Monthly Development Update – Nov 5th 2012

[Ekarona]

Question related to the engine upgrade to come;

As the engine is from age of conan and i recall having heard the system requirements would be relatively the same, is the engine to come going to be making use of having multiple cores in your computer?

And relatively related question will it also make more use of the graphics card instead of mostly using the CPU as ive heard it does now?

Pretty much that's the point I believe. Not sure how large part of code can be threaded, but at least some of it should be.

The current system requirements are ridiculous, I don't even believe that game would run on such system at current time ;D

Min
Windows 98/ME/2000 SP1+2/XP Pentium II 300 128MB RAM 2X CD-ROM drive DirectX 3D 8Mb video card DirectX compatible sound device 700MB free hard drive space Internet connection, 28.8K Modem

Recommended
Pentium II 450 256 Mb RAM 3D card with 32MB RAM, DirectX 8X CD-ROM drive 1GB free hard drive space Internet connection, 56K Modem


128MB ram? On my comp the memory use is over 330 just after started...


I suppouse expected requirements would be nice at some point.

[Scottik]

I guess, that character name conflict will be resolved by played time.

So all those hours days spent afk in Bor would finally pay off!!

[cdavidsurf]

i don't see any other posts about it in this thread, so i gotta ask
will the engine update contain all or any part of the re-balance or will that come later?

[Ekarona]

i don't see any other posts about it in this thread, so i gotta ask
will the engine update contain all or any part of the re-balance or will that come later?

Not that we know of, those things are completely separate, in best case engine can offer some new things for balance.

[lainbr]

Pretty much that's the point I believe. Not sure how large part of code can be threaded, but at least some of it should be.

The current system requirements are ridiculous, I don't even believe that game would run on such system at current time ;D

Min
Windows 98/ME/2000 SP1+2/XP Pentium II 300 128MB RAM 2X CD-ROM drive DirectX 3D 8Mb video card DirectX compatible sound device 700MB free hard drive space Internet connection, 28.8K Modem

Recommended
Pentium II 450 256 Mb RAM 3D card with 32MB RAM, DirectX 8X CD-ROM drive 1GB free hard drive space Internet connection, 56K Modem


128MB ram? On my comp the memory use is over 330 just after started...


I suppouse expected requirements would be nice at some point.

I cant confirm now, but in 2006 AO ran almost ok in a Pentiun 2 128MB RAM (with 32MB to onboard graphic card) using a dial-up Modem.

[Worldofalts]

Pretty much that's the point I believe. Not sure how large part of code can be threaded, but at least some of it should be.

The current system requirements are ridiculous, I don't even believe that game would run on such system at current time ;D

Min
Windows 98/ME/2000 SP1+2/XP Pentium II 300 128MB RAM 2X CD-ROM drive DirectX 3D 8Mb video card DirectX compatible sound device 700MB free hard drive space Internet connection, 28.8K Modem

Recommended
Pentium II 450 256 Mb RAM 3D card with 32MB RAM, DirectX 8X CD-ROM drive 1GB free hard drive space Internet connection, 56K Modem


128MB ram? On my comp the memory use is over 330 just after started...


I suppouse expected requirements would be nice at some point.

don't forget screen resolution. I think the first time I played mine was like 1024x768 or something ridiculous... while now its 1920x1080.

but, tsw is certainly gpu heavy, so I can see AO on the *edit newer* dreamworld engine being likewise (I hope).

[Mastablasta]

I ran AO just fine in 2001 at 1280x1024 Pentium 4 1.5ghz, 512mb 800mhz RD RAM and the first card from ATi (now AMD) to carry the Radeon brand, Radeon DDR, it had 32mb RAM. At max.

A friend of mine had been running it on a Voodoo 3 with a Celeron 350mhz and 64mb RAM. That just managed lowest settings at 1024x768.

[Maurtue]

"For example, if an account on average takes 1 second to transfer and a thousand people log on the instant we bring the server up, someone is going to be in a queue for 1000 seconds (~17 minutes)"

I guess the last guy in the queue needs to wait for 100 seconds before he gets in! not bad!..or maybe it is..

I ran AO just fine in 2001 at 1280x1024 Pentium 4 1.5ghz, 512mb 800mhz RD RAM and the first card from ATi (now AMD) to carry the Radeon brand, Radeon DDR, it had 32mb RAM. At max.

A friend of mine had been running it on a Voodoo 3 with a Celeron 350mhz and 64mb RAM. That just managed lowest settings at 1024x768.

Oh. first time i ran AO was on 300Mhz computer and Voodoo 2 (8mb gfx card).. didnt really run smooth at all..

[Ilaliya]

Question related to the engine upgrade to come;

As the engine is from age of conan and i recall having heard the system requirements would be relatively the same, is the engine to come going to be making use of having multiple cores in your computer?

And relatively related question will it also make more use of the graphics card instead of mostly using the CPU as ive heard it does now?

I'm waiting on a more detailed answer from someone more intimately familiar with the exact version of Dreamworld we're using. But from what I understand, the version we have won't use multiple cores for rendering work but will use multiple cores for other things.

