FTC sign

[Yo HasLEGO 193]

Hey Rob, could you send a composition of the FTC sign when you have the time?

I think it would look great on the half round towers on the second story.

 

Thanks in advance

[spiritchaser28 920]

I really want Flintlock to be the central hub of trading in ylands. I think with these amazing builds and anyy efforts we bring to increase the trading would be amazing. I have ships full of resources I have no issues unloading on Rob's map to help speed up the effort of making the town feel authentic. So if Rob approves a blueprint build, I'm there to help deliver the ores, wood and stone needed 

 

[Deadeye_Rob 908]

That looks incredible mate!

ive has a couple of requests for the logo. I’ll be uploading it for download as a composition on Monday.

[Deadeye_Rob 908]

@spiritchaser28 I’ve been busy over the last few days starting up possible layouts for a ‘Central Trading Port’.

I’m thinking of something along the lines of a stone-lined Dock able to accommodate at least four large ships. The dock will include an open town square flanked by a few buildings and NPC shops.

I’d like to base my architecture on the tried-and-tested Victorian/colonial style incorporating some industrial themes in there too!

The thing of concern however is the strain on system resources. Flintlock Plantation (Caliga Hall) takes significant time to render on approach. I estimate that a similar side-effect will occur on this project. In order to limit this effect, I’m toying with the idea of locating the port in the Polar Biome where ambient entities are reduced.

What do you guys think? 

[spiritchaser28 920]

Caliga does indeed take some time to load.....even with my recent RAM upgrade to 16 G. However I think if you spread out the dock away from Caliga hall it should not be a problem since it is in the middle of the island. 

On a side note, I was able to access Caliga hall (sharegame) on 4 RAM. It took a bit of time to load, but I made it. Ylands reccomends 8 and that is fine in most cases. You have quite a few collisions in your build, and lots of terrain modification which tends to slow the load down. Although I appreciate a good curve in a structure as much as the next person so I am willing to wait for something beautiful to load.

As far as the NPC shops go...keep in mind you can only have one of each vendor ATM...you already got them around the main plantation. I might suggest killing those vendors off and spreading them out a bit around the main island. Keeping hem so close to the main hall can contribute to the lag

I think it may be a good idea to have a port, with a road that leads off to a few different areas with vendors, and the main road leading to Caliga. If you spread out the amount of data to different sections of the island I think it will decrease the load time. 

Also keep in mind that having a port with several ships can cause lag as well. I love the idea of a harbor with hundreds of ships, You are thinking 4 or 5 ships in the dock would be grand, but I know how you (and @zarwil) build and those would be grand ships...... If you place them in a central location, Unity would shut down the program entirely for many players. I have been entertaining the idea of creating a map with a "ship harbor" where new players can come claim a simpler style ship build. Ships with sails, maybe a few with engines, but nothing too massive on the data....less collisions etc could allow a few more ships to be used in a larger harbor scenario....but a bit more spread apart.

It can be done on your map actually. But I try to keep in mind the amount of data being displayed....so I might suggest some simpler harbors and ports with 2 to 3 ships docked, but spread entirely around the island to keep the lag time to a minimum.

 No matter how you decide to do it though, I have found recently that the devs have figured out a way to save most (if not all) the info in the cloud....and I applaud them for that move. It's pretty awesome to not lose all your data and saves now. 

I guess my main suggestion for the map is "spread the data around"  For instance YoHasLego's building is awesome, but I do not suggest putting it within view of Caliga hall. It can be down the road just a bit just so players aren't having their computers strained by the massive amount of buildings in one area. We did this with the original Locust map, and it was pretty awesome, but wow did it take forever to load at times. However in the areas with the buildings spread apart a bit...I had no issues.

 

 

 

Edited April 17, 2021 by spiritchaser28

[ocnoglittle 760]

10 hours ago, spiritchaser28 said:

"spread the data around" 

I agree with this 100%. Having more than 2 ships within the render-zone starts being laggy for most people. You can definitely have space for 4 ships, but I hope they don't actually put 4 at once. 

Maybe your port could lead to a trail/ simple road that leads to the NPC shops a bit farther away.

About the polar biome, it is up to you. I don't know if clearcutting an area from a different biome will help or not ?

