Granrick
-
Posts
113 -
Joined
Content Type
Forums
Blogs
Events
Articles
Downloads
Gallery
Posts posted by Granrick
-
-
why would you sign up for 6 months on a new game, which after the first month you should have figured out has already plowed into the iceberg and the captain is just chuggin this baby along while the engine rooms flood
but not to worry the wealthy elite in first class still have their champagne
Simple, I'm enjoying the game.
It has everything that I personally want from an MMO. Maybe it doesn't have what you want, and that's ok, not every game is for everybody. No one's forcing you to sub for 6 months.
-
What if you get hit by a bus and lose both your arms?
Then I'm not going to be too upset over losing a few bucks. I'll have bigger concerns.
-
I subbed for 6 months. As for the person that said "Why would you sub for 6 months to save a few dollars" - simple, I know I'm going to be playing for at least 6 months, so why not save money?
-
My consular's first sabre was green. So green is the same as blue as a starting crystal.
-
Usually you hear the opposite complaint...
-
I roll need if I need the gear on my companion AND everyone else greeded or passed.(Nobody needed the item, then I believe it's fair game to roll need and give it to my companion for an upgrade)
But what if they hit Greed because they wanted it for their companion - then you're just ninja-ing.
In all of my groups going forward i'm going to send a message out at the beginning - no Need for companions unless you ask first.
Simple.
You need to coordinate with your party. Decide at the beginning if you can need for companions, and if not, then when loot comes up that's good for a companion it has to be dsicussed.
The way my group rolls, is that we need for upgrades for both companions and players, unless it's an orange/set pieces item. Then only need if it's a player upgrade.
-
I wouldn't MIND another free month, but I don't think we DESERVE another free month
-
In my experience one good card is better than 2 mediocre cards. Generally, the better new cards have better technology that trumps the combined power of the two SLI cards.
Besides, 2 SLI cards don't give you double the graphics power, they give you more like 1.5 - 1.66 power.
The best use of SLI in my opinion is two awesome cards... but that's really only if you've got money to burn.
-
But shouldn't people have a bit more respect for the people they group with?
So they want to roll greed on an item to sell it at a vendor for probably 2K, that is fine, but at some point, where does the respect come into play? I could have rolled greed on many items to sell, but out of courtesy to my group, I click pass and allow it to go to someone who actually deserves it and will make better use of it for their character.
You're missing the point of Need Vs. Greed. Need always trumps greed. So if someone is going to use it as an upgrade they should click Need. If no one has a use for the item and everyone clicks Greed, then it goes randomly to the highest roller to sell. So, if you click Greed, there should be no problem, because you won't get it unless no one else has a use for it.
If someone DOES need it and the click greed, well, that's there fault for not clicking the right button, but if the item isn't Bind on Pickup you can always give it to them.
I only pass if I really don't want an item even to vendor.
-
Really? Cuz I played WoW from Nov. 09' through Nov. 11' and can't recall not being able to loot mobs I was standing right next to. Furthermore, in the 2 years that I played WoW, I don't recall ever there being a time when I had to repeatedly press an ability over and over and over and over and over before it worked.
I've played WoW since release and I'd have to say that's happened to me numerous times.
-
In several threads people have been trying to make sense of Bioware's decision to pull the detailed character and object graphics completely instead of making them an option.
Questions:
Why limit everyone, even those who weren't suffering significant performance hits?
Why say it will take 3 or more months to turn something on that was taken out of beta in one patch cycle?
Answer:
They had plans to sell a high-res texture expansion pack.
Occam's Razor - the simplest explanation in this case is to follow the money. It's really the only thing that makes sense.
I suppose another explanation could be that the dev in charge of this who took it out of the beta client quit or something, and everyone else can't for the life of them figure out how he did it. Hah.
One flaw to your logic. That's not the simplest explanation. Also, read the post about texture atlas and all the stuff, it explains it quite well.
-
-
Stephen, I have a Masters in IT - I can point you in the dirction of this particular piece of technology. If indeed it is being used, then this poses a lot of problems - not only redering isssues but placing pieces of software on people's computers that they are not aware of - there could be serious legal ramifications if the latter is the case...
But since he said they aren't, your point is moot.
-
I say local server vs. the local hard drive due to the speculation earlier in this thread regarding the second process. Decryption would involve remote requests for keys, and although the data transferred would be small the load would be huge for the remote server authorizing the requests. Actually removing the high quality texture option even though it was available in the beta and used for advertisement is a very risky move, and there has to be an important reason. Reducing load on their servers would be one such reason.
