the physics engine, and there are lots of other parts of the game that need working on alot more imo.
Look I'm sorry that you feel I'm just being a fanboi here and overlooking how terrible the whole situation is. You can think whatever you want of me, but I play the game whenever I can find time, I fly the planes, especially the 109, which exhibits one of the faults of the physics engine and I can easily fly in manner that minimizes the issue and maximizes the planes strengths. So shoot me if I don't see the sky falling over this issue or that, because for me the game is still a ton of fun, after 4 years of playing. I guess I'm just idiot or something, or mabye its just that I take the game for what it is, and enjoy it for what it does and try not to get to worked up over the other issues, because I'm not there to get worked up over something like the 109 departing laterally, I'm there to dive out of the sky at 500 kph at blow the living snot out of my enemy, or blast some infantry as he tries to storm my base. I'm there for the big battles, the long grinding campaigns, and the comraderie of my squadmates and the friends I make online doing it.
In my view the game is not broken, its still the best monthly investment I make in any entertainment form, and I think the game is moving in the right direction and that CRS is doing a very good job of delivering slowly but surely on giving me the greatest ww2 combat experience I've ever had.
Originally posted by cerpas hahahahahahahahaha...its the best??? LOL man, maybe I should create junk and charge people for it as well...seems there is a sucker born every min...WWII online sucks, it has been a continual process for 4 years, it was release unfinished the first time and will be released unfinished again...the UI sucks, the lag sucks, the framerates suck, hell, falling through the map really sucks, memory leaks suck, clippin into buildings sucks, exploding equipment sucks, aaa guns that dont shoot down airplanes suck, censorship sucks but at least they cant delete this post ...WWII online sucks...
could be the dumbest post in history. I don't lag, never fall through the earth (although i've heard of it happening), most memory leaks were fixed long ago, framerates constantly above 50+, don't run into buildings and you won't blow up (it is stupid, but 100% avoidable), not that hard to shoot down air with AAA, and you only get "censored" on CRS forums because it needs to be a constructive post. If you go in there whining about anything and everything, it will get deleted every single time.
Originally posted by cerpas hahahahahahahahaha...its the best??? LOL man, maybe I should create junk and charge people for it as well...seems there is a sucker born every min...WWII online sucks, it has been a continual process for 4 years, it was release unfinished the first time and will be released unfinished again...the UI sucks, the lag sucks, the framerates suck, hell, falling through the map really sucks, memory leaks suck, clippin into buildings sucks, exploding equipment sucks, aaa guns that dont shoot down airplanes suck, censorship sucks but at least they cant delete this post ...WWII online sucks...
-And i thought i was pissed off!
------------------------------- -DON`T GET MAD GET EVIL-
I don't see the point with all this hate toward a game that lots of people enjoy. If you don't like it, leave it, and let it be. In other words, get a life.
Comments
I think the most operative word in your quote is 'eventually'.
The Rats have never said, "Within 6 months", or "within a year" ..... its just "eventually".
Sparre, you've been around long enough to remember the Rats saying that "eventually" they would control non-direct fire weapons (artillery, high alt bombing, bouncing grenades) using an Ordnance Server.
Four years ago they said that "eventually" we would have visible supply to interdict.
"Eventually" didn't work out too well for those features, did it?
CRS is VERY long on promises and VERY short on delivering them. I don't think anyone who has played WW2OL consistently over the past four years could ever deny that.
I have to say he is pretty accurate in his statement don't get me wrong I am huge fan of the game but CRS has very limited resources and prolly have not gotten the game to where they would have liked to in the past 4 years. That being said they had a big dream and atleast they made thier game reality just because they made promises four years ago and did'nt come through doesnt make me think any less of them because atleast they tried hard with their limited resources and made a great war simulation.
I really do think CRS does what it can with what little it has and doesnt make alot of false promises. The upcomming release of Battle Ground Europe will probably be the deciding factor in how fast the advancements in graphics and gameplay come that may have been promised long ago but we still await. Hey atleast they are working towards them instead of leaving game as is and collecting a subscriptions.