Edited April 18, 2021 by ocnoglittle

[Deadeye_Rob 908]

Oh don’t fear! I’m not intending to build a massive community port on the same map as The plantation. That would weigh very heavily on running the map.

What I’m planning is to start a fresh map to site our Community Port.

I totally agree with the issues regarding multiple ships. To counter this I think some polite signs around the docks requesting visitors despawn their ships when disembarking would suffice?

As for choosing a biome to locate the port, I think that a polar biome would ease loading times due to its reduced entity count (especially underwater!) the drawback to polar of course, is the temperature affecting visitors and the blizzards which would greatly hinder navigation.

Ill be back on tomorrow to publish the FTC monogram for people to download. I’ll also scout some maps for potential building sites. I think this will be a very pleasant project if it works out well!    

[spiritchaser28 920]

Hmmm Polar region definitely has less vegetation and wildlife . It's actually an optimal place for a port with a few more ships, and I can see a trading post with several npcs working quite well in a small polar region....even if they are packed together. I'd recommend a small map. One or 2 islands max for a hub where lots of players meet and trade....although according to Ales they seem to have found a workaround so we can have larger maps with less lag. Maybe we should wait until 1.7 to implement some of these ideas?.....Don't know....I really want it now LOL

I think you should continue your work on Caliga hall map. It's a very unique place, and so far I like the vibe of it. It feels like a victorian style plantation in the middle of the wilderness. Just as long as we can keep that theme. 

When we built the original Locust, the theme was Viking....and for the most part the things we built there stuck with the theme. I made the mistake of inviting a couple new players and the first thing they did was plop down some of the basic Ylands blueprints....so the next thing I knew there was a modern house sitting off the coast that sort of stuck out like a sore thumb. I was happy that some new players were excited about the game, don't get me wrong....but I wished they would have stuck with the theme of what we were attempting to build.

 

Edited April 18, 2021 by spiritchaser28

[ocnoglittle 760]

I wouldn't wait until 1.7. ?

For some places in the Locusts, we had sets of fur gear in a couple of chests for visitors, so they didn't freeze to death. Maybe we could do that too if you choose polar.

21 minutes ago, Deadeye_Rob said:

To counter this I think some polite signs around the docks requesting visitors despawn their ships when disembarking would suffice?

I think this should be sufficient.  

[spiritchaser28 920]

8 minutes ago, ocnoglittle said:

For some places in the Locusts, we had sets of fur gear in a couple of chests for visitors, so they didn't freeze to death. Maybe we could do that too if you choose polar.

That's actually a good idea. It worked well for our polar biome. Plus the first thing I did was ensure all the workstations were ready and we had supplies. We stuck to a more modern theme in the arctic region and all the builds seemed to fit the vibe of the place. 

I guess my main concern and hope is, when you decide to take the plunge to build a flintlock region in the arctic, that everybody building there sticks to the same idea of aesthetics

 

 

Edited April 18, 2021 by spiritchaser28

[ocnoglittle 760]

modern = spaceships? ?

[spiritchaser28 920]

4 minutes ago, ocnoglittle said:

modern = spaceships?

Well we were sort of on the same page......a Polar Area 51 LOL

If Rob decides to make a polar shipyard/trading post area....and he allows us to build there. I will stick to his design ideas. I personally love victorian architecture and I have plenty of ideas for a polar region biome with 18th century design aspects

 

 

Edited April 18, 2021 by spiritchaser28

[zarwil 393]

@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.

[spiritchaser28 920]

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

[zarwil 393]

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?

Edited April 18, 2021 by zarwil

[spiritchaser28 920]

I'm on EST. My username in game is the same as it is here. Hit me up as a friend.

 

 

Edited April 18, 2021 by spiritchaser28

[Deadeye_Rob 908]

On 4/18/2021 at 8:04 AM, spiritchaser28 said:

Maybe we should wait until 1.7 to implement some of these ideas?.....Don't know....I really want it now LOL

I agree, regardless, it will take me some time to design blueprints and buildings. I'm going to design 'shell' buildings where only the shop-front interior is accessible. This will cut down on entity placement and should make rendering the port a little faster and easier. 