Yes, but tacking on "because of decryption" is in no way founded at this point. Yes the local machine would have trouble keeping up with high res textures, but that in no way says "because we're encrypting them and forcing your machine to decrypt them"
-
So basically the engine is not fit for purpose.
They're saying most people's PCs aren't fit for the high res textures at all times. Some of that fault probably comes down to the engine, but not all of it. Their concern is not that you can't run high res textures with the engine, it's that with the variable amount of players loading in at high res it can cause slowdown. They decided to err on the side of caution. They disabled running high res textures outside of cutscenes for a smoother run of the game.
Was it the right decision? Maybe not, Maybe so.
-
The High-Res official response this morning seems to confirm OP's suggestion. The repository referenced as being overwhelmed by calls could be the local server handling decryption, and so their solution were texture atlases.
The official response in no way confirms his suggestion.
It's not saying the server was overwhelmed, the local PC was overwhelmed by constantly calling in new textures from the hard drive, so instead the load several textures at once in an atlas, but at lower resolution.
-
The primary, widely accepted theory for how light propagated for over a century was that there was a medium, called the luminous aether, that acted as the carrier for light. The first test anybody managed to come up with to try to detect it was the very famous Michelson-Morley experiment, using the world's first interferometer. This experiment came up with quite likely the most famous null result in history: the result they got was within the known experimental error of the device, and thus quite possibly really zero.
Further refinements of the experiment were carried out with various advances, the overwhelming majority continued to show results within the error of the device, even as the sensitivity was increased and the error reduced. This didn't shake belief in the Aether, which had been accepted for so long hardly anyone dared question it.
The experiments assumed that the aether moved, by the motion of the earth through it if nothing else, and tried to detect the variation in the speed of light caused by the movement of the aether.
The series of null results, however, led to a few people trying to rectify the theory to fit the data, this led to all sorts of novel extensions on the existing theory, but the aether was still generally accepted as fact.
The first failure to detect the aether happened in 1887. It wasn't until 1905 that someone finally managed to put everything together in a new, aetherless theory. His name was Einstein, and he'd just come up with the Theory of Special Relativity.
Acceptance was not instantaneous, it took a lot of testing, further null results on aether detecting experiments, and a lot of other experiments testing Einstein's new theory before it largely displaced the idea of the Aether. This happened about 1911.
The process here is what's important: A theory is put forth, data is gathered in an attempt to find out if it's correct. Based on the data that comes in, the theory is revised, over and over, via discussion, correspondence, and a lot of thought, until finally a new, better, more plausible theory comes up that is found to fit the observed data.
The aether was postulated based on very little data at all, but became accepted as scientific fact anyway. To this day, no refinement of the original experiment, no matter how it is varied or how precise it is, has ever managed to detect a definite movement in the 'aether'. But the experiments did create a process that eventually lead to a better, more accurate theory being found. And a few more since then!
That's what we need here.
We've got the wild-eyed theory with almost nothing backing it up, that MAY fit with some of the observations. It's tenuous at best, and in some ways fairly implausible, but it fits better than other things that have been put forward.
What we need now is to start the process of finding out what IS going on, and adjusting, rewriting, or replacing the wild-eyed theory with a better one.
A collaborative process that continually improves our knowledge and understanding as a whole, in order to eventually end up at the correct result.
And as far as stephen's textures response... ummm... well I've mentioned a few times it probably at least partly had something to do with a lot of characters being in one place, which is pretty much what he's saying: that the load becomes too much if there's a lot of people close together.
This WOULD explain the bit in the one DLL that reduces the texture sizes...a bit. Maybe.
It sounds like it's probably more a problem with loading the assets into the memory in the first place than with what happens when they get there, though.
I haven't found much about the details of how the hero engine works from what I've looked at so far, and frankly I'm too tired at this point to parse it properly anyway. If it could be confirmed, however, that the 'remote renderer' stuff is part of the hero engine's system that's simply been renamed, and that the naming similarity with the copy protection method is just a coincidence... we'd have enough of it to pretty much blow the theory...though not to replace it with anything, which'd be better.
Though you're dealing with natural phenomenon, not a man made creation.
When dealing with the way programmers would program something, then it's logical to go with tried and true methods first, rather than assume it's the wild-eyed theory.
