Just to be different, nadnerb... I have 2 GB RAM and it isn't perfect for me either.

well, i didnt mean to infer that it was perfect because it certainly isnt. i just meant that ive never had it get to the point where it was unplayable. btw, i also played wow for a short time (i hated it) on this same box and there were times when it "lagged" so bad that it wasnt playable. again, this is not to infer that there aren't problems with uru because clearly there are, but to say it's all uru's fault and it cant also be your system/connection because some other mmo doesn't do the same thing is still not right.
i was on prologue on my old box (1 ghz athlon) and it would grind to a halt in the city as it did for most people. allthings considered, moul is a big improvement so far for me, even with the problems.

I have no technical aptitude, so I wouldn't understand a word of it, but I'd be interested to see *why* there's so much lag in groups in Uru, vs say, a group in City of Heroes.

What is it about how Uru is built that makes lag happen, when it's not an issue in other games?

This isn't to say that the quality of your connection isn't an issue, but that should be only one facet of the problem, and game design the other.

_________________
Officially bonked R.E.B.E.L.
Falling Man Group Secretary
Storyteller & Creatrix
MOULAgain Houligan KI#00001498

Having worked as an IBM consultant I've seen first hand that maintaining a codebase and trying to integrate it is a very tricky business. I'm sure that Cyan and GameTap like many companies are under contractual agreements with Turner to produce certain content under demanding deadlines.

I'm sure that they are using server farms to accomplish this, and with each cluster of servers the complication of adding in a codebase hotfix is indeed mind boggling. The stages of pre-development, development, black box testing, white box testing, unit testing, thread profiling, QA, network analyis, user testing, etc... puts a tremendous pressure on these individuals.

Most of them are probably for this last month working something like 50 to 70 hour work weeks -- if my guess is right -- and they have probably been doing that for months on end trying to get this off the ground.

There funding has been sparse except for the influx from GameTap and Turner Broadcasting. They have not only programmers, but video technicians, sound techs, systems analysts, project mangers, business analysts... and all of them probably wearing multiple hats at the same time.

I guess what I'm saying is that this is something we have all been waiting for and should be happy that they even got this off the ground.

Yes, the engine could be improved; yes, new features could be added; yes, the performance could be like other games -- although the engines and money behind some of these other companies mentioned is tremendous. Remember, Cyan, is a small start up company, that is trying to do with 40 individuals what most large companies do with hundreds of developers, engineers, analysts, etc.

I for one am voting them a vote of confidence that the game will improve with time and that things are good enough for the time being... remember folks we're the fan base and should support every effort. I think most of you think these guys are rich fat cats... it isn't like that at all. Most of these people working for Cyan probably make an average salary for the type of work they do ... most of them are doing it for the love of the job I would assume. It's an exciting industry.

I wish them the best...

Sure, I, too, experience lag, and hope for better days ahead. But I'm not going to beat Cyan over the head about it: Why? Because I work as a software engineer and know how tough this business is and what it take to get a product out the door and on time. It takes a lot of hours and willingness to beat your head over buggy code till you get it right....

sorry for the long winded rant... just an old engineer letting ya know its a difficult game out there, and I hope Cyan succeeds, and GameTap too.

_________________
Earthwizard - KI # 01555592 - The Ageless Explorer's Hood
D'ni Digest | AoG | Guild of Cartographers

Last edited by earthwizard on Fri Feb 02, 2007 7:10 pm; edited 1 time in total

Eleri wrote:

I have no technical aptitude, so I wouldn't understand a word of it, but I'd be interested to see *why* there's so much lag in groups in Uru, vs say, a group in City of Heroes.

What is it about how Uru is built that makes lag happen, when it's not an issue in other games?

This isn't to say that the quality of your connection isn't an issue, but that should be only one facet of the problem, and game design the other.

If you look at the graphics in City of Heroes, and then look at the graphics in Uru, that should tell you enough.

Characters and settings in City of Heroes uses far less polygons than Uru does, which means computers can render it a lot quicker, which means a lot less of what people call lag.

Folks, its really quite simple. Before you go into the city next time, try dropping all of Uru's graphics requirements to their minimum settings. I'm willing to bet that you will see a marked increase in performance.

Speaking as another software engineer: what he said.