And, yes... this is a DX9 engine so it will utilize the GPU. So you won't be able to see anything render without shader model 2.0 (which basically is saying the same thing as you need to be DX9 compliant). We haven't looked at optimization or performance at this point, but a safe bet is that you might reasonably want a 8800 GT or better to fully enjoy the beta release. So, we're talking 2007-ish technology here. The fact is, Conan at release was playable on a laptop with an 8600m and the settings turned down. Our assets and playfields should be a bit lighter than Conan, but there's no telling until we look at performance and optimization, and then do all the menus that lets you turn off/scale back features.

[Metafly7]

Thats cool information but ill await more of it then. As ao will be my last game in my life im thinking of building a very cheap new computer that can handle the new engine since my current computer dates from 2004. So getting some specifics can help me make a choice in time since ill need quite the time to make discisions final.

Thanks for the reply

[ByLogic]

I'm waiting on a more detailed answer from someone more intimately familiar with the exact version of Dreamworld we're using. But from what I understand, the version we have won't use multiple cores for rendering work but will use multiple cores for other things.

And, yes... this is a DX9 engine so it will utilize the GPU. So you won't be able to see anything render without shader model 2.0 (which basically is saying the same thing as you need to be DX9 compliant). We haven't looked at optimization or performance at this point, but a safe bet is that you might reasonably want a 8800 GT or better to fully enjoy the beta release. So, we're talking 2007-ish technology here. The fact is, Conan at release was playable on a laptop with an 8600m and the settings turned down. Our assets and playfields should be a bit lighter than Conan, but there's no telling until we look at performance and optimization, and then do all the menus that lets you turn off/scale back features.

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

Cant wait for 1Q 2013

[Sweede]

Great update

But with my 3 full accounts the id thing is a big kick in the balls, but guess i survive it

[Vhab]

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

Cant wait for 1Q 2013

Cuda has very limited use in practice. It can only be used to speed up a few very specialized cases.
The biggest change overall is that we get to tax the GPU more in general.

[lainbr]

I'm waiting on a more detailed answer from someone more intimately familiar with the exact version of Dreamworld we're using. But from what I understand, the version we have won't use multiple cores for rendering work but will use multiple cores for other things.

And, yes... this is a DX9 engine so it will utilize the GPU. So you won't be able to see anything render without shader model 2.0 (which basically is saying the same thing as you need to be DX9 compliant). We haven't looked at optimization or performance at this point, but a safe bet is that you might reasonably want a 8800 GT or better to fully enjoy the beta release. So, we're talking 2007-ish technology here. The fact is, Conan at release was playable on a laptop with an 8600m and the settings turned down. Our assets and playfields should be a bit lighter than Conan, but there's no telling until we look at performance and optimization, and then do all the menus that lets you turn off/scale back features.

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

[ByLogic]

Cuda has very limited use in practice. It can only be used to speed up a few very specialized cases.
The biggest change overall is that we get to tax the GPU more in general.

well cuda utilize both cpu and gpu its useful for any proses power you want access to.
But i understand what you mean, i am sure its going to be good.

[Worldofalts]

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

likely not, but we will still have access to the old engine in case, afaik. 8800 GPU is fairly powerful even by today's standards.

[DaviasI]

I've seen the dreamworld engine run on min spec machines and then the fastest hardware out there. I can confidently say that with AoC (DX9 and 10) and TSW the difference between min and max spec is so great you might almost think you were playing a different game. Yes AO will be running DX9 but even then I'd still recommend spending an extra $50 for a better gfx card, after you do you'll wonder how you played before.

A good sub $100 relatively modern gfx card can make things pop far more than the old nvidia 8800 series card could.

I did have one quick question: If everything goes smoothly and swiftly, and assuming the fantastic coincidence that both are ready in a close time frame, what is the anticipated order of launch? Engine Update or New player experience first? I know you mentioned the new character creation will come after the NPE launch.

[Teknologist]

We can't add "extra data" to character IDs.
The IDs on RK1 and RK2 are using the full range of 32bit unsigned integers and leave no extra room to 'flag' them.

The lack of mapping of old ID to new ID on the client is a concern to us, but unfortunately not a high priority.
We are aware of the concerns and one-time inconveniences this causes and might mitigate some of them.

Unfortunately we do have to balance out the development time vs the gain of addressing this.
This does mean addressing a one-time inconvenience particularly for bots is not high on our priority list.
We only have finite resources to work with.

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). Granted this will increase the size of the database. This can be done at any time with an alter statement for instance:

ALTER TABLE CharData MODIFY (charID BIGINT);

You can then add a large integer value to each char ID such as 100,000,000,000,000 for RK1 and 200,000,000,000,000 for RK2. New characters could add 400,000,000,000,000. Obviously you would have to change the datatype to long in the code that uses the Char ID.

Or you could create a charLink table that contains the new char ID's and the old char ID's as well as a flag to indicate which server the char started on or a null value for new chars on the new server. This could be created as the characters are migrated. This data could then be made available via the char XML on the AO site.

The first option would be the easiest to implement and from a database point of view a necessary update considering you may run out of ID's in the future.

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.

[Cdogg421]

has someone made the rollback 2012 shirts yet?

[Worldofalts]

has someone made the rollback 2012 shirts yet?

do we get to pick a colour, or will they be AO Forum colour again?