Imperial Crackdown Part II: Mission Lok

Issele · Post by **Issele** » Mon Apr 24, 2006 9:30 pm

Xaneth and I spoke a bit today and did a ruff outline:

The Empire has taken control of Lok and restored order to TRGA City. A Imperial Tax will be placed on the city and Xaneth is to turn over a list of all citizens. Mean time the Rebels will plot to re-take there city. Imperial forces will become aware of this and send word to high command. A 2nd Crackdown will be ordered. <---For role-playing

We will use the same bases we did in Part I. There will be no NPC spawn this time. Issele is limited to using only 10 PEPs' There will be something speical but it will not cause lag. <--- no lag

Winner is determinded by who enters who's base. Example: Imperials make it to bottom of Rebel Base and hold it, Imperials win. <---promote pvp

feed back <---- please

Szul · Post by **Szul** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 10:00 am

AFAIK the lag is caused by the way Player structures and their contents are loaded, along with large amounts of players all being in same area. Maybe you could ask your Dev contacts to explain why this happens, because the Community Reps never really bothered to explain why this has been a problem since Release when we ask about it on the Forums.

Post by **Lexx Yovel** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 1:56 pm

Sounds good, I like how there is a way to determine a winner. Will there be a needed number of Imperials at the bottom of the base for a certain ammount of time? Capture the flag might be another option, although you cant put them in bases.

Kurke_Aumea · Post by **Kurke_Aumea** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 4:47 pm

Szul wrote:AFAIK the lag is caused by the way Player structures and their contents are loaded, along with large amounts of players all being in same area. Maybe you could ask your Dev contacts to explain why this happens, because the Community Reps never really bothered to explain why this has been a problem since Release when we ask about it on the Forums.

What's sad is I do have an explanation. The lag you refer to is typically caused by one of two things:

1). Player Structure Lag
This lag exists because of the way player housing is setup. Any structure natively in the game creates a permanent modification to the terrain (this includes NPC cities and POIs). Player structures (such as housing, city structures, tents, etc.) all create temporary modifications to the terrain. This means that everytime you come within visual range of a player structure, the game engine has to actually redraw the terrain according to what structure is placed there. This is even more evident with player cities. Despite the fact that some player cities have been around since you could actually build a city, each city is in fact a temporary terrain modification. The flattening is only temporary and will return to normal if the city and its structures are ever removed.

2). Character Models
SWG greatest feature has always been its character customization. Of course, this is also its greatest drawback. The fact that you have an infinite amount of choices for how your character looks requires the use of more polygons (the building blocks of any virtual 3D object) when compared to static models. (By static model I am referring to models that are the same. Think storm trooper...) Now, since there are more polygons to draw, this can create more lag (which is not really lag, but a frame-rate drop). Typically, this is not a problem when you only have a few characters on your screen. But, when you start getting into larger groups of characters (like in a starport), you're video card will have a difficult time drawing so many polygons. I'll even go out on a limb and say you get a better frame rate around 20 storm troopers than you do 20 players. The reason would be because the storm troopers all use the same model, just replicated. Each player character model is different, thus lower frame rates.

There you go. The things that make SWG great also serve as its weakness.

Post by **Lexx Yovel** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 4:49 pm

Yes! Character detail was the problem I always heard about. Visual effects and other eye candy are factors too, but I think Character detail was always the issue.

The only real issue to fix such an issue is maybe if everyone wears the same armor?

Kurke_Aumea · Post by **Kurke_Aumea** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 4:58 pm

LexxYovel wrote:Yes! Character detail was the problem I always heard about. Visual effects and other eye candy are factors too, but I think Character detail was always the issue.

The only real issue to fix such an issue is maybe if everyone wears the same armor?

The only real fix would to limit the number of combinations you can have for your character (like 3 types of male humans, 3 types of female humans, 3 types of Rodian males, etc.). It's not so much the bodies as it is in the facial details. You'd be surprised how much detail is in a character's head. From hair style and color down to the freckels on their face. That is where the complexity comes into play.

Apium · Post by **Apium** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 5:02 pm

LexxYovel wrote:Yes! Character detail was the problem I always heard about. Visual effects and other eye candy are factors too, but I think Character detail was always the issue.

The only real issue to fix such an issue is maybe if everyone wears the same armor?

Because of how it was set up in the first place I doubt everyone wearing the same armor would help. The game still has to draw each seperately. I guess if we all wore the same armor permeantly from the start with no option to change that would reduce it.

I'm most likely wrong though. I can program several languages but I cannot stand graphics.

Issele · Post by **Issele** » Sun May 07, 2006 10:42 pm

Update::: This event is being planned for May 21st...