Author Topic: New efforts!  (Read 7210089 times)

Arcana

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #24640 on: May 24, 2016, 01:47:17 AM »
Well, there's that Catch 22 that there's no reason to worry about designing a distributed player character storage system if there's no game server to store characters for.

At some point, someone has to take the bull by the horns and say, "I/We are going to make this even if it can be shut down." When that happens, then you have incentive to make the pieces that can insure that the "server" is able to survive a nuclear attack, or a C&D.

I'm of the opinion that if you want the kinds of features being discussed here, you start with the very design of the system on paper including those features, or you will never ever have them.  These aren't the kinds of features that can be retrofitted into complex software after the fact without going completely nuts.

I'm perfectly willing for someone to put in the effort necessary to proving me wrong there.

slickriptide

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #24641 on: May 24, 2016, 03:45:19 AM »
I'm of the opinion that if you want the kinds of features being discussed here, you start with the very design of the system on paper including those features, or you will never ever have them.  These aren't the kinds of features that can be retrofitted into complex software after the fact without going completely nuts.

I'm perfectly willing for someone to put in the effort necessary to proving me wrong there.

I agree completely. The problem is that nobody appears to be napkin doodling that system that's going to run the other systems. This is what I've been getting on about with the people who get the idea that it's fear that's keeping an emulator from happening. It's not fear. No emulator writer has ever been stopped by fear. The reason that people qualified to write an emulator are not doing so (or appear to be not doing so) is that they're not interested in making an emulator. They're interested in doing something else. Which is great. We wouldn't have Paragon Chat if it was otherwise.

I'm not saying you're wrong. I think you're right. I also think that if this hypothetical game engine is so very hypothetical that talking about it being still in the napkin doodling phase is appropriate, then there's not a lot of mileage in waiting for it. If it happens, it happens. Even if this really great game engine is the absolutely "right" way to be making content for CoH Revived, if we sit around talking about it for years while we wait for someone to take all of the discussion and run with it, we'll still be chatting about it in 2018.

In the meantime, we've got other options, even if they aren't the most desirable or most correct options. At the least, expanding the "game" using the resources at our command today will illustrate just what we need a game engine for and what we don't.

***edit***

I should add that one aspect of the XMPP server platform is that it may actually be possible to retrofit something like your blockchain user records as a modular service that  doesn't have to be built into the "game server". All that the server cares about is that a user record exists. It doesn't care where it comes from or where it goes when it's saved. That's the job of the persistent storage module to worry about.

That doesn't mean that the XMPP platform is any better for some of those other issues you mentioned. It just means that platforms exist for which the parts of the whole can be independent of each other as long as they all interoperate at some level.

.


« Last Edit: May 24, 2016, 04:29:37 AM by slickriptide »

LateNights

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #24642 on: May 24, 2016, 06:23:58 AM »
I agree completely. The problem is that nobody appears to be napkin doodling that system that's going to run the other systems. This is what I've been getting on about with the people who get the idea that it's fear that's keeping an emulator from happening. It's not fear. No emulator writer has ever been stopped by fear. The reason that people qualified to write an emulator are not doing so (or appear to be not doing so) is that they're not interested in making an emulator. They're interested in doing something else. Which is great. We wouldn't have Paragon Chat if it was otherwise.

I'm not saying you're wrong. I think you're right. I also think that if this hypothetical game engine is so very hypothetical that talking about it being still in the napkin doodling phase is appropriate, then there's not a lot of mileage in waiting for it. If it happens, it happens. Even if this really great game engine is the absolutely "right" way to be making content for CoH Revived, if we sit around talking about it for years while we wait for someone to take all of the discussion and run with it, we'll still be chatting about it in 2018.

In the meantime, we've got other options, even if they aren't the most desirable or most correct options. At the least, expanding the "game" using the resources at our command today will illustrate just what we need a game engine for and what we don't.

***edit***

I should add that one aspect of the XMPP server platform is that it may actually be possible to retrofit something like your blockchain user records as a modular service that  doesn't have to be built into the "game server". All that the server cares about is that a user record exists. It doesn't care where it comes from or where it goes when it's saved. That's the job of the persistent storage module to worry about.

