They did help, but not with network load.
It simplified the amount of costumes your video card had to draw. Things such as capes and auras require particles and physics effects that increase the load on your machine, not so much your network.
EDIT: This is why a lot of people complain that Thermal or Cold shields lag them out, they require more particles to draw than bubbles and put a heavier load on the person's graphics card/CPU.
Quote:
Exactly |
Originally Posted by StrayKitten
They did help, but not with network load.
It simplified the amount of costumes your video card had to draw. Things such as capes and auras require particles and physics effects that increase the load on your machine, not so much your network. EDIT: This is why a lot of people complain that Thermal or Cold shields lag them out, they require more particles to draw than bubbles and put a heavier load on the person's graphics card/CPU. |
the costume itself as raw data doesn't add ot the bandwidth, or at a very insignificant amount) the only people who could get problem from costume/aura data on the network side if those that are still on 56k modem ( I highly doubt there is that many)The real problem is that the data is sent to the client, which then have to process it and then display it. When you get a team of 8 you don't see a difference because the data that needs to be processed is minimal. But make that team of 8 MM with all pets out ( range between 40-60 depending on the MM ) that starts to be a lot of information to process at once for every frame since the costume is re-calculated in it's position and then re-drawn every frame.
So if we take the old Hami raid where everyone ( 150+) were following the same targeter, you had to re-calculate and re-draw every costume in your line of sight at every frame. This can push any non-optimal computer to be overloaded and crash the client.
Taking away the variables who adds physics on top of the simple positional data (cap and Aura) you reduce the amount of processing power needed and dimish the chance of crashing for the clients.
The new Hami raids, help with limiting the number of person in the zone so you never have more than 50 costume ( without counting pets)
This is mostly true. The more effects, costume accessories, etc, the bigger your costume file/data. This only impacts when a player first "sees" another and the game transmits the costume data. Its like getting close to an AE building or WWs, and the game "pauses" for a second or two, while it gets all the player data for those now in range.
Now on to Power Customization. Considering its in closed beta, even if I had information to share about how its done I couldn't tell you. But, its likely that it will work like the costumes and that it will be transmitted with that. Now it will increase that data burst, but it is a one time deal. Nothing new will likely need to happen real time.
Tanker Tuesday #72 Oct 5 @Champion
"I am not sure if my portrayal of being insane is accurate, but damn its fun all the same."
Quote:
Actually they did help immensely, just the sheer task of organizing 290+ players into specific groups that Marut Radi scatterpack KOS me and some others had, was facilitated enormously by Upsen's uniform idea.|
Originally Posted by Dinah_Might
I have never understood the purpose of these suggested raid costume beyond "Ease to identify your role at a raid", and I assume the thread keeps getting bumped due to nostalgia.
|
The regular hami runnings stuck with the uniforms only for about a month or so as everyone became old hats at the strategy and their AT's roles in it.
But the lag was enormously reduced by implementing Ups' suggestion, no capes/no auras, so that I could even do a raid on a laptop, which I could no longer do when they slid back to 'come as you are'.
Quote:
Hi Dinah, no worries about calling out.|
Originally Posted by Dinah Might
a) Did these costumes ACTUALLY help? and can someone explain in laymens terms HOW.
b) If so, The costumes COULD have been simplified even further (example Plain Tights, single colour) Why were they designed in such a way to include patterns and texture? Now i don't mean to "call anyone out" or insult Upsen Downs by this post, I just want help understanding WHY we have been doing what we are doing. |
Everyone in the thread has done a great job of explaining the organizational benefits of the colour, and the video lag problems from drawing umpteen different things on your screen at once. It used to matter more due to the sheer number of heroes (was it 150 or 200?) and the lower horsepower of the video cards (and computers) back then.
I picked the particular costume parts cause of two things.
1. They were the parts that had the fewest pieces to draw.
2. They had no particular personal details or body parts/hair showing.
The texture didn't matter as much as the polygons, but I specified one so that it would be more uniform.