 

On 4/18/2021 at 8:04 AM, spiritchaser28 said:

I think you should continue your work on Caliga hall map. It's a very unique place, and so far I like the vibe of it. It feels like a victorian style plantation in the middle of the wilderness. Just as long as we can keep that theme. 

Fear not! Caliga Hall will always be my personal home and is an ongoing project. Whilst I want nothing more than for Ylands to have its own community harbor, I don't want any peasant trudging on my land =P

My plantation will remain accessible but only to the select few. =D

[Deadeye_Rob 908]

On 4/14/2021 at 10:47 PM, Yo HasLEGO said:

Hey Rob, could you send a composition of the FTC sign when you have the time?

All uploaded and ready to download now buddy! It should be on the composition catalogue. I've also left a link to the browser page on a separate thread.

If its not available yet, it needs to be ratified by the Ylands catalogue admins.

Enjoy!

[zarwil 393]

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...

[spiritchaser28 920]

Hmmm....maybe the amount of collisions is causing some of the lag? Take the composition into editor and see if you can determine how many collisions are occurring. I know with bigger compositions that can be a factor. ....and since it's a moving composition it becomes harder to render. I recently upgraded my RAM to 16 gb and I noticed an immediate difference in graphics quality and lag issues. They recommend 8gb RAM but I think it isn't enough.....the game is playable with 4 gb (That's what I had before I upgraded) but even at the low RAM I had some serious lag. The game uses a lot of memory...with the 4gb RAM my laptop was using 100 percent of it's available memory and disk in task manager( and I had frequent crashes), with the upgrade I am now using a small fraction of it and everything is lag free. 

Edited May 5, 2021 by spiritchaser28

[Deadeye_Rob 908]

This is true but should not be a factor when construction mode is disabled. Upon leaving construction mode all ship blocks are effectively 'welded' into one object. This means that the individuality of each block is nullified. The unwanted side-effect of this is that weather effects can pass through the physically transparent blocks however. So as far as I can tell, it shouldn't happen. Not too much at least.

[zarwil 393]

@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

[Deadeye_Rob 908]

22 minutes ago, zarwil said:

so rendering shouldn't be related to the lag

I can vouch for this. When playing on a multiplayer server, the crippling FPS drop is experienced the moment the ships anchor is disengaged.

If Zarwil’s theory is correct, then the FPS drop is caused by the server attempting to render my ships position as it floats freely in the water to all server participants.

When the Anchor is engaged and the ship is stationary however, the FPS stabilises and the game resumes a smooth operation.

It definitely has something to do with the ships physical movements during sailing and free floating.

 

Edit: this might be a good time to tag @Nikki Severin. I think what we’re experiencing through our discussions could be useful to the development team.

Edited May 5, 2021 by Deadeye_Rob
Adding Tag.

[zarwil 393]

@Deadeye_Rob The devs are already aware of the issue

They tagged your bug report as "known issue"

Edited May 5, 2021 by zarwil

[spiritchaser28 920]

9 hours ago, Deadeye_Rob said:

Upon leaving construction mode all ship blocks are effectively 'welded' into one object

So that isn't exactly the case.....there are still collisions within welds.....welds just reduce collision counts, but they still occur.

I also had the presumption that welding would effectively turn multiple blocks into one block and make it easier to load and render the graphics.....I was wrong. Unity can actually load multiple smaller welds faster. With ships it is a single weld when you exit construction, so that's true....but it still can have multiple collisions which can cause your fps to drop because the game is trying to render the graphics to the display.

I do agree though with the assessment that a moving ship can cause some of the lag in fps and how the graphics render. Again I can say with confidence, that upgrading the RAM can effectively make those graphics render quickly. The first time I visited Caliga hall I had to wait for a few minutes when I got there because my RAM was only 4 gb......it took a while to load...Now however with 16gbRAM I can pop by Caliga Hall with no wait time. Because the RAM sends the information to my computer faster, and allows for faster rendering of graphics to my display at the correct 60 FPS.

Frame per second can drop when the memory in your computer is trying to "catch up" with the time. One thing I can suggest is disabling Vertical Synchornization (VSYNC)......sometimes that can help with the frames per second problem. Do this by going into the options menu and clicking video, then disable it to see if it helps.

 

Edited May 5, 2021 by spiritchaser28