That doesn't mean that the XMPP platform is any better for some of those other issues you mentioned. It just means that platforms exist for which the parts of the whole can be independent of each other as long as they all interoperate at some level.

.

Hasn't Paragon Chat laid a pathway to development in its thread, one that may eventuate in a combat ready version of PC?

(And funnily enough, the person working on PC is the reason this separate discussion came about...)

Would that not then mean that a discussion of this type IS worth having?

slickriptide

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #24643 on: May 24, 2016, 01:21:05 PM »
Quote from: LateNight

Would that not then mean that a discussion of this type IS worth having?

Did anyone say that it was not a conversation worth having?

My remark about the Catch 22 was not that people shouldn't talk about the theory behind architecting a distributed MMORPG. It was an observation that theorizing at some point has to lead to action if the theories are ever going to be realized.

My contention was not that nobody should talk about global storage of character data. It was that a game has to already exist for storage to matter.

It doesn't even actually matter how one would develop a truly distributed game. "We" are not developing this distributed game. We are all dependent on Codewalker and Friends to either give us tools for content manipulation or to reveal that they actually have been working on an emulator in secret.

Let me put it this way - if Codewalker, Leandro, and Guy Perfect, et al, were all killed in a freak meteorite shower, where would we be? Could we make some sort of game out of Paragon Chat? (After a proper mourning period, of course.)

If the answer is yes then what's stopping anyone from doing that other than it being different from some other vision of a "CoH" game?

We're discussing distributed gane management but we weren't really discussing a distributed game. We were discussing a number of affiliated games interchanging player information between them. That doesn't require that the interchange exists from day one. It only requires that the interfaces to the storage are abstract enough that any number of storage or data interchange methods could be plugged into the game.

Now, if we're talking a truly distributed game, where there's no concept of "my server" and "your server" but only "the cloud" then yes, in that case I'd agree that the data storage is innately tied to the design of the game itself.

Otherwise, a game server, especially one that you want to optionally run "offline", can be decoupled from its permanent storage mechanism and would even necessarily have multiple such mechanisms available to handle situations of "full network", "partial network", and "no network".


LateNights

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #24644 on: May 24, 2016, 03:37:08 PM »
Yeah, I'm not much up for putting pressure on anyone to deliver anything.

Massive "Thanks" to Codewalker (and others), for doing what they've done with PC - it's made people happy to run around in and, if word ever gets back to NC that someone with some brains (Codewalker, etc..), has managed to achieve what they have, it just might put some pressure on them to sell rather than risk having their property taken back by the people that cared about it.

Don't forget you're asking someone to break the law and dumping it all in their lap - a punk move no matter how you slice it...

Arcana

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #24645 on: May 24, 2016, 07:07:27 PM »
Hasn't Paragon Chat laid a pathway to development in its thread, one that may eventuate in a combat ready version of PC?

(And funnily enough, the person working on PC is the reason this separate discussion came about...)

Said person has also said that it is unlikely Paragon Chat itself would ever evolve into something that supported the features you'd need to turn it into an actual City of Heroes style game, partially because of deliberate design decisions confining Paragon Chat to a communications tool, and partially because of technological limitations making that impractical even if it was desirable.

Quote
Would that not then mean that a discussion of this type IS worth having?

It might be the opposite.  If Codewalker had a publicly announced project to recreate the City of Heroes game using Paragon Chat as the foundation I might be less inclined to publicly brainstorm about all the ways he was doing it wrong.  I might be more inclined to discuss technical ideas with him directly instead, unless he specifically opened design ideas for public discussion. 

It would depend, of course, on whether I was in the first round of closed beta or not.

LateNights

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #24646 on: May 24, 2016, 08:03:13 PM »
It would depend, of course, on whether I was in the first round of closed beta or not.

Me too!!

