Realism at what cost.

CozMoDan

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Herco Coz Mann
I think that most, if not all, us will agree that the realism in this game is about , if not the, best in gamming. But the cost of such realism is in CPU time used. Everything that is done uses CPU time and hence makes the game, no matter how small, slower. I am not sure how long ago the lag started getting worse but for me, and judging by the posts about it, and many others it is bad.

My suggestion is to cut down on some of the realism. For instance, the wind blowing I don't even notice it unless I am stopped but it is there all the time and burning CPU time. Butterflies, they are nice but it would not make the game worst if they were not there, IMO. Night and day really makes no difference to me and I would rather save the CPU time. If you look up at night you can see little explosions ( or that's what they look like) up in the sky, what's up with that ?? How many time do you look up ?

Now don't get me wrong I am not saying this in a bad way just trying to be constructive and maybe make the lag a little less by cutting things that are not really that noticeable but just slow things down some. Really how much of these type of things would you miss and would you give them up if it would the lag ?
 
You mean make a super safe mode or something? The problem is in the servers...MA's servers..they need an overhaul...
 
All that basic graphic stuff is rendered client side. IE it doesn't contribute to lag.

I think the lag problem could be caused by a couple things. One being poorly coded checks and balances with this whole loot 2.0 thing. Seems like it's got to send lots of data every shot you take about your gear, skills, buffs..etc.

Could also just be the intermediate internet relays to the MA servers. Might make sense for MA to setup continent seperate servers finally like oh I don't know.... Every other mmo in existance. Lol

America playing on american based setvers, europe on europe based servers...etc.
 
They can bring this back any time..



Realism Shmealism, give me the old campy cartoon graphics any day!

PS, I hate night cycles.
 
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Entropia is the best game for realism? I want what you are smoking :smoke:
 
Entropia is the best game for realism? I want what you are smoking :smoke:

What she said :wise:

You obviously don't play other games :)

The only realism that EU will be tough to beat at is the economic simulation and that too only in certain aspects of it.
 
Entropia is the best game for realism? I want what you are smoking :smoke:

Just talking about graphics.

But, still a no though.

Graphics in an open world MMO?

Still a no.
 
I believe the only physics being modelled by the servers is related to the player position.

I remember the old days when you'd just off a cliff to spend the next few minutes bouncing around as the servers couldn't match up where it calculated the player was and where they were in the client, jumping down a slope could cause the same problem as you could move forward faster than the servers allowed.

That's why they made a big deal about when they added physx and they gradually tuned out the rubber banding.

That load has probably increased since the addition of vehicles. The player update rate for positioning must have increased a lot to cope with it.

as for realism in games all I'll say is TW3 - Blood and Wine not an mmo but it's one of the few games I can say I like looking at.
 
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What she said :wise:

You obviously don't play other games :)

The only realism that EU will be tough to beat at is the economic simulation and that too only in certain aspects of it.
... and MA keeps on reducing both the number and the extent of realism in those aspects of its only true trademark... sigh. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the road to the greatest success consists mostly of making the game FUN. As in fun to play, not just fun to administrate.
 
They can bring this back any time..



Realism Shmealism, give me the old campy cartoon graphics any day!

PS, I hate night cycles.
:wise: So much ditto all that. Yea this is fun, but, that was a much more engaging game and imo a more polished product. Next time we get a new engine, can we have one that's easier to make function, even tinker with?
 
do away with graphics entirely. white text on a black background is all we need. all graphics are essentially superfluous.
 
I remember times when text adventures where great games, but today ? Hmm
 
ahhh remember playing them at uni - muds
 
Entropia is the best game for realism? I want what you are smoking :smoke:

I did mean real life just the things I mentioned like wind blowing, sun rise and sunset, butterflies, trees, shrub bushes and so on. Graphical renditions, but it doesn't matter either you get what I am trying to say or you don't, I am talking about things that take up server time.

Yes I would think MA would need server maker-over and no I don't think all the graphical things are client side. How could the client keep all the info on players positions, areas, buildings and all the rest of the "stuff".

Also I do think the game IS fun and I enjoy playing. I think one has to get over the making a living from this game and play for the fun of it and if you get lucky then great but don't be mad at the game because you don't make the money.
 
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I recently purchased a new cpu, nothing overly expensive around 600$ or so. the lag I experience on very high graphics is the same as when I am in safe mode. I would say my ping increases very slightly from around 353ms to 333ms from very high to safe mode. I don't think this is the issue at all.

my internet connection is less than stellar, I have ATT in my area. my only option currently. the lag is only noticeable in EU. all other games I play including using xbox on a wireless connection run just fine.
 
I did mean real life just the things I mentioned like wind blowing, sun rise and sunset, butterflies, trees, shrub bushes and so on. Graphical renditions, but it doesn't matter either you get what I am trying to say or you don't, I am talking about things that take up server time.

Yes I would think MA would need server maker-over and no I don't think all the graphical things are client side. How could the client keep all the info on players positions, areas, buildings and all the rest of the "stuff".

Also I do think the game IS fun and I enjoy playing. I think one has to get over the making a living from this game and play for the fun of it and if you get lucky then great but don't be mad at the game because you don't make the money.

My point was that other games are far, far more advanced than EU with respect to things like weather, atmosphere and flora/fauna, but whatever.

The client handles everything, the only thing the server handles (with regards to players, buildings, environments) is positional data and action data (such as "did the player shoot a shot"). The server doesn't calculate the way a bush waves in the wind, your client does, and if you don't believe me, start two clients simultaneously on two PCs and look at the same bush.
 
Really how much of these type of things would you miss and would you give them up if it would the lag ?

