GlowstickSwinger Posted April 28, 2012 Author Share Posted April 28, 2012 (edited) Now you're just splitting hairs. Of course I mean outside the parameters of the typical 8-10ms latency that's not even detectable by the human eye. ... The human eye is not even a valid point of reference when dealing with massive i/o systems. I am seriously starting to doubt your claim of having a background in technology. That 8-10 millisecond is seek time PER SECTOR, not per file, and not per application operation and certainly not per HeroScript. And that's just the seek time, your not even accounting for rotation latency. You do realize that the HeroEngine has a repository, which is a database engine that sits on top of file i/o requests, an that adds latency as well? And that these file i/o requests are pulling up a serious amount of textures, models, and other assets, resulting in a very high amount of sectors being called upon? Once those sectors start adding up, a blocking operation can be crippling. SOME MAFFS TO END THIS CHARADE IF you are dealing with a HD that is partitioned to have its sector size to be 1024 bytes, operates at 10,000 RPM, and you are pulling up 4MBs (4096 sectors) of assets for the very first time mid-game operation via a blocking script, and perhaps those assets are fragmented all over the disk and you have to hop between them... check these times out 100% sector scatter: 12.28 seconds 75% sector scatter: 9.216 seconds 50% sector scatter: 6.14 seconds 25% sector scatter: 3.07 seconds 10% sector scatter: 1.228 seconds 5% sector scatter: 0.614 seconds 1% sector scatter: 0.1228 seconds (Does those dismount hiccups sound familiar yet?) If just a mere 5% of those .DAT files do not have concurrent sectors on this setup.. THE ENTIRE GAME LOOP STOPS FOR OVER A HALF SECOND. And I haven't even factored in any delays caused by any indexing the repository adds on top of that. AND I'm running this equation in an isolated environment where no one else is going near the hard drive.. not even the Operation System. This equation acts as if SW:TOR was the only application in the entire resource universe and didn't even have an operating system to get in the way! That's not negligible! You are saying that BW is on some cutting edge quantum computer stuff, and that we all need 40,000 RPM or not-invented SSDs in order to play the game! That's nonsense. Total nonsense. I'm never going to suggest that we, the consumers, subsidize their inability to embrace industry standard solutions. Accounting for latency in disk i/o has been a solved problem since the 1980s and you do it by having your game loop be event-driven. Edited April 28, 2012 by GlowstickSwinger Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeramieCrowe Posted April 28, 2012 Share Posted April 28, 2012 (edited) A couple more things you should be taking into consideration, and don't seem to be: First of all, the devs have mentioned that this engine has been modified by BioWare so extensively, that it's not even the HERO engine anymore, so any info you've gathered on it probably doesn't apply, and secondly, they built this engine to last the next decade, as per James Ohlen. The simple fact that it requires a dual-core processor already tells you there is more under the hood and waiting to implemented than the mere bare-bones engine we're seeing right now. In other words, you're seeing only the tip of the iceberg. I admire what you're trying to do here, and it seems you have some analytical skills, but don't fall into the trap of disregarding clues and elements simply because they don't fit your theory. Make a theory that fits ALL the evidence, not fit evidence into your theory. Edited April 28, 2012 by JeramieCrowe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SOLIJA_ Posted April 28, 2012 Share Posted April 28, 2012 (edited) but don't fall into the trap of disregarding clues and elements simply because they don't fit your theory. What is he disregarding that will make everything he has said and shown evidence for irrelevant? I think he is spot on. I read this whole post and all it seems that your trying to do is "be the bigger man" or "1-UP him". You probably agree with everything he says, your just too "proud" to acknowledge it. Edited April 28, 2012 by SOLIJA_ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeramieCrowe Posted April 28, 2012 Share Posted April 28, 2012 (edited) What is he disregarding that will make everything he has said and shown evidence for irrelevant? I think he is spot on. I read this whole post and all it seems that your trying to do is "be the bigger man" or "1-UP him". You probably agree with everything he says, your just too "proud" to acknowledge it. I agree with much of his findings. I disagree that it's solely TOR doing it, or that there aren't some other things that seem to be exacerbating it (this is what he's disregarding). It's impossible to completely isolate what's causing the extreme latency. Also, because I have yet to experience these spikes, and I play 8+ hours a day since the first day of Early Access. Edited April 28, 2012 by JeramieCrowe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lequin Posted April 28, 2012 Share Posted April 28, 2012 (edited) A couple more things you should be taking into consideration, and don't seem to be: First