 :P

TimtheEnchanter

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #24647 on: May 24, 2016, 08:53:32 PM »
From what I've seen, XMPP is WAAAAAY too laggy to ever support combat. Maybe a bigger server could help, but the rubberbanding is EVERYWHERE in Paragon Chat. Throw damage calculations into the mix and the whole thing would look like spaghettification.

TimtheEnchanter

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #24648 on: May 24, 2016, 09:07:56 PM »
I was thinking less about the specifics of the Star Wars timeline and more about the narrative influences on George Lucas.  Lucas said the Jedi were inspired in part by Authurian legends and part of the legend is the notion that there was once this great time with Camelot and the Round Table and so on, and one day Arthur will come back and usher in a return of those times.  There are elements of that in Star Wars: Luke finds his father's light saber and while he doesn't have to pull it from a stone, he does have to pass a test of worthiness of a sort in learning the Force.  We hear about the Jedi as these people who protected the galaxy long ago and now they are all gone, and by the time you get to Return of the Jedi there's a sense that Luke's journey is in part about a revival of those lost ways.

If nothing comes of this, oh well. A bit of a necro, even though it's an active thread. I was just watching the Last Samurai the other day for the first time in years, and the Jedi kept popping into my head. I know Lucas took a lot of inspiration from Samurai as well when creating the Jedi, and it was amazing to think how easily the Last Samurai story could have been a Star Wars film instead.

The Samurai general abandoned the use of guns because he felt it was dishonorable. I guess he was in favor of a "more elegant weapon." There's a moment in which Katsumoto arrives at the Council and is arguing with Omura (who is in bed with U.S. Ambassadors for the sake of trade agreements). Suddenly all I see is the Viceroy of the Trade Federation. All of this came to a head with the Samurai being slaughtered by modern technology. Then there's Tom Cruise's custom sword which said, "I belong to the one in which the old ways are joined anew."

My mind is currently blown.

crashpositron

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #24649 on: May 25, 2016, 04:56:21 PM »
From what I've seen, XMPP is WAAAAAY too laggy to ever support combat. Maybe a bigger server could help, but the rubberbanding is EVERYWHERE in Paragon Chat. Throw damage calculations into the mix and the whole thing would look like spaghettification.

I've not seen rubberbanding except if I'm in Fly when I zone. Even that stops if I click Fly off.

TimtheEnchanter

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #24650 on: May 25, 2016, 05:26:13 PM »
I've not seen rubberbanding except if I'm in Fly when I zone. Even that stops if I click Fly off.

Actually I see it most with other players, not me. Sorry, I should've been more specific about that. Even at minimum load if someone is walking a straight line, I'll see them constantly teleporting forward or backward.

MWRuger

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #24651 on: May 25, 2016, 05:47:48 PM »

The Samurai general abandoned the use of guns because he felt it was dishonorable. I guess he was in favor of a "more elegant weapon."

From what I have read, the Samurai in general did not favor them because they were easy to use and even a "filthy peasant" could kill a trained warrior with one. Coupled with the fact that it was a illegal for peasants to own any kind of weapon and it's easy to see that the Daimyo were pretty concerned about peasant revolt.
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Ironwolf

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #24652 on: May 25, 2016, 06:47:01 PM »
From what I have read, the Samurai in general did not favor them because they were easy to use and even a "filthy peasant" could kill a trained warrior with one. Coupled with the fact that it was a illegal for peasants to own any kind of weapon and it's easy to see that the Daimyo were pretty concerned about peasant revolt.

It depends, from the Book of 5 Rings Miyamoto Musashi in 1645 writes:

Masters of the long sword are traditionally known as heihosha [strategists]. As for the other military arts, those who master the bow are called archers, those who master the spear are called spearmen, those who master the gun are called marksmen, and those who master the halberd are called halberdiers. But we do not call masters of the long sword "long swordsmen", nor do we speak of "short swordsmen". Bows, guns, spears and halberds are all tools of the warriors and each should be a way to master strategy.

Brigadine

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #24653 on: May 25, 2016, 07:48:06 PM »
I've not seen rubberbanding except if I'm in Fly when I zone. Even that stops if I click Fly off.
Ive seen it. It looks like graphics stuttering but its actually momentary server lag. My computer can run any game on maximum settings. Its not my computer.

