COMMENTS ON NEW SIEGE

[Feralidragon]

@$carface (and others): Let me be very clear in something:
The problem isn't and never were the used textures. The textures are what, 512x512, 256x256? That's nothing and that doesn't influence a single thing besides on fog and lighting.
You guys have maps with more textures and with higher resolution and they don't affect gameplay, and a mesh texture is no different from a bsp texture.

The only problem is that the new siege versions have more and more new buildings, which are built close to each others, and since every single one of them is translucent (and since the very first version of siege another thing didn't change: the fact that each building has 2 or 3 of these meshes in the exact same place just rotating at different speeds and with different orientations, more rendering slowdown), that's where *some* of the "visual" lag may be coming from.
Plus, in maps like Bathrooms, you can see lots and lots of buildings at the same time and there's a huge ass mirror rendering the whole thing TWICE (2x overhead), together with players shooting loads of projectiles, and having tons of effects in view due to some spam.
If they were masked or opaque (and had some LOD applied), you wouldn't have that much of a problem.

Translucent faces/polys slows down the rendering, because the process itself is slow and like the 99% of the features for UT, they are processed in the CPU instead of the GPU (so it doesn't matter if you have a better or worse GCard unless you use S3TC high-res textures, which is not the case here since S3TC is not even used in meshes afaik).
Also, each time someone EMPs or flames the buildings, more effects are spawned, however the problem is that at least in the case of the flames they have dynamic light on in a great radius (hence the redish walls around in each glame), and dynamic light is another thing the engine takes a looong time to render.

So, bottom line, buildings like: containers, protectors, boosters, nukes, etc shouldn't be translucent, they should be either opaque or have their LOD settings adjusted in each client depending on framerate.
Only buildings like: forcefields, suppliers, teles, and a few others should remain translucent, since you need to pass and see through them, but even so they should have their LOD settings applied per client depending on framerate.
Dynamic light from some effects should turn off once the framerate drops on the client.

Also, the siege server crashes sometimes (and no, this has nothing to do with the client, this is server related only), and it always seems to be some kind of extreme bandwidth overflow (idk the actual reason since no one ever told me, just assuming).
I have looked at Koala's coding a long time ago when PMed me with some doubts when he developed the last versions, and I alerted him in a few things relative bandwidth and replication when he was trying to implement some stuff. He told me he was going to try anyway, and the result was a laggier game and some of his features were removed later, which greatly improved the online play once again.

Plus, given his deceptive last story (know to all), I don't know if he implemented some stuff there to give him some sort of advantage in-game (since he did so with many of his maps as well), and which could affect performance as well.

So, although I didn't check the rest of the code, I believe this whole "siege ultimate" was made with absolutely no knowledge whatsoever on replication (and I don't blame anyone for that, replication is a complex subject afterall), and they were simply done with "brute force" until they just "worked" online, independently on the performance, and therefore I think there are many things there that are being "over-replicated" without any need, thus overflowing the server with processing and the bandwidth with data each tick (perhaps around 30 to 60 times a second in some actors, I don't know the server settings).

Plus, all the buildings in siege are "pawns", and a pawn has a special kind of replication in UT and an totally unnecessary shitload of data do replicate (look at MH servers for instance, the monsters are pawns, and the buildings in siege come from the same kind of class), and in each spawn they go to the "pawn list", a list that should only be used for players and true pawns in-game, not buildings, so another flaw might be the very concept behind it and which needs to be changed.

The only viable solution to fix and improve this gametype is the total remake of it and a total new architecture thinking in all of these issues, but maintaining "somewhat" the original gameplay. As it is now it's not either scalable, fixable and will just work "well enough" for the times to come, and it will just become worse and worse.

[|uK|Cube]

told you my textures werent causing lagg

[|uK|Shiva]

Ferali.. thank you for the excellent explanation...

would someone like to take up this work? Help SW out instead of just sit here and bitch about it?? (spongo?).

We are trying to make this thing work better. Make public games more fun, challenging and something that requires skill.

Grim was the NS upgraded to 5? It sounds like the NS was lvl0.

Anyways.. I hope someone read through ferali's post and can help us with that... unless ferali you want to help us yourself... or WC is reading this secretly without commenting you old bastard... POST!.

[][X][~FLuKE~][X][]

ferali if possible would be an incredible asset, i have watched him go from novice coder to super elite coder in less than a year and his work in UT to date is unchallenged as far as mods go.

the only thing i found that i didnt like was the scoreboard and the additional text on screen for each build and upgrade amount, blocks more of the screen, i dont like the scoreboard because it looks very squashed together and small.

i dont get any lag either but then i have a high end pc.

[HIGH[+]AdRiaN]

No, today was one of the few days that i dont feel terrible lag then fuck my mouse
i like the new verison, sup is now, Rocket cannon value is just, but there are very thinks for improve yet

[Feralidragon]

@|uK|Shiva: I won't lie to you, I have "some things" planned (like the actual remake from scratch of the whole thing with a new architecture).

However, everything is still on my head only, and I intend redo all the visuals as well (each building with a new model, the constructor as well with a new model with visuals close to what you can see in my current WIP mod, etc, but everything optimized so you can be able to see many at once), and therefore I believe many may not like it because they are so used to the "old" and can't bare something "new" (although I am a regular siege player myself at uK and I know what works and what doesn't gameplay and visual-wise like most players around).
And I have my current mod to finish first (within one month or two).

Plus, with a new version, some new concepts, new buildings (perhaps some controllable stuff, or stuff like airstrikes instead of just nuke, nuke, neutron, nuke...), etc (which can all be added/removed by the admin later).

So, in resume, don't wait for me, it's indeed better for someone to step up first or have WC releasing a new version and keep with it (which would be the ideal).

[Moskva]

Ehmm... well the nuke siren is indeed bad because we were playing BlackRiver (original one), and I made a nuke siren and upgraded it to level 5.
A minute later I upgraded it I noticed that M1K3 was nuking, because I was outside waiting and he had boots, but the nuke siren started working when M1K3 was already in the entrance (the wall) and it was too late for everyone

[|uK|B|aZe//.]

Fixed the chat box... it now goes away

unless a new version of siege with the fix was uploaded and put on the server its still fucked up so no its not fixed it sucks ass to put it bluntly

personally we should fuck ultimate off the server and run xtremeliterc2 because its built way better and just wait for wildcard or feral/XxX to make their own siege versions. sw i know your limited to time/knowledge of coding so dont cry after seeing this post <3

[SilverWing]

unless a new version of siege with the fix was uploaded and put on the server its still fucked up so no its not fixed it sucks ass to put it bluntly

personally we should fuck ultimate off the server and run xtremeliterc2 because its built way better and just wait for wildcard or feral/XxX to make their own siege versions. sw i know your limited to time/knowledge of coding so dont cry after seeing this post <3

the version didnt get updated... im waiting for feedback on sup and nsiren and ill release the new version

[|uK|B|aZe//.]

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