A question to you game developers out there

[Archimedian]

I'm not familiar with how the UT engine (any of them) work and while I do develop software for a living none of these tools are things I have ever even peeked at.  So with that said...

Taking the following two statements:

Hey all,

Just wanted to update you all on where we are with the ping issues that are affecting those of you trying to raid. Currently all shards on all servers except Sartok are up. Extra shards will only help so much and we are actively focusing on whittling down to the crux of the problem. I wish I had more to tell you but we are trying our hardest to find a workable solution for this is in the short time so that we can get the long term solution started.

At this point there is nothing more that CS can do, I approved the turning on of all shards Friday evening and it has been that way since. Please understand that we are indeed doing the best we can to resolve this issue but I cannot give an eta as of yet.

and

6 is the max because these are actual copies of art that have been placed in chunks. We do not have instance technology. You are being moved to a different chunk and we only have that art duplicated 6 times. In order to bring up mare we have to make more and that is not a simple process.

I would assume that the game level maps are just one big "map" where you can put copies of the same area in out of the way places.  Does this engine have instancing tools?  Does 3.0 offer instancing options?  I have my opinions as to using the concept of "multiple copies of the same content" as a poor mans instance concept but I'll hold onto them, although opinions on the subject from those with experience in this kind of development would be appreciated.

Thanks.
(and wooohooo first post, hopefully it doesn't suck)

[Lum]

Instancing is handled on the server.  UT is a client graphics engine.  I'm not sure what you're asking here and am not familiar with what you're quoting (like, what game is it? what exactly was the problem?)

I *think* you're talking about Vanguard. If I'm not mistaken Vanguard instances nothing as a design decision. However, even in an instance your client could melt depending on how much you have to render (WoW's engine tends to cry during 40 man raids, which are all instanced) since the only way to "instance" what your client draws is to... uh... draw less stuff (or draw stuff uglier i.e. level of detail reduction).

[Margalis]

The second quote is perplexing. More context needed. Duplicating art is hard? What? Ctrl-C Ctrl-V mean anything?

[Samwise]

Every FPS engine that supports online play supports instancing, insofar as any time you connect to a game server you're connecting to a different "instance" of the game.

[WindupAtheist]

Next we need a sky-blue post and we'll have all the name colors represented.

Oh, also, Vanguard sucks lol.

[geldonyetich2]

I *think* you're talking about Vanguard. If I'm not mistaken Vanguard instances nothing as a design decision.

Yep, it's Vanguard.

Source thread of both quotes.

[Abelian75]

As said above, it doesn't really make sense to say whether or not unreal has instancing.  In one sense it does not, but in another sense instancing is all it does.  "Instancing" is really an MMO term.

Basically what I gather from that quote is that they have basically added six zones to their game that all just happen to have the same layout, monsters, etc.  The server has no idea that these zones are in any way similar for the most part, though, so each individual "instance" is just as expensive as creating an entirely new zone.  I would imagine the issue isn't literally copy-pasting the content, but the fact that each zone, or set of zones, probably requires its own physical servers, and there's only so much hardware they have to work with.

The proper reaction to the quote, imho, is a quiet chuckle.

(Unreal is more than just a graphics engine, too, really, and it does include a server.  Not an MMO server, but, in theory, there's nothing to stop someone from deciding to try to turn it into one.  It's pretty much like getting somebody's entire game and turning into another game.  You may be buying it for the graphics engine, but you get a whole, whole lot more that you have to chop out of it if you don't want it.)

[Trippy]

Placeholder.

Edit: darn, it didn't work...

[Margalis]

Yeah, it sounds like instead of instancing they just exactly replicate the zones N times and dump people in one of the N zones, or something like that....hard to tell

It's not like instancing is technically complicated, you keep one set of the static data and dynamically track the variables on a per-instance basis.

To the original poster, typically the way an instance works is that you define the area once, in one place, but define it in such a way that you can track N copies simultaneously. All these copies have the same base parameters, layouts, etc, but the dynamic data like enemies, players etc can be tracked on a per-instance basis. You don't actually create N static copies of the place on the map, it's all just done in memory.

Really it's not any different from object oriented programming with class definitions and instances. You have one class definition, the map and enemy layout, then you create an instance and flip individual variables.

