Monthly Development Update – Nov 5th 2012

[Otansaanpas]

Isn't dreamworld engine supporting cuda? multiple cores (threading) for other things is probably the best

from what i've read, CUDA is used on TSW servers to do some calculations, not on clients :/

[Silvana]

I was asked to pick about keeping a character or not when I logged in earlier. Was caught a bit off guard. I had thought it would be later on.

[Mastablasta]

I was asked to pick about keeping a character or not when I logged in earlier. Was caught a bit off guard. I had thought it would be later on.

No you weren't. You were asked if you wanted to spend a character slot on this character. This has been in since the last patch, and has nothing to do with what characters you are able to play now or in future as you don't have less than 8 character slots and cannot have more than 8 characters on a server.

[Silvana]

I won't argue. I haven't had a ton of time in the game lately, so I'll believe you

[Vhab]

From a database point of view there are a few easy ways to fix this:
Considering you are already using the "full range of 32bit unsigned integers" you are going to run out of char ID's at some point in the future. It makes sense to consider changing the Char ID datatype from INT (max value 2,147,483,647 using 4 bytes) to BIGINT (max value 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 using 8 bytes).
<snip>

The database change would be the easy part. Of course we already considered this.
The code part however would take many weeks if not months to find every single bit of code that (correctly) assumes the ID to be 32bit on the server, client, tools, external tools and more.
Finally, we'd have to deal with legacy data from various sources that are not easily changed with a single query (think binary storage, storage that is not in a database, etc).
It wouldn't just affect just character IDs, it would affect the entire ID system.
With a project the size of AO, no change is ever an easy change.


But please do note, I didn't say all the issues related to the change of IDs are being ignored.
I'll be trying to mitigate some of them.

I can say however we will not make an "old id" to "new id" mapping publicly available for bots to query.

Obviously without all of the database information I can only speculate on these things.
As a DBA I would gladly help you guys through this migration and future updates. I'm sure I could come up with all kinds of data optimizations you guys haven't thought of.

Thank you for the offer, but we have a resident Oracle DBA who can do all kinds of crazy optimization magic

[Aiken]

has someone made the rollback 2012 shirts yet?

I actually Lol'd

+1

[Mastablasta]

I wanted to know if it will run with the integrated board or we will really need an outside offboard graphic card ;o

Depends entirely on which integrated graphics card you're refering to. Modern integrated GPUs, like in an AMD APU, or the latest intel CPUs, are fairly powerful and can actually play games. Old ones, not really.

[Graftmage]

I can say however we will not make an "old id" to "new id" mapping publicly available for bots to query.

Is there any more reasoning to it apart from lack of time/resources? As in, you intentionally want people be able to start from clean sheet (name change after merge and you are effectively new, untraceable person), etc?
Adding old ID to your database (and my guess is that it will be there anyway, to address potential issues with the merge) and PoRK XML does not seem like a task that can take "weeks" of development effort...

[lainbr]

Depends entirely on which integrated graphics card you're refering to. Modern integrated GPUs, like in an AMD APU, or the latest intel CPUs, are fairly powerful and can actually play games. Old ones, not really.

Well, since I bought my notebook this year I assume its a new version. But I'm worried cause it does not run TSW. And I'll not have a proper computer in my hands till sep/13 Nor have money to buy a proper computer (and ever if I had I wound not since I would need to get rid of it before sep/13)

[Deemure]

Just a brief comment, perhaps more of a suggestion. Please consider locking down all tower fields for two weekss after the migration. Then maybe even instituting a new controlled land sale like was done when notum wars first came out. I think this would allow orgs to get organized and the player/twinks moved over before the battle resumes.

[Lheann]

has someone made the rollback 2012 shirts yet?

The shirt printer has the roll back logo and text ready to print. I will have them for 19.99 each and will be available in my online store if a roll back occurs. Colors will be Black, White, Red, Xan like Blue, Tir City Brown and AI Alien like Green. Sizes will be S,M and L. If you want XL or XXL those will be 22.99 and come in the same colors. The shirts will be a Hanes Tag-less style tee shirt.