Yep, CRS has limited resources. We all agree on that.
But when you've got limited resources, you at least TRY to maximise the resources you have. You're building a game, its got bugs. You need coders to fix it.
So what do you do? You fire half the coders whilst at the same time hanging on to guys who, quite frankly, are worse than useless.
Yeah, lets fire Hoof, the guy who developed the ballistics and flight models, and lets hang on to DocDoom, who's never written a line of code in his life and who seems to exist for the sole purpose of pissing off the entire playerbase with an unending series of forum posts which either:
a) fail to answer the question posed in the first place,
b) exhibit a bewildering lack of knowledge about the basics of the game (remember his classic post re AI not firing through buildings? - this is one of the DEVELOPERS guys!!)
Sorry, but CRS' limited resources are of their own doing ..... and even with those limited resources they have, think about where they have devoted those resources over the past year or so. At a time when players were asking for SPAA, new tanks, new aircraft etc, geez even another boat or two, what do we get?
Infantry emotes and radial cover and a Mercedes race car
You don't know jack, that's why you aren't in business anywhere. Don't try to run their company, because no one cares what you think. If they didn't know what they were doing they would be bankrupt and gone. They aren't.
Pnhobbit, the old saying "the customer is always right" is one of the great untruths of the 20th Century. The customer is very rarely right.
But by the same token, one of the biggest mistakes any business can make is developing a business model based solely on what the business owner 'thinks' should be the core objectives of the business. That becomes a very inward looking viewpoint ...... "oh yeah, lets do this, it'll be great!" shortly followed by, "Those stupid customers, don't they realise how great this is?"
Listen to posts by the Rats, in particular by Doc. "We've got a huge terrain with 450 towns and cities!!!!"
The customer says, "So what, I want performance! After all, I can only fight in one town at a time. I don't particularly care that you've got Zundert modelled beautifully whilst I'm trying to fight with 3 fps in Virton".
Doc - "We model muzzle velocity, shrapnel, spall and calculate each piece of the projectile independently. Isn't that fantastic?!!!!"
Customer - "But when I fire an 88mm HE shell, I've still got to HIT that enemy infantry to kill him? And by the way, I'm still getting only 3 frames per second".
Purely IMO, CRS have become so wedded to the trees that they forget the forest they are trying to operate in. As a player, I don't CARE if that HE shell I've fired is modelled with correct weight, muzzle velocity and ballistics. All I care about is that when it hits, the RESULT is within my reasonable expectations.
And that's where CRS has screwed the pooch ..... whilst all the parts of their game might be fantastic, might be epic, might be ground-breaking ....... the result we see in game is so far from our reasonable expectations as players that it fails to meet the criteria set by CRS itself - a combined arms WW2 simulation.
I hope that makes my position clearer.
nevermind
While you raise some valid points Kadesh in this discussion, but I have to disagree with you on many of your points and perspective in that that post.
"But by the same token, one of the biggest mistakes any business can make is developing a business model based solely on what the business owner 'thinks' should be the core objectives of the business. That becomes a very inward looking viewpoint ...... "oh yeah, lets do this, it'll be great!" shortly followed by, "Those stupid customers, don't they realise how great this is?"
I understand what it is your trying to say here, but you say it very poorly. First what you are referring to are not "Core objectives" of the business. They are really not even "Core Objectives" of the game itself which is not the business but a product of it. All I see here is someone trying to pick apart design decisions from an outside view. The developers are in constant contact with the players and know their game better then anyone else, they also are the only ones who know the level of skill and knowledge of their workers, their numbers, how much they can spend on wages, what their building lease costs, power and bandwidth usage/cost, status of their servers etc. But they should definately listen to the directions offered up by the players. When the players demand something they should throw caution to the wind and follow their lead. Because just listening to them, noting what they want and adding it to the list to do when they can is not good enough it seems. Let the development be lead by public opinion and speculation rather then internal knowledge and budget constraints. That'll work great!
"Listen to posts by the Rats, in particular by Doc. "We've got a huge terrain with 450 towns and cities!!!!"
