The Caves Compromise

[BeastNips]

To skip over the boring part: Caves and Ruins are an issue for various reasons; they are going to take a while to implement.

 

I was wondering if there was some kind of compromise to this...

 

First of all, I don't fully understand the game's online limitations. The question must be asked: Can the game sustain a larger map? If not, my suggestion may seem a bit pointless given the space requirements, but if it can, I'd like to suggest the following compromise to the caves problem.

 

New Biomes

If the map could be enlarged, biomes belonging to Caves and Ruins could be added to the surface world randomly like other biomes. Obviously this takes some adaption, considering mobs and other things dependent on the environmental features of caves and ruins, but I do think this could be possible.

 

The Maze Biome, Mushroom forest Biome, an alternate Rock Biome containing Rock Lobsters; could these become biomes in the surface world?

 

 

[DarkXero]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=364821573

[T4T3RGR3NAD3R]

You know the adventure mode level "Two Worlds"? Maybe it could be like that, with caves and ruins in the same map space. When you enter a sinkhole, you are teleported to a section of the map with permanent night and no clock. This would have cave stuff. Same with the ruins.

[outseeker]

@darkXero, +1 dis lol

[Diabu]

Hello,
 

First of all, I don't fully understand the game's online limitations. The question must be asked: Can the game sustain a larger map?

I would say yes, but no more than twice the crurent size, my last try of a very huge world caused some crahes on low specs computer and increased the lag drastically.
 

The Maze Biome, Mushroom forest Biome, an alternate Rock Biome containing Rock Lobsters; could these become biomes in the surface world?

Sure you can. The main issue concerning caves/ruin is to handle two worlds with their own map and clock, and with different entities.

Hope this helped

[BeastNips]

Hello,

I would say yes, but no more than twice the crurent size, my last try of a vert huge world caused some crahes on low specs computer and increased the lag drastically.

Sure you can. The main issue concerning caves/ruin is to handle two worlds with their own map and clock, and with different entities.

Hope thid helped

That's my point, or more my question. Would having additional biomes be an acceptable compromise?

[Diabu]

I'm not from Klei, so I can't tell you if it's acceptable.

But from my point of view, yes, that could be a start.


I'm also interested in caves and ruins; that's why I worked on a multiworld mod allowing to teleport between two servers : One could be configured as a main world and another one as a Caves world.

This way, you can benefit of all the Caves mechanisms, the main issue is that it requires more set up =)

Edit: This was written before I joined Klei's Team

[BeastNips]

 

This way, you can benefit of all the Caves mechanisms, the main issue is that it requires more set up =)

 

As I understand it, mods and devs alike can not come up with a way to impliment caves without some serious drawbacks. I just feel sticking them in the regular map would be a neat solution with fewer drawbacks.

 

What would we really lose? The darkness of caves? Depthworms? Maybe the giant tentacles (easily replaceable with normal tenticles)? Possibly the phases in the Ruins (ok, that's a biggy). The ruins being made easymode aside, I still think the benefits would outweigh drawbacks.

[rezecib]

sticking them in the regular map would be a neat solution with fewer drawbacks.

 I was thinking that, too, but even that would require a huge rewrite of the cave systems. (for example, the game's lighting system doesn't support that kind of two-worlds approach-- and before you point out Adventure Mode's Two Worlds, that only works because there's one player, so when you transition it changes the light/environment globally).

 

After having thought about it a lot, having two world simulations might not be that bad, actually. The reason the game is so sensitive to hardware in terms of lag is because it's barely threaded at all; almost everything runs on one core of your processor (I have a quad-core processor, and I only really see it use up to 30%). Having a second simulation would be parallelized, so it would use the multiple cores more effectively and for anyone with a multicore processor, having two simulations shouldn't be much laggier than having just one.

 

That still leaves open the issue of how do you handle when players are really spread out (one in one cave, one in the ruins for that cave, several other players each in their own caves/ruins, etc). You don't want to be running 6+ simulations, since most people only have 2 or 4 core processors. Maybe that could be accomplished by making all cave entrances lead to one larger cave, so you have a maximum of 3 simulations (at least without mods like Up and Away running).

[BeastNips]

 

 I was thinking that, too, but even that would require a huge rewrite of the cave systems.

 

I honestly didn't consider that. I assumed the caves would need to be re-written for multiplayer anyway, but I didn't realise the extent they would require to be on the surface.

 

 

The reason the game is so sensitive to hardware in terms of lag is because it's barely threaded at all

 

So does your internet connection have anything to do with this? Would more simulations cause more lag issues due to bandwidth? Or would this not be a factor? (I know sweet FA about computers ha)

[Diabu]

What would we really lose? The darkness of caves? Depthworms? Maybe the giant tentacles (easily replaceable with normal tenticles)? Possibly the phases in the Ruins (ok, that's a biggy). The ruins being made easymode aside, I still think the benefits would outweigh drawbacks.

