Curse

JohnCoke · May 20, 2005, 05:47 PM // 17:47

Sigh, but you HAVE to record where the player is, check that value against the region your opening (i.e. Lion's Arch or Yak's Bend), for each guild mate. Still not a good system. In fact its still the same system with all the increased traffic. Maybe if you thought of something new.

EDIT: How about this then?

Hold a 16 bit hexadecimal value of each outpost/town in the game.

If you kept it small like this,and literally inside a structure like the guild roster. Then checking it wouldn't make much difference.. it'd actually be less than chat. But this is WAY too generalized and probably has half a dozen of its own problemss, I'm just seeing we're making no progress on details.

Kopus Tol · May 20, 2005, 06:33 PM // 18:33

Look, these are the steps right now.
1. Ask your guild mates where they are.
2. Get the location.
3. Change to that location.

There are the proposed steps.
1. Ask your guild mates where they are.
2. Get the location.
3. Change to that location.

The only difference is the computer is doing these steps, not the player. The traffic is the same. Yes, your computer has to check your location with the locations of your guild mates. However, this does not take up network traffic.

JohnCoke · May 20, 2005, 06:54 PM // 18:54

YES IT DOES! Sheesh, the server does these steps. And therefore has to grab it from all the guild members.

Kopus Tol · May 20, 2005, 07:12 PM // 19:12

Where are you getting information right now? FROM YOUR GUILD MEMBERS.
You are talking to your guild members already. Every time you log in, every time you log out, every time you use guild chat.

JohnCoke · May 20, 2005, 07:23 PM // 19:23

But it isn't constantly grabbing the information. Your talking about occurences. You'd have to keep track of their position ALL the time, everytime they change areas etc..

Kopus Tol · May 20, 2005, 07:31 PM // 19:31

Do you have to keep track of their positions ALL the time right now, to know what district to go to?

JohnCoke · May 20, 2005, 07:46 PM // 19:46

o, but its you, a human being asking and remembering. Not the computer.You have to store it somewhere, and update that list everytime they change. Unless you want to only grab that information when "you" need it which would be even more horrendous for the hundreds of thousands of users.

Kopus Tol · May 20, 2005, 07:52 PM // 19:52

Constantly grabbing the information is bad. We both agree with that.

>Unless you want to only grab that information when "you" need it which
>would be even more horrendous for the hundreds of thousands of users.

I don't understand this though. So everytime ask my guild what district they're in it's bad for the game?

JohnCoke · May 20, 2005, 08:00 PM // 20:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kopus Tol

Constantly grabbing the information is bad. We both agree with that.

>Unless you want to only grab that information when "you" need it which
>would be even more horrendous for the hundreds of thousands of users.

I don't understand this though. So everytime ask my guild what district they're in it's bad for the game?

No, because that is just a chat message (which some even compress these text message to cause even less traffic, which is a side point). That means unless it continually keeps the information in a structure, then everytime "you" visit a town and need that information.. it'll have to get it. Imagine a 50 person guild, you enter a town, and this is the only point where it updates it. Ok not bad. But ten thousand other guilds are doing the exact same thing. All at one small interval of time.

Opposed to, updating the information continually, say if you exit a town. Then it updates the list to your new area. That list is in the structure on the server that everyone can see/use. So they'll always have your current location. This creates traffic often, but not in as big of spikes. For games, often is better than spikes (spikes=lag). Uniformity is better than erratic.

Kopus Tol · May 20, 2005, 08:03 PM // 20:03

What makes getting the information take up more traffic than guild chat?

Marus Varrus · May 20, 2005, 08:50 PM // 20:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kopus Tol

Let's look at the current implementation.

"Hey what distro you in? 4, brt."

So you're using guild chat to ask where your guild mates are. Your guildmates use guild chat to respond to you. We agree that guild chat doesn't take up a lot of traffic.

So what we need is a way for one client to send a message to the clients of guild mates. It's exactly like guild chat, except that instead of the players talking to each other, the clients are. This must already exist, for the guild window to update when a member logs in or logs out.

So this also doesn't take up a lot of traffic.

So now for "Hey what distro you in? 4, brt.", instead of using guild chat, use the second, client to client chat.

When speaking of server traffic you are implying that the dozens of chat requests going back and forth at one time (at most) stating a character's location is the same amount of trafiic that would be generated for every character in a guild brodcast their location serverwide constantly. You do not understand server mgmt my friend. What would be your location broadcast refresh rate? what location would be broadcast for guildmates located instances? See the problem is the client is a NOT prompted broadcast it is an automated broadcast meaning an infinately higher amount of data having to be broadcast for a very small return on it.

wish101 · May 21, 2005, 02:52 PM // 14:52

How about this?

Hold ALT+Left Click on the city of your choice on the map and a box pops up asking you which district you'd like to go to in that city.

Obviously, you'd ask in guild chat first where everyone was going.

Voila!