The customer says, "So what, I want performance! After all, I can only fight in one town at a time. I don't particularly care that you've got Zundert modelled beautifully whilst I'm trying to fight with 3 fps in Virton"."
I'm a bit confused on this arguement. For starters your not the only one fighting on the battlefield, so it doesn't really matter that your only in 1 town. If that town to the north of your town falls then all of a sudden there being more towns then just your town becomes a pretty big deal because now there is a new flank to worry about. Possible reinforcements etc. The reason Doc is excited about having alot of towns to play in is because they add more depth and ability to see different directions occur in gameplay because of them. Not to mention the battlefront moves and having more towns allows it to move in new ways. Ala, Maneuver Warfare which is coming to the game in time, and then it won't be just about "We have all these towns to fight in" it'll be more about "We have all this terrain to maneuver in, did you see how 1st Panzer Division swept around that northern front and totally cut off that major hole of resistance in those towns! Wow!"
See where I am going with this? Now as for your last point, the FPS is an internal issue, currently beign tracked by coders to discover why its occurring, and what can be done to fix or atleast minimize the issue that seems to be tied with texture calling and likely tied to the displaying of large numbers of players all crammed into these many towns on the front. But I really don't see why Doc can't be proud of his modelling of towns due to the low FPS caused in some instances of battle. They are barely related to one another in the whole scheme of things, and Doc is not likely to be the guy sent to fix the problem, I'd guess that RickB, their best programmer would be.
"Doc - "We model muzzle velocity, shrapnel, spall and calculate each piece of the projectile independently. Isn't that fantastic?!!!!"
Customer - "But when I fire an 88mm HE shell, I've still got to HIT that enemy infantry to kill him? And by the way, I'm still getting only 3 frames per second".
Purely IMO, CRS have become so wedded to the trees that they forget the forest they are trying to operate in. As a player, I don't CARE if that HE shell I've fired is modelled with correct weight, muzzle velocity and ballistics. All I care about is that when it hits, the RESULT is within my reasonable expectations."
Well I guess all I can say to this part is I'd rather play a game that tries to reproduce the effects of the weapons by modelling them as closely as they can rather then, and deal with those WTF moments that seem to occur once in a while as a result of doing it that way, then to have a dumbed down system where every result is the same because X+Y=Z. And lets consider the other guys "Reasonable expectations" and what about that dumb fart over there what does he want? Hollywood, how about little billy over there, can he start destroying tanks with the butt of his rifle now cuz he thinks thats pretty reasonable. Now I realize I am stretching the point here, but its for good reason. Get any number of people in a room and discuss these things and more times then not you'll arrive at a totally different place everytime. But use Math and Data and more times then not you'll arrive within the same vicinity, and the times where it doesn't atleast you can look at the logs and says, Here's the deal, now is that correct or a bug, do we fix it or leave it alone?
I really enjoy the game simply because its not a gaurranteed experience, just like in real life, you will have WTF moments, and issues. That for me is part of the beauty of the game.
And while I understand your position that you feel CRS is in the wrong, but I really don't feel that even if I did agree with what you are saying here, which mostly I don't. Some things I thought were just put poorly or are less significant to me then you think they are. But the result in my eyes doesn't detract any from the overall package.
Just because that guy didn't die this time when you fully expected he would doesn't make this game any more or less a combined arms sim. Because the planes choose to hug the deck instead of escort or intercept bombers most of the time doesn't make the airwar any less complex or vital in the scheme of overall gameplay, its just a decision by players to not join in on it. Because there is no current hydro-dynamic water model for the boats to float through doesn't mean they aren't fun in their own right and useful parts of the game at times. The fact that you've never fought in that town way down south doesn't lessen the fact that it does exist, someone has fought there before, and you might fight there tomorrow for all you know. And thats the rub. This game has the ability to even after 4 years of play for me, come up with fresh new experiences, be it seeing some guys do something I've never seen before, witnessing a huge bomber formation choose a daring new route to attack factories through, or whatever else the game brings up, from the WTF moments, to the "I want to scream bloody murder!" ones it is what it is, and its constantly changing and evolving, either because we as players change and evolve in our play and tactics, or because the rules did, some new element has been added, or some exploit was taken away or nullified.
