This is probably the first time I find myself in agreement with Whilyam. :D

@Pavitra: I'm not sure that no city instancing at all would be good, but on the other hand the 50-people cap has probably never kept anyone out of Ae'gura in the MOULa days. There is simply not a huge crowd trying to enter the City these days. If MOULa gets bigger, hopefully there will also be more public places open... for example, is the Nexus K'veer public at the moment? I'd love to hang out with people there. ;-)

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Simone - KI#1001138
Please avoid drinking the lake water.

AdamJohnso wrote:

I like instancing as-is; it makes perfect sense to me from an in-game perspective and always has.

I can't tell if you're serious or you're trolling.

Consider:
* When two players use the linking book in Eder Gira to Eder Kemo, and neither shares the book, the players go to separate instances...
* Yet when two players use the linking book from Er'cana to the City Silo, or use the book from the City Silo to Er'cana, the players go to the same instance without sharing.

And consider this one.
* When two players in a neighborhood use the linking book to Gahreesen, they go to separate instances if their home neighborhoods are different.
* When two players in a neighborhood use the linking book to Eder Delin or Eder Tsogal, they arrive in the same instance regardless of their home neighborhood.
That is for two books on pedestals IMMEDIATELY NEXT to each other in the same room!

These examples highlight how the current instancing scheme is inconsistent and confusing.

And in case anyone says, "Well, your first example compares between Age to Age, and city and Age", consider these additional rules...
* When two players use the linking book in Kadish Tolesa to the City, they arrive in instances based on their home neighborhoods. (And if they share the book, the player shared-with gets flung into the main City instance. Woohoo!)
* When linking from the City to Kadish Tolesa, players arrive in entirely separate instances unless they share.

Obviously, there needs to be a game mechanic to provide instances for people... but right now, instancing makes as much sense as "Yeesha's book linking cloth can take you to the same spot relative to a spinning building in Gahreesen, but Yeesha's book linking cloth takes you to an absolute position in the Age of Ahnonay."

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MOULa 26838 | Prologue Video Project: On Hold pending Minkata support
Visit rel.to to explore Myst, Uru, and D'ni communities!

Someone using my name in vain? :)

As long as MOULa remains un-updated, population limits will almost never be a problem. (I say "almost" -- I suspect that if Rand or one of the DRC folks turned up in Aegura for a chat, the population would hit 50 within twenty minutes.)

But, of course, as long as MOULa remains un-updated, instancing will be un-updated as well! If you're planning to revamp Uru's infrastructure, you're planning for a new and growing Uru, with more regular players.

My answer, as I've said, is that all Ages and all Books (and tablets) should work the same way. You need enough flexibility to cope with existing design patterns (private City areas attached to private Ages, for example) but the pattern should be visible to a player the first time he links. And not change after that.

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Andrew Plotkin (KI#00102725)
Uru Newcomer's Guide and Answer Sheet
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Pavitra wrote:

Whilyam wrote:

No city instancing.

As belford once said about something almost, but not quite, entirely unrelated: This is a lovely idea which needs to be shot dead.

I think you're remembering DocOlanA (or however he capitalizes that) who also arrogantly thought every idea he didn't think up needed to head to the guillotine.

Quote:

But "don't let more than 50 people in at once" is unacceptable, and even more so is "let everyone in, and if you can't handle it then buy a faster computer".

50 is an unnecessarily low level that we are at now. As others have said, there's no real throng of people clamoring to get into Ae'gura, and that number is far more conservative than necessary. 100 might be pushing it, but somewhere around there.
Also, the lag comment was on the general whine that Uru is/was laggy, not an example of how to deal with the city. It might help if there were "recommended" system requirements in addition to the regular bare essentials list we have now. The fact remains that Uru's lag is client-side.

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-Whilyam

Whilyam wrote:

Pavitra wrote:

Whilyam wrote:

No city instancing.

As belford once said about something almost, but not quite, entirely unrelated: This is a lovely idea which needs to be shot dead.

I think you're remembering DocOlanA (or however he capitalizes that) who also arrogantly thought every idea he didn't think up needed to head to the guillotine.

No, it's from here. (Since, apparently, I'm not done taunting strange gods. I might want to reconsider that strategy at some point....)

Whilyam wrote:

Quote:

even more [unacceptable] is "let everyone in, and if you can't handle it then buy a faster computer".

Also, the lag comment was on the general whine that Uru is/was laggy, not an example of how to deal with the city. It might help if there were "recommended" system requirements in addition to the regular bare essentials list we have now. The fact remains that Uru's lag is client-side.

If you disagree, please attempt to refute me rather than just restating the opposite opinion.


It occurs to me that I'm not following my own advice just there, so let me attempt to correct that. The problem with the "the lag is client-side; therefore it's the user's fault; get a faster computer" theory is that it's fundamentally user-hostile. It tells the player, "If our game doesn't work for you, it's your own durn fault." Taking that kind of attitude towards one's customers(*) strikes me as a bad policy, generally speaking.