Been playing Entropia on Very High since 2011, I wouldn't want to give up a single setting for those who play on overheating laptops or a PC that has some serious issues.

This lag issue that is affecting some players for the past few months I suspect is either a regional issue or something Mindark cant work out (hence they asked for a poll on the client loader to try and get more info)

For me Entropia is rock steady, no lag, no disconnects and I dont even live in Sweden :tongue2:
 
Graphics quality has little effect on server side performance unless it has to do with objects that change their interaction, IE destructible objects.

I play with 150-200 FPS, 50-60ms latency and yet I stil get these huge delays sometimes several seconds long where my gun just stops shooting. It doesn't seemingly have anything to do with population as the first weekend of MM was flawless and odd times during the week, just about any time of day, I am having issues.
 
All that basic graphic stuff is rendered client side. IE it doesn't contribute to lag.

Yes it does; client-side lag.

On my old computer, the radar didn't work when on the TP-runs with tons of people; as the client would be fully occupied (re-)rendering avatars that reapperas in radar range after just having left radar range, the radar wasn't updated, so I had no clue if the people in the run was way behind me or way ahead of me as there would just be a green blob at edge of radar.

An more straight-forward sight of client-side lag: When you look arund ingame (1st person) it takes a few seconds all teh time after you have turned your head. (For me mostly an issue when running in High mode which i do mostly for screenshots.) And my usual pet peeve: For me it takes 5 minutes to dock (fly into) a space station, because when I start to get close to the opening (having fog and all kinds of light effects) I start to get like one update every 10 second which means that precision steering (to adjust course) is impossible so for me, I have to fly to edge of parking area, aim for the opening and fly straight forward hoping I'll hit it.

Having said that though, server side lag (or server-client communication lag) is of course a problem.
 
In Crysis 1 you had maps where you could spawn a lot of vehicles and drop the nuke.
really fun multiplayer map, but when a lot of players (12+) were there, we would always lag out, especially with the gfx of the nuke impacting. Entropia is based on cryengine 2, but the maps are huge compared to multiplayer crysis maps. crysis 2 didnt even have vehicles to spawn in multiplayer, which was a real shame. I could imagine some lag taking place with the stitched huge maps in entropia if a lot of vehicles are spawned and everybody is using explosives or mindforce effects.
 
Been playing Entropia on Very High since 2011, I wouldn't want to give up a single setting for those who play on overheating laptops or a PC that has some serious issues.

This lag issue that is affecting some players for the past few months I suspect is either a regional issue or something Mindark cant work out (hence they asked for a poll on the client loader to try and get more info)

For me Entropia is rock steady, no lag, no disconnects and I dont even live in Sweden :tongue2:

That is unbelievable and I am glad someone is not having problems. But as you can see I think you are about the only one. I, like you, played basically without lag until a few months ago. Then MA did something that changed all of that and I just wonder what it was. I have a 4 core X9650, Radeon R9 380 GPU and had go lucky until now:(.
 
That is unbelievable and I am glad someone is not having problems. But as you can see I think you are about the only one. I, like you, played basically without lag until a few months ago. Then MA did something that changed all of that and I just wonder what it was. I have a 4 core X9650, Radeon R9 380 GPU and had go lucky until now:(.

I dont have much problems either.. but I live in the Netherlands. 7 year old quad core with 8 gb ram but 1050 ti gfx helps.
 
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That is unbelievable and I am glad someone is not having problems. But as you can see I think you are about the only one.



Well as the Radar in the above picture shows, I clearly am not the only one. That was two days ago.
 
In Crysis 1 you had maps where you could spawn a lot of vehicles and drop the nuke.
really fun multiplayer map, but when a lot of players (12+) were there, we would always lag out, especially with the gfx of the nuke impacting. Entropia is based on cryengine 2, but the maps are huge compared to multiplayer crysis maps. crysis 2 didnt even have vehicles to spawn in multiplayer, which was a real shame. I could imagine some lag taking place with the stitched huge maps in entropia if a lot of vehicles are spawned and everybody is using explosives or mindforce effects.

Yeah as the server is one of the client computers. It is having to act as a server and perform all the client interactions. P2P multi-player is not analogous to entropia.
 
That is unbelievable and I am glad someone is not having problems. But as you can see I think you are about the only one. I, like you, played basically without lag until a few months ago. Then MA did something that changed all of that and I just wonder what it was. I have a 4 core X9650, Radeon R9 380 GPU and had go lucky until now:(.
I blame US ISPs.
 
Tbh there are better looking sandbox open world MMO's without such problem. Graphics fireworks are not main factor in generating lag and delays. Usualy is poor programistic optimalisation, cheap servers with weak bandwith.

As for delays if often company generatet unnecesary strain on client side wchich adds to previous things. For example items representation in inventory are 3d models, wchich could be and was at some time just 2d pics.
 

sorry for off-topic but what the @#$% is that thing? it appears you were playing on Calypso, is that in the Crater? and is that bot really level 36xx or even 56xx?!
 
I think the main constrain in entropia has always been the number of transaction...everything needs to be kept track of, every shot, skillgain, reload, trade etc etc.

In addition the graphics has always been outdated both visually and in the core technology, many of the objects on calypso at least are the same once that was used 10 years ago while some areas have obviously seen lots of refinement.

The graphical style of entropia is its signature and has a charm I think... I think many people agree with me that it does not have to be on the cutting edge of what is possible right now, we don't play for the graphics.

Recent lag issues for some or not - Entropia has always demanded a lot from your PC, even on a new PC with good spec I have rarely seen it run as smooth as other modern games.
 
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