The colours were very important - this was to speed up organization.
Why:
1. Raid leaders quickly see who's here for the raid, and what's going on during the raid.
(Blasters here, Defenders there, Control by the yolk, etc.)
2. Raiders can find where they are supposed to be by looking for their colour.
(I'm a blaster wearing red so I should be where all those other red heroes are. That guy in the gold suit is leading and not just honking around above the hami.)
How:
I based the colors mostly on the Archetype colours but I took the yellow and pink for the raid leader and the targeter cause they are really easy to spot. (everyone hated the pimpin' pink so it got dropped except for a few brave folks.)
Because the defenders/controllers had so many roles, we split off empathy, rad, kine to have their own color on top of the archetype color, so they could find each other as well. (remember the kine+sniper tactic or the rad anchor tactics etc?)
That's pretty much everything.
Cheers,
Upsen.
One of the suggestions I had was to log in in safe mode to minimize all graphics settings. This helped when I was on a lower end pc. My pc now is far from highend and is several years old,
YMMV---IMO
Ice Ember
Quote:
Ok, laymens terms ...|
Originally Posted by Dinah Might
a) Did these costumes ACTUALLY help? and can someone explain in laymens terms HOW. b) If so, The costumes COULD have been simplified even further (example Plain Tights, single colour) Why were they designed in such a way to include patterns and texture? |
Get yourself a piece of paper, and draw some lines on it so you have 10 sections. In 5 of those sections, draw a single triangle, all about the same size, as fast as you can. Now, in each of the other 5 sections, draw 5 triangles, all attached to each other (total of 25 triangles), as fast as you can.
Essentially, the row with single triangles represent the most basic of costumes. The other row, represents more complex costumes. Each costume is made up of a certain amount of polygons. The lower amount of polygons is quicker to draw by the GPU, and can then move on to the next costume. More complex costumes take longer to draw by the GPU, thus cause graphical lag.
Now, on to the textures. Look to your side, reach out as if you were grabbing your texture (I know it sounds silly but it's the best thing I can think of
), and then draw the same pattern on the 5 single triangles as fast as possible. For your row of multiple triangles, look to your side again, and reach out, draw your pattern on the first set of triangles, look to your side again, reach out, draw a different pattern on the next set, etc etc, as fast as possible.By using the same texture, you're not forcing the GPU to go fetch a different texture to render, thus reducing graphical lag.
I think that's probably the simplest way it could be put.
CHAMPION!
I have never understood the purpose of these suggested raid costume beyond "Ease to identify your role at a raid", and I assume the thread keeps getting bumped due to nostalgia.
One of the items that happened at raids that often confused me was the direction to "turn off powers (such as shields*) or wear simple uniforms to reduce lag. But I often thought "Costume data is saved on my computer, why would it cause lag?"
Recently in one of the suggestion threads, a poster claimed they didn't like power customization due to the lag it would add which prompted responses such as:
- All rendering is done on the client. The additional bandwidth usage would be miniscule.
I'm glad someone else finally said this to be clear.
- Power customization is just a form of costume data. The suggestion that the bandwidth will crush folks connections and that we should be able to shut it off to prevent that sounds as inane as saying "costumes are too elaborate and take up too much bandwidth, therefore, folks on slower computers should only see default gloves and boots on all other characters." Makes zero sense.
- Bandwidth is based on your connection speed and has nothing to do with a slow pc. At. All. I assume you mean rendering speed that has nothing to do with your connection, based on cpu and gpu specs. At most, the power colors would probably equal two bytes, or two digits.
So I want to know
a) Did these costumes ACTUALLY help? and can someone explain in laymens terms HOW.
b) If so, The costumes COULD have been simplified even further (example Plain Tights, single colour) Why were they designed in such a way to include patterns and texture?
Now i don't mean to "call anyone out" or insult Upsen Downs by this post, I just want help understanding WHY we have been doing what we are doing.
* I understand Hami's damage will not be reduced by shields