Arcana

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #24654 on: May 25, 2016, 08:08:35 PM »
I've not seen rubberbanding except if I'm in Fly when I zone. Even that stops if I click Fly off.

Actually I see it most with other players, not me. Sorry, I should've been more specific about that.

You are seeing what we might call "reverse-rubberbanding" and is a consequence of the sync problems I mentioned above.  In City of Heroes, there's a central game server and a client (or many of them, whatever).  Interestingly, when you see other people it is due to the server telling you where they are**.  But when you see yourself you actually see where the client predicts you will be based on current conditions, including your movement inputs.  Prediction is something many MMOs do to make the game feel smoother.  If there was no prediction you'd hit W, the W would be sent to the server, the server would process that movement key and calculate where you should be, and then send that back to you.  There's lag associated with that and for technical reasons that lag can be even larger than your round trip ping time to the server (even if the server isn't overloaded).  That lag creates a disconnect between when you tell the game to do something and when you see it.  Delays of as little as 50 mililseconds are things humans are tuned to detect, and by 100 miliseconds it becomes very distracting.  Instead, when you hit W the game client *immediately* moves you forward (technically, next frame, natch) and there's no perceived jerky lag.

The fact that everyone else is being moved by your client only after the server tells you doesn't create a problem normally, because you don't see when those players "actually" wanted to move, so there's no issue.  But what happens if the game client allows you to move but the game server thinks that shouldn't have happened, or worse *didn't* happen for some reason?  Well, you appear to move for a while, your client keeps telling the server where it thinks you are, and eventually the server says "nope, that's wrong: you should be there."  At that point the game client says "oops, sorry" and puts you where the server says you should be.  You "rubberband" to where the server authoritatively says you are according to the game.

That doesn't ordinarily happen in Paragon Chat because there's no central server that can ever disagree with where the game client thinks you are (technically, it can happen because there's two predictions going on: Paragon Chat's prediction and the game client's prediction, and *they* can sometimes get out of sync: PC can still rubberband you).  But its everyone else that is more vulnerable to rubber banding now: what you see is now Paragon Chat's prediction of where it thinks those people are.  But if *they* disagree then eventually they will send a position to you that is different from where Paragon Chat has been predicting and feeding your game client.  Then *they* snap to the "correct" position: they rubberband.

On the list of "problems to solve if you want to turn Paragon Chat into a real MMO" this one is number six.  Out of five hundred.


** Everything I'm saying here is a simplification, but it captures the main point well enough not to go too far down the rabbithole of the technical details.

Codewalker

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #24655 on: May 26, 2016, 03:13:24 PM »
I moved the discussion of bases in Paragon Chat here:

https://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=12087.0

There are a lot of technical details being put in replies to that thread, and I wanted to put it somewhere that people who are watching for information about PC work in progress are more likely to see it.

Vee

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #24656 on: May 27, 2016, 02:33:35 AM »
I moved the discussion of bases in Paragon Chat here:

https://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=12087.0

There are a lot of technical details being put in replies to that thread, and I wanted to put it somewhere that people who are watching for information about PC work in progress are more likely to see it.



Codewalker?

Tahquitz

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #24657 on: May 27, 2016, 03:38:49 AM »
No, that would be CATS.  All the base belong to him.

...for now.
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Paragon Avenger

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #24658 on: May 27, 2016, 04:08:15 AM »
Weakly update,

All the talks belong to them now.
Talks continue, NCSoft insists that the new company that will hold the license to the IP for City of Heroes use paper towels with the accordion fold in the restrooms.  The THeM refuses to accept anything except the roll kind of paper towels in the restrooms.  Somebody mentioned hand dryers and the meeting broke-up with angry shouts.  Other than that, everything is going smoothly, and I can't tell you anything about any details, especially about restroom paper towels.  Did I already talk about that?  You didn't hear it from me.  And as always, we love you.

Tahquitz

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #24659 on: May 27, 2016, 05:12:35 AM »
I'm new-ish here.  What the hell is THeM?
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