I just take the game for what it is and find it alot of fun most of the time. When it isn't any fun for me, I just turn it off and wait till I feel motivated to turn if back on again. But it is still the only game service I continue to play for, going on 4 years in a row now, and actively playing when I feel like it and have the free time. All I know for certain is that the game will over time change some more, but no matter those changes, there is no other MMO War-Simulator with anywhere near the scope, and depth, and variation to gameplay and experience available out there.
It is what it is to me... namely. Fun!
Come on demarii. Did I EVER suggest that? Conversely, if you took the entire WW2OL population and asked, "Would you rather work was devoted to performance issues, or infantry emotes?", what do you reckon the answer would be?
Demarii, do you deny that performance is King? New players will not give a flying fig if there's 450 towns in game if they are finding themselves getting 3 fps in battle.
"The effects of the weapons" is exactly what I'm after as well. The problem is that the method that CRS uses (projectile tracking), contributes greatly to the FPS and lag issues we experience, whilst simultaneously failing to take into account the greatest cause for death or injury caused by explosive weapons, concussion.
Kadesh, who works on the infantry Emotes? Toto. And he's not a programmer, he's a modeller. So how would he help with performance issues, if not working on the infantry models. See thats the big problem I have with people complaining that these guys are not taking the right course, they often say, why are you making new units, or adding new water textures, or working on this or that, they should be focusing on performance. Well they are always working on improving performance, but in a large program such as this things that may give some performance increase don't just jump out at you, you have to crawl through the code, try something see if it works and then see what the ramifications of it are. And you can't put a massive group of coders to work on doing that, often times when your working on specific elements of code you have freeze the code, meaning while they are their the code doesn't change, because a change can and often will have an adverse effect on the work being done.
If they add or change something and are trying to modify it to see if they can improve performance and someting doesn't jive where is the problem, is it in the new addition or in the performance tweaks they've tried. Its also that same kind of mentality that dictates that normally you have a small group of coders doing something, more heads is not always better or faster when dealing with code. When I am bug hunting in code, I can go from one part, then next thing I know I'm following interdependancies into several other files, through multitudes of functions and operations, I have to think my way through them, I can't just hand half the thought process off to another coder without being 100% sure he understands exactly how it works, starts etc. So essentially that other guy would have to go and look at the exact same thing I did, follow the exact same route and think through the problem just as I would. Now does it make sense to have two guys doing the exact same thing, is that really wise use of programmer time? No it isn't. So generally you put your best guy on the job if he's free, and in the case of a client specific bug or issue, for instance if the Mac Client works well, but the windows client seems to have a problem it might be smart to get the guy who knows the windows client code the best to handle the issue.
And none of that has any bearing on wether the rest of the team can continue doing their jobs making models, new sounds, or whatever. They tasks do not hinder or freeze when the coders are going through the code. And while you seem convinced that the projectile tracking code is the problem with low FPS, I am not, the reason I am not is its pretty much been there since the start of the game, and for a long time fps were actually very stable, but then the rats did some Graphics overhaul, changed over to OpenGL, changed and increased their texture sizes, added 3D buildings and the like, and suddenly the fps started to drop again. So while just a hunch my guess is the issue lies with how they are swapping in textures, I think I even heard a Rat suggest as much as that was where RickB was thinking it was or something like that. And given how good he is I'd be willing to go with his guess on the matter.
And to re-iterate, Performance is key, and they've always said its always sitting at the top of the To-Do list. But it takes time to find even the smallest bit of performance, and sometimes they have to knowingly hurt it just to find bug, like putting in some diagnostic code like they did recently, it really hurt my Connectivity but now that they've released the latest patch with the fixes that the debug code helped them with I no longer have the CTHL issue and my connectivity is much better. Was it a bad move to have a week of slightly lower performance to fix an issue that was making the game totally unplayable for parts of the player base?