A lot of discussion has gone on in this thread and several very valid points have come forward to point out how this theory is almost entirely unlikely. So, unless Bioware themselves say they are using remote rendering as a form of DRM, I'm assuming it is not true.
-
OFFICIAL RESPONSE ON PERFORMANCE ISSUES.
So, that should put it all to bed.
The high resolution textures and the medium resolution textures use entirely different rendering methods, so they cannot mix them. The medium textures are done using a texture atlas. The high resolution textures, even on a high-power PC, would not be able to handle rendering all the players with high resolution and bump mapping.
Again, they are working with a 3rd part engine, the Hero Engine, so this makes everything harder.
Hopefully they are hard at work now on a solution, I would imagine a hybrid system that can render the closest characters at high-resolution and then the rest using atlasing. This will take a very long time to develop and test, so be patient.
I'm glad to have a response and hear they're on it.
Indeed, and the response makes perfect sense, and explains why high res textures were everywhere in beta and then removed.
-
Hi mate, "I am that speculator ;)" who has shad light on RemoteRenderer thingy and Lemon_King has poke around as well in the Renderer where it handles Dynamic Models .
That said, take a look at this:
"OnLive is a cloud gaming platform: the games are synchronized, rendered, and stored on remote servers and delivered via the Internet.
The service is available using the OnLive Game System,PCs running Microsoft Windows (XP, Vista, 7), Intel-based Macs with OS X 10.5.8 or later, Android devices and iOS devices. Since the games are rendered on OnLive's servers, a low-end computer may be used to play any kind of game as long as it is able to play video.
OnLive recommends an Internet connection of 5 Mbit/s or faster, and a 2 Mbit/s connection meets the minimum system requirements.[8]
Over 50 publishers, such as Take-Two, Ubisoft, Epic Games, Atari, Codemasters, THQ, Warner Bros., Kalypso Media, 2D Boy, Eidos Interactive, Disney Interactive Studios, and others have partnered with OnLive.
Sorry, but this has already been covered. Yes OnLive Streams games, but it's basically streaming a video. We can verify very easily that this isn't going on by adjusting settings via our drivers and viewing the amount of data streaming.
-
They did. http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/01/10/bioware-responds-to-the-old-republic-performance-issues/
It's not them, it's you.
F2P by 2013
It's not a response, it was written before this. It'd have to be a presponse
-
Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy - you shoot a bunch of bullets into a wall without doing much aiming. Then you go and paint a bulls-eye over the spot where most of the bullets hit and it looks like you're a good shot.
As it relates to SWTOR, you see a bunch of issues people are having with the game. You find a pdf on the web that could be stretched to cover several issues. Suddenly, a lot of people think this must be the cause.
I mean no disrespect. Just pointing out what I'm seeing going on.
-
You have posted many replies in the form of trying to sway this post to a certain conclusion. Might i suggest a wait and see approach, just to be safe.
*nods* I'm waiting to see.
I'm just also stating what I think is most likely in the discussion that is ongoing. I hope to calm some people who seem to be freaking out a little or jumping to conclusions that have no support yet.
I want to state right now that I do not know exactly what's going on under the hood, and there's no way I can, but I'm posting what seems most logical as a counterpoint to some of the more wild theories.
-
While Miliways may have come off a little brash at first, his points are all 100% correct.
An MMO is a different beast than a single player game. There's a lot going on in a MMO besides graphics that can slow things down.
-
We're not talking about animations being streamed, or textures. MAYBE the models. Even then probably only some of them.
We're not talking about an entire scene being pre-rendered or ALL the assets streamed: we're talking about a relatively small portion of it being streamed, or something, and holding up things waiting on it.
At most we're talking about a portion of the models being streamed: there's some evidence to suggest character models in particular may have been singled out.
In any case, most of the scene at least is clearly rendered locally, and final rendering is extremely obviously local for just the reasons you stated.
What we THINK might be happening is that, say, characters are being pre-rendered by the second process and zipped into the environment as rendered by the primary client.
Most of the effects I mention would be side effects of this process.
the more and more we reduce what might be "sent from the server for DRM", the closer and closer we get to it just running like a normal MMO. You know.. the data of what's going on and who's doing what being sent by the server to our clients to render. Obviously, that can cause lag if your client isn't receiving the info in a timely manner. This is something that will always exist with MMOs.
I play SWTOR and I'm a gamer!!!
in General Discussion
Posted