Dev Diary #176 What comes after 1.7

[Dev Diary #176 What comes after 1.7]

9 hours ago, Aleš Ulm said:

being able to carry a torch while holding a weapon and much more.

Speaking of torches, you really need to work on overall lighting in this game. Light sources stack on top of each other and pretty much blind you if you have a few workstations lit during the night. Torches and lanterns also barely light up your path in a cave, so you can't see anything. There is no light source to my knowledge which works in the water, which means it's impossible at times to see under water when you're exploring a random encounter. Those are the most annoying parts anyways.

[FTC sign]

@spiritchaser28 Yes, ram will help your computer load and display structures/welds, but that is still unrelated to the ship issue. If the ship lag was caused by a bottleneck in rendering or loading structures, then ships would lag in single player sessions as well, but they don't. Therefore we have to conclude that the issue with ship lag is related to how multiplayer sessions handle ship physics simulation, and the synchronization of related data between clients.

The crucial differentiating factor here is relative ping between players, which can easily introduce 400ms round-trip-time delay if two players are separated by a continent. If ship physics is simulated on the host client (server), and other clients rely on positional data from the host in order to be "in-sync", then this could explain the horrid FPS lag. This is probably not the case exactly, since this would cause lag with basic ships as well, which is why all this is so confusing. Whatever is going on, relative ping between players, and sending data related to ship physics simulations across the internet is definitely related.

Again, specs people's PC's are not directly related these issues. The bottleneck is the speed of the internet, and the specific coding of ship physics over a network.

[FTC sign]

@Deadeye_Rob The devs are already aware of the issue

They tagged your bug report as "known issue"

[FTC sign]

@spiritchaser28 The ship isn't rendered server side, it's rendered on each players client, so rendering shouldn't be related to the lag. If this was the case the you should get low fps wen playing by yourself as well, but that's not the case

[The Dreadful Wale]

Here's my take on the Dreadful Wale from Dishonored 2

 

As you can probably imagine, this idea was brought to me by @Deadeye_Rob (who also helped with some dirty work and interior design towards the end)!

I'm a big fan of the Dishonored games, so this was a perfect project to pursue! The ship is a whaler captained by a character named Meagan Foster, who organizes and plans your missions throughout Dishonored 2. The ship serves as a headquarters between missions, and is absolutely iconic in its design!

Here are some screens  

Interior:

Captain's cabin:

Engine room, with switches for enabling different sets of lights, and a lever for enabling/disabling the charging station:

 

[FTC sign]

On 4/18/2021 at 2:17 PM, spiritchaser28 said:

You are the ship expert in my opinion @zarwil I'll be more than happy to test any theories you have

Well, given that the ship rob's been using still causes huge lag despite not using many misc items, my theory seems to be debunked. Man I can't even imagine how they're handling ship physics in multiplayer but they're doing something seriously wrong...

[Low FPS when using Ships]

22 minutes ago, Nikki Severin said:

Is there any chance you could please send me the blueprint, composition or even a save of a game where your ship is docked with the anchor down? 

We know of these issues with large structures like yours but we want to take a look to see if there is a way to help you with this  

 

I can send it to you in pm's 

Also, I made a multiplayer map testing this exact issue before (With considerably smaller ships than the one in question), and sent it to Adam.

Here's the lag test map: SHIP BATTLE LAG TEST.rar

There are two issues at play here; huge lag spikes when loading in big ships, and crippling FPS drops during sailing in multiplayer. The former you can play around with the comp I send you, the second you can test with the scenario above. 

[FTC sign]

Just now, spiritchaser28 said:

You are the ship expert in my opinion @zarwil I'll be more than happy to test any theories you have

Sure thing! I'll device some tests and hit you up. What's your time zone?

[Why I no longer don't believe in Ylands]

Just now, RedEagle_P1. said:

One of the reasons I left is the game is better than ever. When I saw that the Game had indeed fixed the issues and turned the situation around but players were not coming back

But Red, there has been pretty much zero marketing for this game... why do you expect the player numbers to explode after like 2 updates to explore, when the player base is already minuscule? 

 

[FTC sign]

@spiritchaser28 @ocnoglittle @Deadeye_Rob

Regarding ship lag, I don't think the size of the "weld" matters tbh.

My theory about ship lag is that it seems to be caused by the number of individual items connected to the ship. Or more specifically, the number of items on the ship which have their position/rotation communicated to the server. The welded part of a ship, no matter how big, should only count as one entity, which has one position and rotation. It has more "faces" to render, but that's handled by each player's client, not the server. The large ships people create tend to be sprawling with "misc" items which are dynamic and can be picked up and moved by the player. So for a ship with thousands of misc items used for details or whatever, the amount of data which needs to be sent (and handled) between server and all the clients can be thousands of times greater than a basic ship with just a couple of sails and a helm. This alone doesn't really explain the 2fps people get, so there must be some extremely inefficient handling of data between server and client. 

If anyone wants to help test this theory, hit me up.

[Dev Diary #172 Bigger ylands]

Just now, ocnoglittle said:

My computer is fine btw, but we can't demand everyone get a RAM upgrade like Spirit did.