Doc is not a programmer, there are lots of guys on the team who do not program. And they likely have a few programmers who tend to be more Specialistics, like Client coders, Graphics Coders, Server side Coders. And generally sitting atop that is a Head Coder who works with the Dev Head to coordinate and facilitate work tasks and changes. Now this is all guess work, but its generally how it works, its about delegating tasks so you maximize your workforce and can maintain a decent development timeline.
I'm sure the the projectile tracking does take up cpu cycles, and doesn't help with the fps issues, I'd say your stretching the issue by claiming that it greatly adds to the problem, because as I stated before, its always been there yet I remember quite well the game running with rock solid fps for a long period a while back. I think you would be alot smarter to look at the fact that they just did a major rewrite over a portion of the game, namely the User Interface, not to mention alot of other big changes in the recent past, some of which are more likely bigger contributors to stressing not just the CPU but the GPU.
Now its been a long time since concussion came up so I'm not too sure about the reason given, but I'm pretty sure it falls along the lines, they couldn't get rock solid data, and it would entail further loading the physics engine with a whoel new set of calculations. I remember that one side complained bitterly about this because they bombs and grenades were made to produce a more conussive effect so one of the strengths of their weapons was not taking affect and for that I sympathize, just like I sympathize with the pilots whose planes have rudder issues. I am one of them actually as I fly the 109. But it honestly does not break the game in any major way, its an issue that can be played with and have little to no effect if you take it into accounr. Just like the bombs or grenades, if you know you need a close hit and shrapnel to do the job then place it well for maximum effect. And why on earth would you argue on one hand that the physics of calculating projectiles is hurting the game and then turn around and complain that they haven't added on more calculations to be done. That makes no sense. Perhaps one day when Rickb rewrites the physics engine, which he says is a total mess and he will not modifty for fears of what will occur he will only totally rewrite that system he can add it in especially if he does it cleaner and faster then the other guy did.
Ignorance does not make for a good arguement, it does not lend it any weight or credibility, and you continue to ignore a great many things in your arguements. You simplify things to the point were they no longer make sense to someone who looks at the big picture. And thats just it, those guys have to see the whole picture, not just the things we the players feel are most important.
These guys didn't just wake up one day have a brain fart and make this game out of luck. They designed it for years, the coded for many more years and they know its strengths weaknesses and limitations better then anyone. They have made a game that is light years beyond what anyone else is doing right now, and the result is it pushes our computers further then other game does. You can look at any portion of this game and see how it out performs other games by what it is doing, and in many cases it is doing those things on a compareable level to those other games performance, not in all cases, but like I just said when your pushing the limits you have to expects some issues, but many people seem to feel more then justified in assuming they don't know what they are doing, they could do it better, and they've never seen the code, they have no idea of the dependancies or inner workings, heck I'm pretty sure alot of those people don't even know how to program a game as simple as tetris much less a 3D MMO FPS that uses a physics engine, doppler sound, and a seamless map the size of the 1200 x 1200 kilometers, and communicates using a tight netcode that can send update packets for hundreds of events so small that even a 56k modem can handle them, it was all sheer luck that got them there, honestly thats what I think some people get in their heads when they talk about how easy it should be to fix this or add that.
Ya those guys sure do need our help figuring it all out.
Thought this might be a useful inclusion to this discussion... Its from the latest production update post on the newest patch the released yesterday.
1.19.4 Live
Todays release brings many fixes to performance issues that have been nagging us since the major code rewrites of 119. Hopefully this will stem many of the issues that we have been having with connections and reconnections over the past few weeks. I want to thank everyone who helped us track these issues down.
We also rewrote the plane sound routines to get what we were looking for in the first pass which is hot sounds and nearby explosions (for improved SA) without hearing every plane in the area and all manner of other things. I hope these are well received.
We also added in a new /orders command which is a basic tool for our work on brigade and mission tools that will be coming in 1.20.
Next week our gold candidate is due to the publisher so well likely have one more release so that the live game and the gold are the same code base and from then on its time for 1.20. Well talk more about that once I get these new installers working but you can rest assured that performance is our primary objective in the coming weeks.
