[MUD-Dev] Geometric content generation

[Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com]

From: Vincent Archer [mailto:archer at frmug.org] 
> According to Dave Rickey: (regarding AO)

>> It doesn't really have "texture management issues" from what I
>> can figure out, it just has too many player-wearable textures.
>> All the texture management tricks in the world can't fit 128 meg
>> of texture onto a 32 meg card.
 
> Well, all the texture management tricks in the world can't fit
> 256M of textures (which is about what you need at the lowest
> detail after 20mn gameplay including a city) in the 128M
> advertised as "recommended configuration" on the box.

Well there is a distinction between textures in main RAM, gfx RAM
and on disk (obviously). A lot of the slow downs that I can see are
down to paging too many textures across the AGP bus, causing the
system to grind for a few frames. The 256 meg RAM thing you mention
is more to do with the colossal number of memory leaks they still
suffer from rather than the textures. I still maintain that they
aren't being too smart with their texture management as a 64 meg
geforce 3 with compressed textures can hold quite large amounts of
texture, yet it lags just as badly as a card with less ram.  Nor
does it become perfect when you knock all the detail levels down. I
guess the main thing is, that they dont have a fixed set of textures
for the players (a la EQ etc.) which just makes the working set too
big.

>> Nope.  We have a built in UI for finding groups, you flag
>> yourself as looking for one, group leaders can flag their groups
>> as needing additions, both sides can peruse the options available
>> within a fairly large radius (basicly the zone you are in plus
>> any neighboring zones).  It's *totally* out of context, like some
>> sort of wireless web classified system, but so convenient players
>> don't even notice.
 
> Until the group leader has forgotten (or never known yet) that the
> "Group" chat tab has direct sends disabled by default (see the
> other thread).
 
> Of course, the very first thing I do when I create a character is
> changing these defaults. But that's because I know, because I'm
> spending so much time hunting information everywhere.
 
> Aside from that, it's a wonder. All that's lacking is specifying a
> range of levels wanted.

I had that problem speaking to people in groups last night. Opt out
is a much better option than opt in - just ask internet advertisers
what they think of the latter ;)

>> Yeah, I have other issues with the "Uber Mob" concept, but as a
>> social building tool it works pretty well.
 
> It's chief problem is that, if you're not heavily social
> (i.e. like to associate with large groups of people), you're
> severely handicapped.
 
> For DAoC, if the "uber-mob" remains set at a level of 16 people to
> defeat, it's not going to be as much a problem.

Terrible shame though if thats the limit, as the game was
startlingly good with a lot of players in the same area in terms of
lag. I'm a power gamer though, and play in an EQ uber guild so I
guess I like that kind of thing.

The only thing that struck me is that I can no longer stand leveling
treadmills - that paradigm needs to be discarded if new games want
to retain the RPG veterans.

I won't comment further on the game as I only got into beta
yesterday (day before release lol).

Dan
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