Seamless loading

[Angel_Mapper]

As far as online play they could probably do some things to limit the server load, like not having it load textures and static meshes (just collision data for meshes). Otherwise I don't see how it would be able to load an entire Conquest map as they're described.

 

[edhe]

How do other games manage it?

 

[Tournament0]

As far as online play they could probably do some things to limit the server load, like not having it load textures and static meshes (just collision data for meshes). Otherwise I don't see how it would be able to load an entire Conquest map as they're described.

Don't worry, it's Unreal Engine 3.
Epic will think of something, maybe they already have.
I'm sure it will be good.

 

[The_Head]

Don't worry, it's Unreal Engine 3.
Epic will think of something, maybe they already have.
I'm sure it will be good.

I agree. I was astonished by how well UT2003 ran when it first came out. I get over 60fps all the time on my computer. Much more than on Halo... And UT looks miles better. I wont go into all the other things better about UT than Halo.

 

[JonAzz]

I don't think with seamless lever loading serers would be that much of a problem... all the loading of the map is done cleint side, only the server does is tell the cleints where the player is or anything else that other players see at once. so you would probaly need to worry about your own computer rather the server...

infact I think this might boost your FPS... seamless level loading works the same way that static meshes do and the terrain. stuff that is behind you, occluded by distance fog/antiportals is not rendered (well it is, just not fully). but instead of having just portions of the geometery or stuff you can't see, entire sections of the map that you can't see will not be even loaded. maybe as you get closer and closer to the area it will start loading the stuff, this way it will be less system intensive. the only thing with this to worry about is teleporting...

 

[Bazzi]

seamless loading in PCs would be nice but I expect a drop in frames/sec.

I dont know why this is, but games on PC statter when accessing the hard disc or the CD drive. I can play a game on my PS2 (with its 32MB of memory) and I can see the DVD drive flash all the time as data is read while I play my game (no game frames problem). In a PC game as soon as the HD is accessed the frames drop.

Why do you need a recommened 512MB PC to play some of the latest games that are also played on a 64MB Xbox? Does your OS take up 400MB? Of course not! But the game loads up as much as possible onto RAM because any HD fetching will screw up the frames rate.

I dont know the specific details for this (but I would put my money on the OS-windows), so I do not expect smooth seamless map loads.

consoles are designed to stream the content from the disc since they dont have much RAM. That also explains why you dont need much RAM for those games compared to PC.

 

[Bazzi]

I don't think with seamless lever loading serers would be that much of a problem... all the loading of the map is done cleint side, only the server does is tell the cleints where the player is or anything else that other players see at once. so you would probaly need to worry about your own computer rather the server...

Well the server must have the whole map loaded since there are some players in every area.... and the server also does collision/some physics stuff and needs to load the objects (though textureless) in order to calculate those.

That's what I know, correct my if I'm wrong.

 

[Crowze]

Not to mention bots if they are there. How can a server serve if it doesn't know what it's serving?

 

[Defeat]

>Yeah it'll work just like RAM does. FAR CRY was low on loading screens and high on level space.

 

[Syri]

True.

Tech was probably born from Lineage II ?

more than likely. i'd expect epic have worked a bit with NCSoft, or whoever developed lineage 2, to get the game working. and i for one was hugely impressed with what they did using the unreal engine on that game. shame they didn't get the gameplay to match, but that's another story...
but yes, it's certainly possible, as lineage 2 proves, to make seamless loading using the unreal engine, and it works well for it too.

 

[rhirud]

The thing with seamless loading is that it takes away a server's boundary.

Great for the player, but more difficult for the owner of the server.

Already, you need hefty cpu power to run a smooth 32 player game, and what will motivate the server's owner to continue that level of commitment to the game when players won't particularly know which server they are acually occupying at a particular point in time.

Also, when it comes to "be nice and no swearing" servers- with players banned from a server - how will that work in a seamless environment.

 

[edhe]

Um, no.

We're not talking about seamless servers, we're talking about seamless map loading.

 

[carmatic]

which i think can mean one client computer connected to multiple servers at a time, etc... not just seamless level loading, but seamless server connections ....
one way i can think of this is like, when you join a game you join to a tightly coherent bunch of servers that treat you like a single server does but can do the job of many different servers... maybe each bunch of servers will behave like a mini-utan or something when it comes to banning players...but it will be very difficult for normal people to get together and coordinate their servers and games are much more fragile because maybe if one of the servers go down then the rest of the servers are in trouble

or if people can run a seamless loading conquest map on their own computer , then it will be like something angel mapper described or something...
but , in conquest i think you only fight 2 teams at the same time, i read that somewhere before,i think that this in addition to the fact that its a persistent world makes me think that its gonna be run on official epic servers, mmorpg style...

 

[Nahand]

... that MMORPG thing is not that far fetched actually, given the seemingly high popularity of that genre of games, and EPIC entering the money-lot with an established franchise while not exactly "competing" with MMORPG's, since UT would be... well... an FPS...

... there's one small detail though: i *hate* MMORPG's, because of their gameplay mechanics and world-accessing politic, wich in turn represents a way of using games as a ludicrious income scheme, that is (to my utter repulse) taking an already big size in the game industry, and the way game companies are (willingly or cash-pressed) pointing their creative efforts. This rambling is relevant to this point because i don't want to see EPIC wasting another game of the franchise with stupidity like that. My fingers are bleeding, being so crossed...


... and about several servers... why? Won't processing power by then be fully able to support such game theorem? EPIC made no statement (until now) about any ground-breaking server rules worldwide, for a game. I think not.

 

[Vedanth Salian]

What about MMORPG? Arent these games with massive worlds? then how do they run online?

If they can do it why cant in Ut?

Cant doubt Epic. From the way they supported Ut2004 like making better netcode and all the patches they are my favourite devolopers. if they can give a truly revolutionary Unreal Tournament & Gears of Wars their whole status in gaming industry will change (mostly gamers).

 

[carmatic]

naah, epic is good, so the conquest mode will be free to use... its only people who license the engine to make use of its seamless loading and make mmorpgs that you would hate...

 

[Angel_Mapper]

I don't think they mean more than one server running the game, although I do think that will be possible if someone licenses the engine to make a MMORPG.

 

[Bazzi]

What about MMORPG? Arent these games with massive worlds? then how do they run online?

Well, MMORPGs don't have accurate collision/physics to handle, they also have one big beefed up box as server for one world.

 

[Syri]

Well, MMORPGs don't have accurate collision/physics to handle, they also have one big beefed up box as server for one world.

they use several for 1 world in most cases. i know that in dark age of camelot, they had a cluster of 5 (i think it was anyway) dual xeon servers, each making up 1 game server. i'd expect most mmorpgs work the same.
as has already been said though, they handle such a large amount even on 1 server, because there's no physics, no collision detection, no fast paced action, it's really not much more than database lookups on the server side, and co-ordinate tracking, if you strip it down to it's basics.
meanwhile an fps game also has collision detection, physics, tracking location of particles and projectiles from weapon fire, and a lot quicker response is needed aswell.

 

[Vedanth Salian]

The netcode will definitely be a challenge to implement then. But i'm sure epic will pull it off in the right way. the way they are making statement that the next UT is gonna be the best Ut with gameplay and all that thing I dont think they will screw us up with bad netcode. I have a really big impression of Epic. Any ways there arent lack of servers for UT2004, its always empty. so they can do something.

I had a question to ask. Did you see their GDC demo? The one with the scorpion navigating. Was that a map of conquest? Just curious?