----
Sounds like they got their eye on the ball to me.
And then there is this reply to a post found in the Hangar Mailbag stick post in regards to the FPS issues while flying...
[Q] what about frame rate stutters while flying?
07/28/05 // http://forums.battlegroundeurope.co...6374#post626374
[KILLER]
"It's not so much the detail of the vehicles, it's the process of loading and unloading the data. It has to be read from somewhere, loaded into it's own memory space for each vehicle, and processed for display.
When you fly over you load a wave of them, and unload them again as you go by and are loading new units. This is happening a lot, god forbid a couple of fully loaded para planes flies through.
It causes a storm of queued up vehicles to form in the list of vehicles the program knows you need to load, hundreds at times, that is a real handful to manage loading in and deleting and clearing memory.
At the rate a plane flies over a battle it might require loading a wave of 200+ models (more than many games even have) and then clearing them out in just a few seconds, over and over again. That's just display, there's also processing all the state data for each one, turret position, speed, firing state, visual effects for each one etc. and translating the parts of the models into the correct states.
The largest difference can be made by turning visible players to minimum when your in a plane. It's worst case for pilots like no other vehicle because they pass by so many other players so fast.
We are trying to make the data loading queue more efficient to toss more that you'll never see anyway, the threading of the loading more efficient, and the model data itself more efficient to handle. None of these are fast or easy things to do.
Then there's just straight framerate increases, which if realized would leave more time for that loading, and reduce stutters as a side effect.
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Once again I'd say they've got a pretty good handle on things. Don't you?
Amen Kadesh!
You hit the head of the nail alltrough your posts. I couldn't agree more!
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Isn't that what the Closed Beta tests are for?
Are you kidding? There are MOUNTAINS of data available on death/damage ranges for HE weapons of all types.
Geez you really don't get it. OK, lets make this simple. There are two ways to do ballistics and explosive effects.
1. You calculate everything down to the minutest detail, shell weight, muzzle velocity, number of shrapnel pieces and their velocity, and then every single time you fire a shell you run those calculations. Hope you have a decent Cray system to do it all though
2. You turn everything over to a probability calculation. Fire a 20mm HE shell at 100mm of armor and the probability of penetration is around 0. Land an 88mm HE shell three feet from a standing infantryman and the probability you're gonna kill him is around 80%. Fire a Mg151/20 round into the wing of a Hurricane and calculate the probability of catastrophic damage. All that can be accomplished with a set of probability tables ... minimal calculation required. But instead, CRS chooses (in the case of the 20mm HE shell at 100 mm of armor) to generate not all the shrapnel, not even most of the shrapnel, but 15 pieces of shrapnel and then see if they will penetrate.
ALL THAT MATTERS IS THE OUTCOME .... NOT THE PROCESS. If I fire a .303 round into a standing enemy infantryman I don't care if the OUTCOME is generated by mathematical calculation, probability, or pixie dust. All I care about is that the OUTCOME is believable. The PROCESS should be transparent in a game like this. Of course, the computer I am running the program on cares only about the PROCESS though, particularly when its spending CPU cycles calculating joule transfer, direction and momentum of shrapnel etc.
Yet CRS continually, frustratingly, thinks about PROCESS, instead of thinking about the OUTCOME. That's why there are issues with grenades, HE shells, air to air cannon etc.
It's a telling quote by RickB isn't it? Here is CRS's best coder, and even he says that the current physics model is a complete mess that he will not touch.
And yet you took about two paragraphs to argue the validity of the physics model to me? For what else is the calculation of projectile velocity, mass and energy transfer if it is not a physics model?
Let me tell you a fun story about RickB. It came from his blog, a very interesting analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the WW2OL codebase. A few releases ago ... I think it was the first time air stutters were REALLY bad, RickB went hunting for a stutter fix. He found a section of code he had deleted for that release. Now the particular piece of code did nothing at all. He checked it, rechecked it, looked for dependencies etc, and it was just a piece of junk code ... it did nothing at all. Yet RickB put it back into game because he was so desperate for a stutter fix that he thought it wouldn't hurt anything. That should give you an idea how much control CRS actually has over the game they created.
