Why didn't DST do what hamlet did and make the caves off in the distant void?

[Just Ragnar]

Are the caves too big to load that way? Wouldn't it be less demanding on the servers, and cause the travel times to be shorter? Or would it just cause problems?

Changing the system now will obviously be problematic, but why wasn't this done to begin with? Just curious, as there's definitively a good reason somewhere, and I'm curious to hear it.

[Maxposting]

2 hours ago, Just Ragnar said:

Or would it just cause problems?

It'd need a lot of work and constant checking for the entities to see if they're in the caves region.
Hamlet's ruins and housing are different from caves and the volcano because there are only a few changes to behaviour from the overworld. (aren't all of them character-related too?)
It's possible it could have been done differently, but the Hamlet interior has been made long after DST.

[Just Ragnar]

1 hour ago, Maxposting said:

It'd need a lot of work and constant checking for the entities to see if they're in the caves region.
Hamlet's ruins and housing are different from caves and the volcano because there are only a few changes to behaviour from the overworld. (aren't all of them character-related too?)
It's possible it could have been done differently, but the Hamlet interior has been made long after DST.

The changes are mostly camera related, but there are mobs that behave differently in there.

Instead of constantly checking the entities, wouldn't it be possible to make a simple tag like "InCaves" to apply or remove if you switch between the two, and give all cave enemies the tag and not for the surface ones or something

[Maxposting]

15 minutes ago, Just Ragnar said:

Instead of constantly checking the entities, wouldn't it be possible to make a simple tag like "InCaves" to apply or remove if you switch between the two, and give all cave enemies the tag and not for the surface ones or something

I'm not sure (very hardly a coder), but there are a lot of cases where a lot of work would need to be put in for this to just work, and I don't think a simple tag can just be used for everything.

For example building spawners which summon mobs or summoning the regular cave skeleton would still need to check for if they're in caves.

Klei probably decided on the shard system because it was the best choice?

[Chesed]

I do not have the expertise to post an informed opinion on this, but I want to say I feel like dealing with the world temperature and day/night/nightmare cycle would be a limiting factor as well.

[Maxil20]

7 hours ago, Maxposting said:

Klei probably decided on the shard system because it was the best choice?

I feel it's also important to note that one of the reasons they most likely did this is because each shard can use a different CPU core for performance. It's why you can have the surface be laggy but the caves themselves can be running pretty smooth as both are on different cores. Having both run on the same core would be really impractical for multiple reasons as a result, even if you need higher demands to run both shards at once.

[Well-met]

the shards system is horrible and I'll be impressed that anyone praises it.

It serves its purpose for a singleplayer title but it's unacceptable for multiplayer. Klei should have spent a few extra months cooking in the beta of dst to come up with better engine tech.

[Bumber64]

Combining the shards would almost certainly perform worse, on top of breaking everything.

Minecraft has the Nether and performs well. It's not a problem of concept. There's either an implementation flaw or a lack of optimization.

[Guille6785]

This is 100% possible and anyone who thinks otherwise is just coping

[Mike23Ua]

I play on series X I can load in and out of caves in less then 2-4 seconds.

Honestly it’s just Older PCs & the last Gen consoles that have the problems.

But I doubt Klei was considering this far into the games future back with the original design intent.

[Cats_On_Fire]

42 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

This is 100% possible and anyone who thinks otherwise is just coping

Yes but like why do we want to run the caves on the surface too. Though seamless transitions would be nice 

[Bumber64]

3 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

This is 100% possible and anyone who thinks otherwise is just coping

Possible doesn't equate to good.

Loading the entirety of the surface and caves every time you join the game. Wasted development time fixing every assumption that is now false. Breaking every single mod* that assumed the same. Ignoring the actual causes of the issues you're trying to work around.

*Don't Starve Alone mod becomes inherently unworkable. Can't disable the surface/caves when you're not there, because you're always there. Lots of players rely on that for decent performance.

[Ratituee]

17 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

This is 100% possible and anyone who thinks otherwise is just coping

but then any weather events, temperature, boss spawns, hound waves, etc. would need to be completely reworked to only happen in a certain part of the map. it would require almost entirely rewriting every script in the game, and at that point they might as well just make Don't Starve 3. it's possible, but the current system works well enough, and i don't see much of a reason to change it when it would probably cause more issues than it would fix

 

also it would break mods

[Just Ragnar]

10 hours ago, Ratituee said:

but then any weather events, temperature, boss spawns, hound waves, etc. would need to be completely reworked to only happen in a certain part of the map. it would require almost entirely rewriting every script in the game, and at that point they might as well just make Don't Starve 3. it's possible, but the current system works well enough, and i don't see much of a reason to change it when it would probably cause more issues than it would fix

 

also it would break mods

Hence the usage of why DIDN'T (past tense) and not doesn't, as if to rework it. Now that the shard server system is in place, it would be very odd to change it to another system.

[Maxposting]

1 minute ago, Just Ragnar said:

Hence the usage of why DIDN'T (past tense) and not doesn't, as if to rework it. Now that the shard server system is in place, it would be very odd to change it to another system.

They were reacting to incendiary bait, that's all I think. That does suck and all it did was derail the thread.

I hope there are updates to the system, having even faster transition times would be great.

[Just Ragnar]

Just now, Maxposting said:

They were reacting to incendiary bait, that's all I think. That does suck and all it did was derail the thread.

I hope there are updates to the system, having even faster transition times would be great.

I think a really odd solution would be to allow someone else to bear the load of the caves server. This might be possible with modding, but basically, set the caves up on a friend's computer while you run the surface on yours. Maybe even a setting that keeps you loaded in the caves server at all times, except you don't exist until you enter a sinkhole, at which point the game makes you not exist in the overworld and immediately caves you?

[Maxil20]

1 minute ago, Maxposting said:

hope there are updates to the system, having even faster transition times would be great.

The funny thing is they used to be considerably faster if you had a decent and upwards computer (Like, as in the times Mike said), and then an update (I think in Moon Quay?) broke the times because of trying to patch client-related exploits, but sadly doing it in a way where it broke the faster times (Don’t quote me exactly on this one, this was the very rough general explanation a modder friend got when they looked into this)

[Maxposting]

24 minutes ago, Just Ragnar said:

I think a really odd solution would be to allow someone else to bear the load of the caves server. This might be possible with modding, but basically, set the caves up on a friend's computer while you run the surface on yours.

I believe you already do this if you setup two dedicated servers and link them as shards. It will be way more tedious to get it to work on two personal computers (I mean currently, howerer it should be possible to create a streamlined coop hosting feature), but it should only reduce the world lag on the shard, as it'd naturally off-load the other shard to someone else's CPU.

Edit: This also improves separate client connections to the shards, i.e., lets say the caves host has terrible internet, the forest host would still host to others smoothly.

24 minutes ago, Just Ragnar said:

Maybe even a setting that keeps you loaded in the caves server at all times, except you don't exist until you enter a sinkhole, at which point the game makes you not exist in the overworld and immediately caves you?

Not sure about this, but you'd still need communication between the two shards and the client.