(*) As a corollary to what belford said, if we're assuming changes to the engine then we're probably in a universe where players are customers again.


Yes, it would certainly be consistent, in a certain sense, with the Myst tradition. Cyan has always pushed the limits of what computers were capable of technically -- do you seriously expect me to buy a CD-ROM drive just to play your game?


But, still... -- actually, I can't think of a good counterargument to that. Point conceded.

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Have Ages, and link to them without bindings.

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Reverend Vader wrote:

Marten wrote:

"Yeesha's book linking cloth can take you to the same spot relative to a spinning building in Gahreesen, but Yeesha's book linking cloth takes you to an absolute position in the Age of Ahnonay."

That particular example may not make sense, per se... but at least it is consistent... unlike book/stone/link sharing as it is at the moment.

How exactly is that consistent?

_________________
Have Ages, and link to them without bindings.

Pavitra wrote:

It occurs to me that I'm not following my own advice just there, so let me attempt to correct that. The problem with the "the lag is client-side; therefore it's the user's fault; get a faster computer" theory is that it's fundamentally user-hostile. It tells the player, "If our game doesn't work for you, it's your own durn fault." Taking that kind of attitude towards one's customers(*) strikes me as a bad policy, generally speaking.

Bad policy committed by every game company out there. That's why people buy new game consoles when a new game comes out on them, because they need the new technology (in most cases) to run that game. No one says "I can't run Uru on a Windows 3.1 machine with 1MB of RAM" etc. From the about page (why this isn't on the Play page where people need to see it, I don't know):

System Requirements:

* Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7
* 800MHz PentiumIII or AMD Athlon or better Processor
* 512MB of Memory, 1GB or more recommended
* Video Card: 32 MB RAM, DirectX9.0 -compliant video card and compliant audio card
* DirectX 9.0c
* 3+ GB free Hard Drive Space
* Broadband Internet Connection
* 800 by 600 16 bit displays

Personally, I think there should be a second list:

Recommended System:

* Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7
* 2GHz Processor
* 2GB of Memory
* Video Card: 1 GB RAM, DirectX9.0 -compliant video card and compliant audio card
* DirectX 9.0c
* 4GB free Hard Drive Space with more for future content
* Broadband Internet Connection
* 1024 by 768 32 bit displays

_________________
-Whilyam

Actually, it used to be quite common that there were both minimum and recommended requirements for computer games.

_________________

MOULa 26838 | Prologue Video Project: On Hold pending Minkata support
Visit rel.to to explore Myst, Uru, and D'ni communities!

Pavitra wrote:

But "don't let more than 50 people in at once" is unacceptable, and even more so is "let everyone in, and if you can't handle it then buy a faster computer".

Not to mention that it would be kind of difficult to buy since that would require a time machine. The computer which can handle thousands of players in the same age has not been built yet and probably won't be within the next 4 years.

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D'Lanor (ɹǝʇunч puǝƃǝן uɐqɹn)

♪ KI# 33949 ♪

...ummmm... not to give you a hard time... but...

D'Lanor wrote:

Not to mention that it would be kind of difficult to buy since that would require a time machine. The computer which can handle thousands of players in the same age has not been built yet and probably won't be within the next 4 years.

Breaking News: Blue Mars Launching Cloud-Based Option This Year: Low Lag, High-Res 3D Virtual World Without High-End Hardware -- Can Second Life Technically Compete?

There are such computers now. MOULa may or may not run in cloud with server side rendering. Other similar games are and Blue Mars has been claiming they could put 1,000 AV's in a SIM (without lag) without the cloud. I find the technical side of Blue Mars and modeling for it similar to MOUL. So, if MOUL moved to cloud with server side rendering we could play Uru on a Droid. Heck, even SL with concurrent dynamic building can be run in cloud (reference).

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Nalates - GoC - 418 - MOULagain: Nal KI#00 083 543, Nalates 111451 - Second Life: Nalates Urriah
Guild of Cartographers

I was of course referring to MOULa and its client side lag. I'm not sure what a server cloud could do about that.

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D'Lanor (ɹǝʇunч puǝƃǝן uɐqɹn)

♪ KI# 33949 ♪

D'Lanor wrote:

I was of course referring to MOULa and its client side lag. I'm not sure what a server cloud could do about that.

Shh..That would require basic reading and comprehension skills.

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-Whilyam

Presumably the theory is that more of the processing is done server-side, lightening the load and thus requirements on the client.

_________________
Have Ages, and link to them without bindings.

Pavitra wrote:

Presumably the theory is that more of the processing is done server-side, lightening the load and thus requirements on the client.

Ok, I see. But does that actually work? It sounds like a hype to me. Wouldn't that just replace the client-side lag with "classic" internet connection lag if the server cloud has to send all that rendered data to the clients?

_________________
D'Lanor (ɹǝʇunч puǝƃǝן uɐqɹn)

♪ KI# 33949 ♪