Read my comment above. The Rats may not need our help, but they sure need someone's. Fer Gawd's sake .... what kind of game is it where the developers decide to lock an aircraft's tailwheel by default and then find that ATG's no longer turn? Do they really have so little idea of how their game actually works that they could make a mistake like that?
Is that the kind of professionalism we now come to expect from Cornered Rat Software?
What if the majority of their beta testers aren't getting the problem? Some things are only really obvious in the live environment.
Big deal there is mountains of data on lots of things and alot of times they don't correlate, so you end up having to spend alot of time just pruning data and trying to come up with something that makes sense of it all, and just having data doesn't mean they either had the time or were able to incorporate it in the game for one reason or anything.
No you obviously don't get it, Probability systems are not the same as a physics system, because they are very simplistic, they only have as much probability as you put into them, and to make a really good one that would come even close to the system they currently use it would be bulky, have huge tables of data assoicated, and still would not have many of the good points of the current one. I'd rather have a system that operated under more of a real world system where it gives an element of chance or change depending on each and every factor being involved interacts. Just like in life no two events are exactly the same, thats what makes their system so special, it shares that philosophy and does the best it can to ensure that while acting realistically that it is still a unique event.
I understand you only care about the outcome, you don't care about the process, but you can not trivialize it done to inconsequential with a simple example and then offer that as proof they've taken the wrong course. And while I'd love to sit here and fence with you on this subject all day long (note: sarcasm) You are still disregarding the fact that while a mess of code as reported by RickB it still functions as expected, they have said so time and time again, they have audited and tested the system over and over and they get the results they want. Sometimes they relook at refactor some of the data, but the actual system which is doing all the work hasn't changed.
No offense to RickB, he is a very smart man and a hell of a programmer, but he should know better then to make blanket statements like that. Now for one, Messy Code does not mean Not Working Code, it just means that if your not the guy who wrote it, you'll have a hell of a time deciphering what it all does and how it all works together. That is why RickB says he won't touch it, he can't or more accurately doesn't care to figure it all out, and he personally believes he would waste more time farting around with the code trying to make it work how he wants then he would if he just rewrote a whole new physics engine that he understood from top to bottom, clearly defined and documented etc.
You see the guy who made that engine isn't around anymore, and coders tend to look very unfavourably on being dumped with some other guys work which is not well formatted, documented, clear or easy to understand, and you look at some piece of this mess of a puzzle a from a Not Complete understanding of the system determine a piece of code does nothing, so you remove it, and then all hell breaks loose... (there is a clue in there, not hard to see it) ... and so you put it back, hoping to get things to return to normal.
Don't confuse, I won't touch that mess because the last time I did all hell broke loose, and I'd waste more time sorting through it and making sense of it then I would to write a whole new physics engine that I completely understand all of from top to bottom, no mysteries, with the belief that the physics engine is broken or not functioning as intended. Because if that were the case, the game wouldn't be playable.
Hehe do you have any idea how easy it is when you are working with something that big of scope to forget or not know that if you do this it might affect that inadvertantly? Especially if some of the original creators of portions of the game aren't around anymore? I could write a book for all the times I have been a part of, or heard stories of someone making some easy little change and all hell broke loose. Code is fickle, you can't take for granted you understand it all, and sometimes you gotta expect to break something to see how it could be done better. It sucks but sometimes some problems or limitations only become obvious under certain instances, and you can't always think for every what if, sometimes you just got to run across them on the way and find a way around it then.
It's all a matter of perspective, and often times its never as simple as having just one.
(Btw, since you seen to be so happy pointing fingers at other peoples work and calling them out on their professionalism, what is it that you do for a living?)
They are. They get it both in the beta theatre and also in the live theatre when we are running special WW2Online tracking executables.
Great, you've just outlined how a stochastic probability system would work. Glad to see you've finally seen the light
You want a few more quotes from the Rats as to how screwed up their codebase is? Have you ever looked into the WW2OL code? Messy or merely Not Working???
