fast time trigger__resource usage

[Oliver Hope 261]

Hey 

I was wondering how resource intensive a time trigger like this is, is it fine for multiplayer? And would it still be if used an array for it to effect all the players?

[Igor Q. 519]

Depends how often you do it but I wouldn't worry about it.

I can make the game spawn 7000 randomly placed entitites in 4 second and the delay is barely noticeable.

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

26 minutes ago, Igor Quintero said:

Depends how often you do it but I wouldn't worry about it.

I can make the game spawn 7000 randomly placed entitites in 4 second and the delay is barely noticeable.

The problem is when you start doing that in multiplayer games (with others online) the lag is unreal. 

[Oliver Hope 261]

27 minutes ago, Igor Quintero said:

Depends how often you do it but I wouldn't worry about it.

I can make the game spawn 7000 randomly placed entitites in 4 second and the delay is barely noticeable.

Damn, raises unibrow

[Rudy.cz 41]

Unfortunately yes. Time triggers like this create excessive network traffic and are unacceptable for serious multiplayer games 

What we are planning is to make possible to set entities to "dynamic" whose could be then be "animated" by using special instructions (i.e move in Y axis 10 meters in 10 seconds). When this will be implemented, we will probably lock the time trigger minimum to something higher, ,so it wont be possible to use it for animations.

This will has to be done due to the technical limitations

[Spyler.X 625]

7 hours ago, Rudy.cz said:

Unfortunately yes. Time triggers like this create excessive network traffic and are unacceptable for serious multiplayer games 

What we are planning is to make possible to set entities to "dynamic" whose could be then be "animated" by using special instructions (i.e move in Y axis 10 meters in 10 seconds). When this will be implemented, we will probably lock the time trigger minimum to something higher, ,so it wont be possible to use it for animations.

This will has to be done due to the technical limitations

I agree that a lighter animation system is necessary, but what about the repetitions that do not have to do with movement? such as wanting to make a quick transition of colors, or other situations in which it may be necessary

also say that reducing the time between repeaters would not solve the problem completely since it will still be possible to alternate several repeaters to accelerate the time, for example now they have reduced it to 0.03 and I once used two repeaters at a time to get that fluided, or adding instructions to the repeater to increase the frequency

[Rudy.cz 41]

Everything is of course up for debate, so maybe some kind of "lerp" function which will interpolate between two values over time, could be of use here. These thing will have to be implemented with multiplayer optimizations in mind (server performance, client prediction, lags etc...) which is of course not trivial task.

[Indomitus 388]

My thoughts on this:

Could it be implemented as a distinct logic object, that could be attached to an Entity, similar to an Entity Storage?  I would imagine an Entity Animator could have properties such as move position from A to B, change rotation from A to B, and change other attributes from A to B.  It would allow for implementation of Animation Complete events for each, which could be used to trigger other logic.  For it to work, I would think the start and end values for each animated attribute would need to be dynamic, with a way to set it in code.

(edit:)

It does raise questions of how this type of animation would affect players, NPCs, animals, and vehicles.  Would an NPC have a walk animation if I move them manually from point A to point B?  Would a ship animate if the anchor is down?  How would it reference/affect groups of objects that have been baked into a single unit?  Could it handle position and rotation in the same object, even if they are over different times?

And for a rotate animation, please allow us to specify a rotation center.  Dynamically, if possible.  And allow an animation to repeat (such as just making a block turn constantly).

Edited December 27, 2018 by Indomitus