[Archimedian]

I *think* you're talking about Vanguard. If I'm not mistaken Vanguard instances nothing as a design decision.

Yep, it's Vanguard.

Source thread of both quotes.

Yep that's where it's from although I was more curious as to the design concept.  Obviously (or maybe I'm just putting this together wrong) a WoW instance on the client only has one "copy" of it self.  Meaning the area map / art only exist once on the client.  The server tech informing the client of spawns and nearby objects basically create a process which tells the clients associated in this instance what they should or should not see.  In basic terms that's my understanding, pretty sure that's about the jist of it.

Looking at the vanguard implementation it would seem that they created six copies (each of which resides on the client) with art and associated items and each has the server tell the client what is in that "zone".  Which led to my assumption of "poor mans instancing".

The second assumption on my part is that Vanguard uses UT 2.5 server tech (which I have no idea if this is the case or not) and I guess my original question was more to the point of, if a client connects to a server does this engine have the ability to make new connections reusing art assets to sub servers.  Or something closer to the WoW instance concept.

I'm also assuming that you have to create pathing maps undetr their scenario once you render the new "zone", so I can see where the statement of not so simple as ctrl C, cntrl V would hold some merit.

And I have never played Vanguard just stumbled across the quote today while doing some research on a project.

[Krakrok]

It sounds like what they did though is exactly that. They took a map square (say 2048x2048) and put 6 copies of the same 'zone' on that map quad (let's say they are 682x2048). So the map square is on a single server and there isn't any more space in the 2048x2048 (maybe that is the map square max of the client). Which would mean without adding a whole new 2048x2048 map section they can't add more than 6 'zone' copies. I just made all that up but it sounds plausible based on how I know 3D engines and maps files work/load. It's what I might do if I had to instance zones without having instancing code. The map size might be more of a 3D client limitation than anything on the server.

And as far as the lag that was mentioned it's possible if you have 6 different raid 'zones' all in the same map square that the client<->server communication for large groups of people in all 6 zones at the same time could cause something to choke somewhere. AKA the server can't handle 6 raids simultaneously on a map square or the clients can't handle the amount of data updates the server is sending for the map square.


On a side note it's funny how they are calling them shards when that was UO's term and is based on the UO lore which said something to the effect that some gem was shattered by the big evil guy and that is why there are multiple instances of the same game world if I recall right.

[Abelian75]

The client wouldn't need to be loading more than one zone at a time (well, adjacent zones as well probably in VG, not sure how they're doing that faux-seamless thing), so this is probably entirely transparent to the client.  The main thing is that the server isn't actually dynamically instancing anything, it's just popping people into zone X instead of zone Y, having no idea that these just happen to look identical.  Instancing, or lack thereof, should pretty much be a server-side only concept.  An MMO client doesn't generally know about the entire world at any given time, even in an entirely seamless world.  The server's the only all-knowing one.

Lordy, I suppose it's possible that the client actually has been given six copies of the same map, though.  God, that would be awesome.

[dwindlehop]

The Vanguard forums use "shards" in a way that is wholly foreign to me. On UO launch, there were several different shards for different geographical locations. Each shard consisted of one or more physical computers or "servers."

Vanguard seems to be inverting the sense of shard and server, or so I infer. Apparently their technology scales to 6 physical boxes and no more, which is a funny limit.

[Nerf]

This is Vangaurd we're talking about, a game that still runs like shit on a system ranking in the top 25k on 3dmark.

Edit: UO used shards like we generally use servers, as in you choose one to play on at character creation and thats where your character resides.

[dwindlehop]

Edit: UO used shards like we generally use servers

We who? Where I come from, a server means a box with a computer inside it.

[Nerf]

A server in MMO terms generally means the instance of the entire game that you reside on.  AC1 had Thistledown, Frostfell, Darktide, etc, these were your "server" choices, and what UO called shards.  Granted, there are several actual physical server boxes that hold the data for each "server".

[Krakrok]

We who? Where I come from, a server means a box with a computer inside it.

In MMO terms a server is obfuscated most of the time to mean a cluster of boxes that make up a single software "server". Software server is not always the same as a hardware server. EVE has 1 software server made up of ~75 hardware servers.