Wasn't that my point? When you've got a dire need to improve the game NOW, do you really decide to dump the guy who wrote the physics and flight systems?
Agreed, you should try looking at these issues from a direction other than simply that of a CRS fan.
BTW, I'm a market analyst.
Sometimes you have to look at the game for what it is - not what it is not.
Taken as a whole right now - compared to other games similar in style - it is the best.
Some twitch shooters would argue diferently, and some hard core role players/simmers might argue differently, but as far as combined arms mmporg simulation goes there is no other game that even approaches this one.
People can argue the finer points of physics fedility or wether the AOs are a good thing but honestly - all the other "good" games out there focus on one aspect - infantry/tanks/sea/air etc.. and do them very well.
WWIIOL is the only game that does ALL of them - and it does them on a scale 10 times larger than any other game in existence today.
So stop with the nitty gritty nit picking and look at the game from a comparative view and you'll see nothing - no game - even comes close to the complete battle feild massive play that WWIIOL provides.
hahahahahahahahaha...its the best??? LOL man, maybe I should create junk and charge people for it as well...seems there is a sucker born every min...WWII online sucks, it has been a continual process for 4 years, it was release unfinished the first time and will be released unfinished again...the UI sucks, the lag sucks, the framerates suck, hell, falling through the map really sucks, memory leaks suck, clippin into buildings sucks, exploding equipment sucks, aaa guns that dont shoot down airplanes suck, censorship sucks but at least they cant delete this post ...WWII online sucks...
They laid off the physics coder because at the time his job was done, that seems to be something you can't seem to get around in this discussion. Yes its messy, but it does work, is it perfect, no, and you'll never find a physics engine that it is, there is no such thing. They have an engine that works very well considering how much it does, and at the time they had a very tight budget considering their starting problems, the did run their servers for free for 6 months until they fixed alot of other glaring bugs and issues with the game, and they were focusing on developing other key elements missing from the game, adding alot of content and the like, so of course they were gonna lay him off. Why wouldn't they.
Now after some time, and experience they realize there are some things they would like to revisit or make better, add, or fix with the physics engine. But none of those things are show stoppers, the game isn't unplayable. If they were they'd be right on it I'd assure you, it would be stupid not to but the simple fact is they are not, because we can still play the game everyday, and have alot of fun.
In the overall scheme of things there are more important tasks for the coders to be doing then tearing into, or rewriting a core engine in the game. One day its turn will come, but before that does there are many other parts of the game which will add alot more value to the game then to simply address some minor issues, and I'm sure you don't consider them minor because of your stance; that is obvious, but just because you feel someway about something doesn't make it right, there is more involved in this game then just the physics engine, and there are lots of other parts of the game that need working on alot more imo.
Look I'm sorry that you feel I'm just being a fanboi here and overlooking how terrible the whole situation is. You can think whatever you want of me, but I play the game whenever I can find time, I fly the planes, especially the 109, which exhibits one of the faults of the physics engine and I can easily fly in manner that minimizes the issue and maximizes the planes strengths. So shoot me if I don't see the sky falling over this issue or that, because for me the game is still a ton of fun, after 4 years of playing. I guess I'm just idiot or something, or mabye its just that I take the game for what it is, and enjoy it for what it does and try not to get to worked up over the other issues, because I'm not there to get worked up over something like the 109 departing laterally, I'm there to dive out of the sky at 500 kph at blow the living snot out of my enemy, or blast some infantry as he tries to storm my base. I'm there for the big battles, the long grinding campaigns, and the comraderie of my squadmates and the friends I make online doing it.
In my view the game is not broken, its still the best monthly investment I make in any entertainment form, and I think the game is moving in the right direction and that CRS is doing a very good job of delivering slowly but surely on giving me the greatest ww2 combat experience I've ever had.
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He is just a mindless troll.
I don't see the point with all this hate toward a game that lots of people enjoy. If you don't like it, leave it, and let it be. In other words, get a life.