I think most people should be fine, given that Ylands is supposed to be runnable on phones. If your PC is slower than an average phone, then you shouldn't expect it to be able to run games very well. Just my 2 cents. 

[Dev Diary #172 Bigger ylands]

5 hours ago, Aleš Ulm said:

The reason for this was related to some inner workings of the Unity engine (or, to be precise, something that every engine has to deal with to some extent). In a nutshell - the further you get from the  of your world, the less accurate some computations are. At some distance from this scene origin, the shadows started acting weird and other issues appeared.

Very interesting, I always thought the map size limit was due to performance issues 

[Why I no longer don't believe in Ylands]

Just now, lady_whynot said:

I don't know the history of Ylands. I've only been there for 3 months. So I was able to look at it without bias as it stands today and test it extensively. And - I think the game is just fantastic.

What happens to ylands is mostly up to the players. The developers provide us with a platform and we have to fill them with life, with our ideas. From a technical point of view, we should actively help the developers if something doesn't work as it should. We should communicate our wishes and expectations in a friendly and appropriate manner; this is the only way they can act in our interests.

We already have a wonderful game that gives us so many options. Let us enjoy it and be curious about what the future will bring us.

The issue hasn't been player feedback historically, it has been that the feedback wasn't really acknowledged or acted upon. Players have been shouting about improvements to explore for years, and if anything, it got worse. The devs have recently stated how focusing on the editor was part of the bigger plan to improve explore all along, however this was never communicated once during the past 3 years. I think the forums have remained surprisingly civil given the circumstances.

We are finally seeing some long awaited upgrades to explore, and the devs have communicated a clear focus on further improvements. There's finally some light at the end of the tunnel! (let's just hope it doesn't go the way of Metallica's "No leaf clover"....)

[Community Feedback]

Just now, Nikki Severin said:

We are most likely going to implement a service that can collect responses from all of our platforms so that everyone has a chance to voice their opinion 

How would that work with double voting? Someone can just vote 9 times on different platforms

I'd put the polls in a notice as soon as you start the game, that way people can only vote once

[Why I no longer don't believe in Ylands]

--In response to a recent negative thread--

As someone who has been quite pessimistic about the game here on the forums and privately with friends, I'd just like to mention that I'm pretty optimistic about Ylands for the first time in about 2 years. The recent attention to explore is what most of us expected when we first started playing. A steady stream of improvements for the survival element of the game. Anything I've ever done in this game has been in the hopes of some day being able to explore a vast world in some cool custom made ships. It seems this is finally coming to fruition, so the devs should get some well deserved credit! 

 

[3rd Q&A with Aleš]

Just now, ocnoglittle said:

From Ocnog: what is the best way to ask about the community's priorities? You wanted to ask how many people want each of these suggestions. The forum is such a small subset of the community.

I have a suggestion for this for the next Q and A. Many games display blog post updates within a notice in the game's main menu. You can do this in ylands as well, pinning important forum posts (such as change logs, community polls etc) when players open up the game. This would also make more players aware of the forum.

[New Community Warlock Nikki]

Welcome ?

[Where are the new custom scenarios in explore?]

I've been playing the new explore for about 3-4 hours now but haven't found any new scenarios yet. Are they supposed to be super rare or something? What do they look like?

[Still can't place blueprint]

@Misa_Bondejcgirl

@ocnoglittle

Turns out I'm just stupid! I found a small space where I could place the table, but it was difficult to find. Ignore this bug report!

[[YLD-29706] Certain corner roof tiles on my buildings have been tilted 45 degrees counter clockwise since last update]

On 4/1/2021 at 12:54 PM, spiritchaser28 said:

That's bizarre. Yeah that should be looked into. It's just the wood roof spike tiles right? or are any others doing it?

 

Just the spikes!

On 4/1/2021 at 1:30 PM, Misa_Bondejcgirl said:

Thank you for your info and sorry for inconvenience, we will fix it in upcoming hotfix 

Thank you!

[[YLD-29706] Certain corner roof tiles on my buildings have been tilted 45 degrees counter clockwise since last update]

47 minutes ago, spiritchaser28 said:

Were these blueprint builds that were pre existing? Or something that just occurred when you got done building it today? Just curious.

Pre-existing blueprints! The blueprint I'm trying to place has the same issue with tilted roof corners as well

[[YLD-29706] Certain corner roof tiles on my buildings have been tilted 45 degrees counter clockwise since last update]

output_log_clean.txt

output_log.txt

[Still can't place blueprint]

output_log_clean.txt

output_log.txt

[1.6: Trading Territories]

Just now, Marci Magyar said:

We can now add handcrafted games into exploration - you will encounter these while exploring the world.

Can these be found in the world as of this update, or will you start adding such games in the future?

[Dev Diary #167 Fixing Exploration]

7 hours ago, Miguel Preguisa said:

Is everyone here on the forum a parent? ? Too old for MC communities and here I feel inappropriately young now! 

Hahah you're not alone! It's pretty funny though that this game is marketed for kids while the core fan base is older than most games out there ^^