|
Post by loudent2 on Dec 29, 2008 21:25:45 GMT -5
NESS has a long complicated area on enter script that uses psuedo heartbeats. Thanks, -driller Well either that or an area HB, but much of the complexity is bypassed unless it's needed. The very first thing it does is check if it's needed at all. It's fairly efficient for what it does.
|
|
|
Post by DEV Driller on Dec 29, 2008 21:58:11 GMT -5
IMHO, NESS is the kitchen sink approach to spawning. -driller NESS has a long complicated area on enter script that uses psuedo heartbeats. Thanks, -driller Well either that or an area HB, but much of the complexity is bypassed unless it's needed. The very first thing it does is check if it's needed at all. It's fairly efficient for what it does.
|
|
|
Post by loudent2 on Dec 29, 2008 22:37:15 GMT -5
IMHO, NESS is the kitchen sink approach to spawning. -driller I would say that's pretty accurate.
|
|
|
Post by luna on Dec 29, 2008 22:45:24 GMT -5
Jlf2n and I are also going to try something different than NESS and the Trap re-spawner on just a few area's in the UD release.
Or I hope anyhow if we have time to get it in.
It's not going to address your fancy quest idea (although it can be extended to do this), but it will address certain aspects such as traps and more realistic spawning which will hopefully require more team work to get through an area.
Also going into the UD release.. the chests will re-spawn random traps. This system though is unique to the chests only and has not been extended out to regular ground traps.
So if we get it in,.. I'll probably ask for some feedback on it.
|
|
|
Post by His Masters Voice on Dec 30, 2008 3:14:02 GMT -5
IMHO, NESS is the kitchen sink approach to spawning. -driller Well either that or an area HB, but much of the complexity is bypassed unless it's needed. The very first thing it does is check if it's needed at all. It's fairly efficient for what it does. In it's default application Driller, it is, but there's many PW's out there running it outside of it's original intent. In the now defunct PW I was building, the NESS HB/OAL/OPE was replaced for triggers to call it in portions of the area rather than the entire area itself, pushing aside the need of it being called for every player entry/exit, which was used as an interior instancing system which prompted proper placeable / NPC locale depending on what that portion of the map expected the player to enter into. NESS was a significant overhead to it's alternatives size wise, but it's the only functional kitchen sink that actually provides a leaner spawn/despawn performance than even those you've pointed, and the current spawner on the server that shells out no mercy clauses while players traverse the areas to the CPU. In addition, NESS helps mitigate the issues of additional network overhead caused in high npc concentrated areas such as the kobold caves without detracting from the experience of it, keeping back a reserve of kobolds in a queue rather than a complete spawn of the entire encounter as an example is something that functions significantly faster than dealing with all spawns being generated on area load with the current implementation. So yes, that kitchen sink has some method to it's madness, but aside from being completly plyable as the current "MMO Spawner", the designers spend less cycles recreating the wheel, and the server spends less time hari kari'ing itself.
|
|
|
Post by DEV Driller on Dec 30, 2008 12:55:42 GMT -5
The system you describe would be a pain for the area designer to maintain. Having developed a PW I understand the need for ease of use. I will write a simple easy to use spawning system for Josh. You can give it a try. It will be a lot less complicated than what you are using now or NESS. We then could do script profiling to see which method uses less CPU. Thanks, -driller IMHO, NESS is the kitchen sink approach to spawning. -driller In it's default application Driller, it is, but there's many PW's out there running it outside of it's original intent. In the now defunct PW I was building, the NESS HB/OAL/OPE was replaced for triggers to call it in portions of the area rather than the entire area itself, pushing aside the need of it being called for every player entry/exit, which was used as an interior instancing system which prompted proper placeable / NPC locale depending on what that portion of the map expected the player to enter into. NESS was a significant overhead to it's alternatives size wise, but it's the only functional kitchen sink that actually provides a leaner spawn/despawn performance than even those you've pointed, and the current spawner on the server that shells out no mercy clauses while players traverse the areas to the CPU. In addition, NESS helps mitigate the issues of additional network overhead caused in high npc concentrated areas such as the kobold caves without detracting from the experience of it, keeping back a reserve of kobolds in a queue rather than a complete spawn of the entire encounter as an example is something that functions significantly faster than dealing with all spawns being generated on area load with the current implementation. So yes, that kitchen sink has some method to it's madness, but aside from being completly plyable as the current "MMO Spawner", the designers spend less cycles recreating the wheel, and the server spends less time hari kari'ing itself.
|
|
|
Post by His Masters Voice on Dec 30, 2008 13:16:36 GMT -5
The learning curve is a far cry less difficult than what you're actually leading on, it's what we've used in Neversummer back in NWN1 with some modifications, and even seen it's brighter days in ALFA, both of which were servers I either developed on or hosted for at some point with area designers that had no previous experience with the toolset didn't have the troubles you're claiming.
I'm not saying your approach will be wrong, as any good change of what's being used currently is more welcoming than what's occuring right now, but keep in mind that the throw more hardware approach at the problem will not work. Are you planning to work from a base such as Knat's PWFSE?
|
|
|
Post by luna on Dec 30, 2008 13:40:09 GMT -5
Well, getting way off topic. Driller, and His Masters Voice. Have you looked at this thing -> nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2Scripts.Detail&id=154In it's current form it's a heartbeat app, so it's not so good. But if I have time I'm going to try and mod it so it can be run of a trigger or some other system that isn't running a heartbeat script. This app is somewhat similar to NESS in that it allows a lot of different spawn options and all you have to do it plug in some variables for each spawn occurance. It doesn't have the other features of NESS though like stuff for traps, placables, etc. The one nice thing about Gizmo's is it's very compact in size and fairly easy to use. I think it has 1 or 2 scripts from what I recall. Anyhow take a look if you have time and let me know what you think (aside from the fact that it currently uses a heartbeat script which can be changed) ?? - Luna
|
|
|
Post by DEV Driller on Dec 30, 2008 13:52:19 GMT -5
When you see what I have in mind you will understand what I mean by ease of use. This will be a from scratch approach. -driller The learning curve is a far cry less difficult than what you're actually leading on, it's what we've used in Neversummer back in NWN1 with some modifications, and even seen it's brighter days in ALFA, both of which were servers I either developed on or hosted for at some point with area designers that had no previous experience with the toolset didn't have the troubles you're claiming. I'm not saying your approach will be wrong, as any good change of what's being used currently is more welcoming than what's occuring right now, but keep in mind that the throw more hardware approach at the problem will not work. Are you planning to work from a base such as Knat's PWFSE?
|
|