of all, the devs have mentioned that this engine has been modified by BioWare so extensively, that it's not even the HERO engine anymore, so any info you've gathered on it probably doesn't apply, and secondly, they built this engine to last the next decade, as per James Ohlen. The simple fact that it requires a dual-core processor already tells you there is more under the hood and waiting to implemented than the mere bare-bones engine we're seeing right now. In other words, you're seeing only the tip of the iceberg. I admire what you're trying to do here, and it seems you have some analytical skills, but don't fall into the trap of disregarding clues and elements simply because they don't fit your theory. Make a theory that fits ALL the evidence, not fit evidence into your theory. LMAO, built the engine to last the next decade? what are you smoking? it's based on directx 9 !!! they need to modify the engine to last the next 5 years if they want graphic cards to actually be compatible with their backwards decision making (directx 9 is emulated now, you actually need to dig thru the MS website to install it seperately lol. 10 years, man it's gonna be retired or something). They don't even have a 64 bit client? Who designs an engine for the next decade with a 32 bit client?!!?!? They have to create their own cache file on a HDD (detrimental to performance given the amount of times it's forced to be accessed) because their client has limited access to memory!!! Seriously, they need to bring their code up to standards, and have better resource management. FTP MMOs have far better tech than they do! (and they have 100mil+ invested in dev). They're too management heavy, and need more capable coders. Maybe the EA cull will help with this? Then again, EA management is kinda useless these days. Edited April 28, 2012 by Lequin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeramieCrowe Posted April 28, 2012 Share Posted April 28, 2012 LMAO, built the engine to last the next decade? what are you smoking? is based on directx 9 !!! they need to modify the engine to last the next 5 years if they want graphics to actually be compatible with their backwards decision making. They don't even have a 64 bit client? Who designs a engine for the next decade with a 32 bit client?!!?!? They have the create their own cache file on a HDD (detrimental to performance given the amount of times it's forced to be accessed) because their client has limited access to memory!!! Seriously, they need to bring their code up to standards, and have better resource management. FTP MMOs have fair better tech than they do! (and they have 100mil+ invested in dev). Their too management heavy, and need more capable coders. Maybe the EA cull will help with this? Then again, EA management is kinda useless these days. With so much of the engine that isn't even implemented yet, how can you say this? *SMH* Not even I can claim to know what the unimplemented elements consist of. Really, can we not be reasonable here, and not jump to largely baseless conclusions? Especially since the devs already stated on the pre-launch forums that they are ready with DX-11 when the time is right... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lequin Posted April 28, 2012 Share Posted April 28, 2012 With so much of the engine that isn't even implemented yet, how can you say this? *SMH* Not even I can claim to know what the unimplemented elements consist of. Really, can we not be reasonable here, and not jump to largely baseless conclusions? Especially since the devs already stated on the pre-launch forums that they are ready with DX-11 when the time is right... proof is in the pudding man, look at the state of the game. The state of the engine, if they have all those optimizations, where were they in the beta? on the PTR? Why was Ilum developed to be UNPLAYABLE??!?!? Why was the recent patch apparently based of a beta phase (bugs from that beta phase have re-occurred in the live environment)? WHY ARE THEY NOT IMPLEMENTING SAID OPTIMIZATIONS? What are they possibly waiting for?!?!? Why do the CSRs constantly say that customers need to upgrade their rigs? (when they more than meet the mininum reqs) Why did the devs keep boasting about "their tech" when it's currently obviously crappy? I don't think they have a clue at the moment. Not enough technical expertise in their ranks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SOLIJA_ Posted April 28, 2012 Share Posted April 28, 2012 I agree with much of his findings. I disagree that it's solely TOR doing it, or that there aren't some other things that seem to be exacerbating it (this is what he's disregarding). It's impossible to completely isolate what's causing the extreme latency. Also, because I have yet to experience these spikes, and I play 8+ hours a day since the first day of Early Access. Funny thing is, I experience really slow loading times too. I re-formatted my Harddrive last night and did a clean install of W7, with none of the special bells and whistles. With ONLY SWTOR installed, it did not improve. I am not running no **** machine either. I can practically run any game out there on max. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SOLIJA_ Posted April 28, 2012 Share Posted April 28, 2012 Especially since the devs already stated on the pre-launch forums that they are ready with DX-11 when the time is right... Well the right time should of been at Launch. Why introduce a MMO with outdated crap? Thats like me going around saying.... Yeah I can afford to buy a Ferrari for cash, but I'd rather be seen in a rusted out car. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sambeta Posted April 28, 2012 Share Posted April 28, 2012 With so much of the engine that isn't even implemented yet, how can you say this? *SMH* Not even I can claim to know what the unimplemented elements consist of. Really, can we not be reasonable here, and not jump to largely baseless conclusions? Especially since the devs already stated on the pre-launch forums that they are ready with DX-11 when the time is right... Sorry but Bioware/EA are getting caught too often for saying one thing and doing another. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeramieCrowe Posted April 28, 2012 Share Posted April 28, 2012 (edited) Well the right time should of been at Launch. Why introduce a MMO with outdated crap? Thats like me going around saying.... Yeah I can afford to buy a Ferrari for cash, but I'd rather be seen in a rusted out car. What I do know is that I'm no armchair developer. They're the professionals, not me. Do I wonder why they didn't launch it with dual-ability DX9/DX11 compatibility? Sure I do. I also know they probably have a pretty damned good reason for not doing it. It's not my right to know why, nor am I going to point fingers at BioWare while being ignorant of those reasons. Usually you end up looking ridiculous doing that... So, ask, "Hey, BioWare, why didn't you release with DX11 compatibility?" Instead, what I see is whining and crying because it's not so, and calling BioWare names. The former will usually get a response while the latter usually gets ignored. Edited April 28, 2012 by JeramieCrowe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeramieCrowe Posted April 28, 2012 Share Posted April 28, 2012 Sorry but Bioware/EA are getting caught too often for saying one thing and doing another. Examples? So far, all I've seen are statements with the usual caveats in bold, underlined letters, i.e. tentative, "as always, this is subject to change", etc. Reminds of when they said they were "shooting for a Spring 2011 release" and people, for some gawd-awful reason, took it as some sort of promise... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sambeta Posted April 28, 2012 Share Posted April 28, 2012 Examples? So far, all I've seen are statements with the usual caveats in bold, underlined letters, i.e. tentative, "as always, this is subject to change", etc. Reminds of when they said they were "shooting for a Spring 2011 release" and people, for some gawd-awful reason, took it as some sort of promise... With their patches recently things were promised with the crafting schems . There were supposed to be an endless array of them providing more character customizations. Very few new schems have actually been seen, according to posts here on this very forum. In terms of Bioware and EA in general: http://i686.photobucket.com/albums/vv229/Oregondiver1/xUq9t.png Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeramieCrowe Posted April 28, 2012 Share Posted April 28, 2012 With their patches recently things were promised with the crafting schems . There were supposed to be an endless array of them providing more character customizations. Very few new schems have actually been seen, according to posts here on this very forum. In terms of Bioware and EA in general: http://i686.photobucket.com/albums/vv229/Oregondiver1/xUq9t.png So, basically a repeat of the crystal schem and egg hunt. People claimed it was broken or not as many colors as they somehow "promised" when the truth was that it just wasn't discovered yet... Now, there are some things that are not working as intended, such as needing at least one mod in a piece to get a schem from REing it, but that certainly doesn't mean they "lied"... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sambeta Posted April 28, 2012 Share Posted April 28, 2012 (edited) So, basically a repeat of the crystal schem and egg hunt. People claimed it was broken or not as many colors as they somehow "promised" when the truth was that it just wasn't discovered yet... Now, there are some things that are not working as intended, such as needing at least one mod in a piece to get a schem from REing it, but that certainly doesn't mean they "lied"... No not at all. I believe they said that everything would have an orange equivalent and that 1.2 would be bringing these in. There are supposed to be many new schems and yet hardly anyone in game or on the forums is saying "Hey I just scored a new schem i've not seen before!" Trust me I've asked in general as I've wanted to buy some and try out new things. No one seems to have seen anything new. Bioware do lie, they're a corporation and that's exactly what corporations do. All they call it is extending the truth. Edit: In terms of lies that pic I posted is a doozy. Edited April 28, 2012 by sambeta Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jhoren Posted April 28, 2012 Share Posted April 28, 2012 Good post OP. I have noticed the excessive and heavy I/O issues this game has as well (and I am happy I have an SSD at least), especially the network I/O. They even had to have the internet backbone guys tweak something on the pipeline that goes from Ireland, where the servers are, to parts of mainland europe, because the systems became overloaded during the early start here in Europe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UCKFred Posted April 29, 2012 Share Posted April 29, 2012 Wow, the discussion in this topic really did die fast after getting moved to the Suggestion Box, well played BW. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rikeryo Posted April 29, 2012 Share Posted April 29, 2012 yeah, topic has nothing to do with the suggestion box, well played. someone reopen this in general discussion! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeramieCrowe Posted April 29, 2012 Share Posted April 29, 2012 Tinfoil Hat Brigade's in full force, I see. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GlowstickSwinger Posted April 29, 2012 Author Share Posted April 29, 2012 Wow, the discussion in this topic really did die fast after getting moved to the Suggestion Box, well played BW. All as planned, sadly. Changing the entire game loop to be event-driven would take months... MONTHS of coding to do. (Close to $300,000 - $400,000 worth of labor easily, not even accounting for QA costs) It's cheaper and easier to tell consumers to subsidize these mistakes by having them shoulder the burden of buying "better hardware". It makes perfect financial sense to kill free technical consultation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GlowstickSwinger Posted April 29, 2012 Author Share Posted April 29, 2012 (edited) A couple more things you should be taking into consideration, and don't seem to be: First of all, the devs have mentioned that this engine has been modified by BioWare so extensively, that it's not even the HERO engine anymore, so any info you've gathered on it probably doesn't apply So you are saying that SW:TOR's game loop is event-driven. What evidence do you have that it's event-driven? Burden of proof > axiomatic rules of thumb Edited April 29, 2012 by GlowstickSwinger Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baptes Posted April 29, 2012 Share Posted April 29, 2012 Okay, I know little about computers and even less about the coding that goes on in an MMO. My last attempt at understanding anything multiplayer was back when I was trying to mod Freelancer. And even someone with as little knowledge as myself can see there are some serious issues with the game engine itself and how it interacts with the players PC. It hogs more memory than anything I've played that wasn't a bug that got resolved asap, yet it persists to this day months after launch. Game crashes, game freezes, game errors that require a HARD REBOOT!!! Now that last one just kind of boggles the mind. What on earth is SWTOR doing to my system that locks it down so hard that even alt+ctrl+del can't make it stop? I want this game to succede, really I do! I love Star Wars! I played SWG, even every now and then after NGE! But your poorly optimized engine is shooting SWTOR in the foot even moreso than some of your questionable desicion making reguarding class balance, customer service (or lack of), misdirections (ie lies) towards your playerbase (as in the "You will be able to RE almost any orange and learn the schematic for an empty shell of it!" 1.2 drops "Oh we never said that! You misunderstood! What, you can link where I said exactly that? Preposterous! Close this thread!"), ect. The list goes on guys but people would be a bit more willing to put up with such...things...if the game actually worked propperly. As it stands SWTOR is a bug ridden, horribly optimized, pretty much unplayable mess for a large chunk of your playerbase that are having to put up with the above BS as well. And you tell them it because their PCs are garbage....right. Its no wonder servers are ghost town for the most part. In closing: ~This is the thread that never ends, it just goes on and on my..."friends"! Some guy posted it in General long ago, but mods moved it to Suggestion Box to kill it. Even so! This is the thread that never ends!~ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mediia Posted April 29, 2012 Share Posted April 29, 2012 Sorry to the creator of this thread. BIoware doesn't care what you think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeramieCrowe Posted April 29, 2012 Share Posted April 29, 2012 (edited) So you are saying that SW:TOR's game loop is event-driven. What evidence do you have that it's event-driven? Burden of proof > axiomatic rules of thumb Nono, that was something you noticed and confirmed. I meant anything else. What's your theory on why the developers, who have developed MMOs since UO (along with event-driven engines), chose to make this one not event-driven? I'm curious as to what you think... Edited April 29, 2012 by JeramieCrowe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GlowstickSwinger Posted April 29, 2012 Author Share Posted April 29, 2012 (edited) Sorry to the creator of this thread. BIoware doesn't care what you think. <-- creator of thread and +1 for truth Edited April 29, 2012 by GlowstickSwinger Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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