Bugs are hard. The someone-linked-in lag (which is the worst part of the Uru experience for me) has to do with the way the client receives, modifies, and displays models in its 3D view. That's gotta be tied in with nearly every part of the client code. Fixing that is a serious, serious code change -- it might involve redesigning large parts of the client.

(Consider: the bug where you link into Relto and see all the unreleased goodies for a moment. The other bug where you link into the City and discover a linking tablet that's not supposed to be present. Those are *also* tied in with the way the client receives, modifies, and displays models. Any change to that code risks making those bugs worse -- or making more bugs like them.)

It's two weeks before launch. Cyan has time for *at most* one more client/server update. They want to fix bugs, but they *really* don't want to introduce new bugs.

So, basically, expect bugs to still be around on launch day. Expect slow improvement. Try to avoid reading the inevitable spate of "Cyan sux Uru is unplayable I'm quitting" posts.

_________________
Andrew Plotkin (KI#00102725)
Uru Newcomer's Guide and Answer Sheet
-- http://eblong.com/zarf/uru/newfaq.html

wow... I don't think anyone said the game was unplayable (just the city), and certainly no one said that "Cyan sux".

I do, personally, know how hard it is to fix software bugs. I realize that they are working on an incredibly small team. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't complain when things go horribly wrong. It's Cyan's job to make the best game possible. It's our job to tell them when they're not.

Nadnerb wrote:

It's Cyan's job to make the best game possible. It's our job to tell them when they're not.

and: "It's my money!"

macnbc wrote:

Characters and settings in City of Heroes uses far less polygons than Uru does, which means computers can render it a lot quicker, which means a lot less of what people call lag.

I figured that was a large part of it. I also remember seeing mention of how much data is being rendered, even when it's not in your feild of view.

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Nadnerb wrote:

...sorry if I seem short, but whenever people complain about performance, there are always people with 2Gb of ram coming on and saying "it works fine for me"

I know what you mean....I've been running on less than 512mb of RAM and lag was never an issue with me up until a couple of weeks ago....even if I upgrade my video card and pc's ram, there's still going to be a significant amount of lag time when in the city....so until there's a fix for that problem, this will still be an ongoing issue....

I think this is going to be an ongoing issue for quite a while yet. You'll know it's solved when there's no longer a cap on nexus Ae'gura.

"I don't think anyone said the game was unplayable (just the city), and certainly no one said that "Cyan sux""

Not in this thread! I'm sorry; I didn't mean to imply that anyone who I was replying to had implied that.

But people *have* said that on the Uru forums. It will happen again -- particularly after the 15th.

_________________
Andrew Plotkin (KI#00102725)
Uru Newcomer's Guide and Answer Sheet
-- http://eblong.com/zarf/uru/newfaq.html

What we call "lag" is the combination of visible effects from several causes. When you have eliminated all client-side effects (CPU, memory, OS, bandwidth, running processes, firewalls, ...) whatever remains comes from the network or the server. Seeing that the game runs normally very smooth for me but freezes for several seconds whenever a player joins or leaves the city, I have to conclude there's a lack of optimization on the server side.

But that was not my topic, I was thinking more of priorities. We're supposed to be still in beta, and the open beta phase normally serves for stress tests and performance optimization. So now is the time for Cyan to try to fix it, at the risk of breaking it, instead of bringing new content in. We can live with a vault wipe now, after all we're all beta-testers.

After the launch the risk will be too great.

_________________
Chacal
Guild of Writers

Nadnerb wrote:

sorry if I seem short, but whenever people complain about performance, there are always people with 2Gb of ram coming on and saying "it works fine for me"

And there's a very good reason for that - it's because most complaints are directed at Cyan, when their the problem of the end user.

Regardless, I posted my last message before I got the latest hotfix - haven't tried it yet, but from the sounds of things I'm guessing I'll be laggy too...

Chacal wrote:

We can live with a vault wipe now, after all we're all beta-testers.

Highly, highly debatable.

I think that if they did a vault wipe now (i.e. anytime before or after launch), there'd be uproar. I'm not saying a vault qipe would bring the end of URU Live, but oh boy would it dent it, big time.

_________________

Last edited by Reverend Vader on Sat Feb 03, 2007 3:07 pm; edited 1 time in total