Front Of Shirt
"Funcom NCU Forced to run Rollback!"

Back of Shirt
"I survived the AO Server Roll Back"
Logo will be between the lines
"Month Day, 2012"

[Ekarona]

Just a brief comment, perhaps more of a suggestion. Please consider locking down all tower fields for two weekss after the migration. Then maybe even instituting a new controlled land sale like was done when notum wars first came out. I think this would allow orgs to get organized and the player/twinks moved over before the battle resumes.

Land sale? For credits?

Bidding starting for 300ql fields at 1B? ;D

Not a bad idea ;D

[Liwa]

I understand that with the server migration ...

- Org presidents will receive a voucher to buy a new I-City plot and a package of "all the buildings you could imagine" so they can rebuild their org's city.

- Org presidents will transfer/migrate to the new server with their org-name and rank ... other org members will migrate with their org-name, but no rank. There is probably something in place to deal with duplicate org-names.

- Org presidents will need to re-promote their org members as they migrate over ... including their chat-bots.

What will happen to Org banks?
Do org leaders need to empty the org banks before the migration? I guess put the credits into alts or their GMI account?

Does it matter if the Org leader is a froob toon ... assuming the org does not have a player city to worry about, just credits in the bank?

What happens to pending mail deliveries?
I have toons on newbie island waiting for the NPE that have pending mail deliveries for the Jet-pack, etc. that would otherwise wait for them until they come off the island.
Others could have other kinds of mail deliveries pending at the time of the server migration, from GMI transactions, etc.



Kinnik

[Warhead]

Just a brief comment, perhaps more of a suggestion. Please consider locking down all tower fields for two weekss after the migration. Then maybe even instituting a new controlled land sale like was done when notum wars first came out. I think this would allow orgs to get organized and the player/twinks moved over before the battle resumes.

What is this "controlled land sale ... when notum wars first came out" you are speaking of? I havent seen anything like that back then.

I dont think "controlling the situation" is necessary anyway. It was pretty fun and intense back then. Hoping its gonna be a similar experience again.

[Phixalicious]

Well, since I bought my notebook this year I assume its a new version. But I'm worried cause it does not run TSW. And I'll not have a proper computer in my hands till sep/13 Nor have money to buy a proper computer (and ever if I had I wound not since I would need to get rid of it before sep/13)

The new engine will be nowhere even close to TSW, so you're likely good to go.

[Worldofalts]

one thing to keep in mind, is that TSW has small 5 man dungeons, and in pvp everyone looks absolutely identical. the visual elements are fairly detailed and fairly high in resolution afaik.

Then, contrast that to AO that has (in theory) much larger raids and massive fluster-clucks like Tara and tower battles, but overall lower resolution textures.

There is a windows hack out there that allows you to trick your operating system into thinking you have a graphics Card, and be able to run games like TSW and AOC, but I have no knowledge of how or where, and wouldn't recommend it personally.

[ByLogic]

from what i've read, CUDA is used on TSW servers to do some calculations, not on clients :/

both i guess. Its Nvidia tech.

[Otansaanpas]

both i guess. Its Nvidia tech.

ahh my bad, i mixed up cuda and physx :/

[Cogline]

Wait, what? I'll have to spend a bit moving packs out or the bank, renaming, then putting them back again? Wasting time looking in them and finding stuff I forgot I had? Blast!

[Teknologist]

But please do note, I didn't say all the issues related to the change of IDs are being ignored.
I'll be trying to mitigate some of them.

I can say however we will not make an "old id" to "new id" mapping publicly available for bots to query.

Can we expect the PoRK xml to made available for the new server when it goes live or will there be a delay?

Since we won't have a char ID mapping to verify characters with we will obviously need to rebuild all of that data from scratch.
This is going to wreak havoc for all org bots and numerous other service bots like the AOSpeak bots or raid bots, which keep track of users and their alts and online status and various other data (points anyone?).

I am working on a plan to deal with this for AOSpeak. I wish we knew when this is going to happen. If anyone has any suggestions or ideas feel free to join the discussion here: http://forums.aospeak.com/index.php?topic=58.0