For what I know, concerning what we lose :

The darkness of caves : Yes.

Depthworms / tentacles : No, I already checked, and they works =)

Ruins phases: Likely  :/

 

For now, biomes and entities are working. Earthquake works with a little fix in the code. Clock disappear but Walls are still invisible.

 

 

 

So does your internet connection have anything to do with this? Would more simulations cause more lag issues due to bandwidth? Or would this not be a factor? (I know sweet FA about computers ha)

The bandwith is not related. Multi simulations will mainly require more memory and CPU time (but if it's threaded, it's ok)

[rezecib]

@BeastNips, What Diabu said, but yeah, the bandwidth should stay pretty neatly per-player, I think, with a bit extra for multiple networked world-related components (like ruins phases being passed in addition to day phases, etc).

[BeastNips]

So if all of this is so simple (compared to disarming a nuclear bomb), is it likely this will be the way it's implemented?

[rezecib]

@BeastNips, Haha, well, I don't know. Maybe the next dev stream Seth will talk about how he's thinking of doing it (he suggested that as a topic, and it's the one that I'm most interested in). 

[saltychipmunk]

well if they do  character location dependent lighting and environmental effects , they can use it to creat more biome specific effects  which would be cool.

[outseeker]

While cool, biome specific effects would be potentially rather weird, when crossing from one to another though. You could only manage it in two ways I guess:

 

1. Immediately apply effects when moving to another type of biome

2. Delay applying the effects when moving to another type of biome

 

Both I think have the potential to be just plain weird when you're walking across the border (and back again) in plain daylight or what have you.

[BeastNips]

While cool, biome specific effects would be potentially rather weird, when crossing from one to another though. You could only manage it in two ways I guess:

1. Immediately apply effects when moving to another type of biome

2. Delay applying the effects when moving to another type of biome

Both I think have the potential to be just plain weird when you're walking across the border (and back again) in plain daylight or what have you.

I suppose it's a question of whether it would be easier to remove these altogether, or to make them work somehow.

[outseeker]

hmmm actually yeah, I suppose instead of creating a new world / simulation for caves, perhaps we spawn the cave areas above ground, but have them totally inaccessible and invisible to anyone who hasn't interacted with a cave opening and been teleported over there?

 

Then we would have to use biome-specific lightiing, weather, etc. but it would only be applied to these "outdoor cave" regions? hmm we would be having to apply weather conditions/lighting on a per-player basis though I think for the sake of implementation.. Not sure if this is a pain to implement or if there are better ways of doing it.. Can we apply visual filters of any sort to players that have teleported into caves so it appears to them that world lighting etc. has changed, but to everyone else it still looks just the same?

[chromiumboy]

What if the Overworld was run on a dedicated server and Caves and Ruins were run on separate dedicated servers? If someone jumps into a sinkhole, they'd be disconnected from the Overworld server and connected to the linked Cave server with the items they were carrying.

[DarkXero]

What if the Overworld was run on a dedicated server and Caves and Ruins were run on separate dedicated servers? If someone jumps into a sinkhole, they'd be disconnected from the Overworld server and connected to the linked Cave server with the items they were carrying.

 

Mark put something so dedicateds get paused when they are empty.

What if caves, adventure mode, whatever are just other servers?

[rezecib]

@DarkXero, Diabu has been working on a mod that does this, actually. If the base game switches to by default hosting a dedicated server from the client and then joining your own server, then a system like this would make a lot of sense. It might be a bit of a bugfest, though...

[DarkXero]

@DarkXero, Diabu has been working on a mod that does this, actually. If the base game switches to by default hosting a dedicated server from the client and then joining your own server, then a system like this would make a lot of sense. It might be a bit of a bugfest, though...

 

That is ******* brilliant.

 

Who cares about bugfests, think about the possibilities!

[Learner]

Personally? Its not a cave without cave music. And if I'm listening to Autumn music as I'm digging a stalagmite, I might lose it.

[Diabu]

Hello all.

Concerning the mod I'm working on, it already works. I had a small server crash when auto reconnecting to a given server, but that should be fixed now.

The main issue with the server side mod, is that it needs many set up. Because we can't use sockets in mods, and asynchronous I/O was suite buggy last time I checked.

For now, when the both servers are online, a player can use the spawn portal of a world to be teleported to the other server portal, keeping his inventory. If the destination server is full, the player is not disconnected from the first one.

[GuyNamedChris]

I don't know the boundaries on what i'm saying so i'll just say it.

 

What if the caves are generated along with the overworld, BUT its a giant second map completly inascessable to view on the surface map and each sinkhole only goes to different parts of the map instead of generating a whole new cave-world to save lag from coming in.

Same for ruins, but for ruins there can be 3 different maze biomes on different sides of the map for the ancient guardians?

 

Well that's all i have to say......yup

 

o 3 o

No really, this post is done