Jables 3 questions chat log

And this + the sometimes a bit overzealous reaction of the community when aspirations didn't pan out *exactly as planned* (or often as quickly as planned) went off the deep end... which has made Neutrino (and Uber as a whole) rather cautious with what they say (that said I think @jables and the team are managing the communication rather well these days).

I never said they dont care, I said what I want to show to other people on the internet how everything looks now. I already know it

Only 2 questions today. Well sorta at least.
We need more high quality questions next time. Everyone think about them over the weekend.

Logged questions of the 3rd august

Good to see krazyflyinchicken took the matter of quality to heart

@jables regarding PA ability to handle thousands of units without lagging : Don't you think the comparison is a little bit biaised ? If you check this : http://preshing.com/20120208/a-look-back-at-single-threaded-cpu-performance/
It's obvious that single thread performance is not really increasing that much compared to TA era. So unless the simulation gets multi threaded (un thread per planet) i hardly see how we could get the same improvement as with TA which really benefitted from single thread performance improvement over time.
More over, we all remember the big performance improvement when the client side got multithreaded to remove the single thread limitation. So it looks like to me that multi threading is a must ... I'm in for a new kickstarter !

Well 21% per year is still pretty decent imho. They're going slower, but they are still going and I am sure they won't stop going any time soon. So we probably will get to multiply our current performance by 3 or 4 in 10 years. 4 times as much would already be plenty to make PA run quite a bit better.
Looking at FA in 2006 it was a real pain on most computers. Nowadays it runs pretty damn decent. And that was all already in the pre 2004 era.

The real question is actually: How well does the server really scale with more units compared to single threaded performance? One can only hope it is in the area of O(n log n).

ofc even then if somebody has a few millions to spare please feel free to spent them on a having Uber hire some multithreading experts and have them work for a year or two to make PA scale with many core architectures.

I miss those days..

Sorry, I fear collision resolution will only scale with O(n^2). So bumping something into something else is really bad, like for example queuing units up on a teleporter.
Here are some numbers, this is the current stable release on a uber server, assisting a single fabber with dox:

Code:

dox[#] physics tick[ms] sim[s^-1]
   500        23           10.0
  1000        97            8.0
  1500       200            3.3

Additionally there is a baseline for handling entities doing nothing but are able to receive collisions: 1000 dox will cost the physics engine around ~1.3 ms, luckily this scales linear with number of entities. So assuming we have around 40 ms for physics the current engine can support 30000 dox doing nothing without dropping a single FPS.

Yes, this is the worst case scenario, where every unit bumps into every other. Usually you only have a fraction of that involved in a single collision. But I've seen games - especially when there is an orbital stalemate - where people queue up 300 dox and antsbolos on a single teleporter.

BTW: Physics is the new bottleneck! Issuing an area patrol with 1000 dox will bring the server to its limits, but it will still run with 10 fps, where colliding 1000 dox will bring it down to 8.0fps.

Yeah okay teleporter bumping chaos probably is the nightmare scenario.
Though that doesn't happen that much. The horrible 20-30% base speed that happens in super sized games usually is there without any teleporter nightmares involved.

21.8.2015
Q1) Dank Magician: is there a reason naval fabbers can't build the three amphibious titans we have? orbital fabbers can already build them over water, is there a good reason that disallows naval fabbers to build them?
jables: sounds like a bug, but I will check with tvinita to make sure. probably an overlooked blueprint. i'll talk to the designers to make sure, but if they were meant to build them, we'll get it fixed

Q2) ItsColmanBruv: Mm, why is it if I'm having a considerable amount of trouble loading a system, which I sometimes do, my screen is full of the sun? xD
jables: camera defaults to the sun while loading the system.
it's the center of system from engine pov

Q3) Dank Magician: What's the reason behind the design decision to make the Unit Cannon unbuildable on water when it doesn't alter its functions in any way?
jables: unit cannon not on water was originally meant to be land only. but we've actually talked about making the change to allow it on water. will depend on playtesting. still not sure if it'll happen though.


20.8.2015
Q1) tekk: 1 million units on the map at once when?
jables: when computers support it we left it open for that very reason so as not to fall into the unit cap trap.. future proof ftw

Q2) (P)Sleeser: will u conisder making the sub comm idenitcal to the comm you use while you play?
jables: doubt it. every unit needs it's own role

Q3) DMC: are you guys planning on hosting some sort of tornament every year like other games have?
jables: We don't usually host them ourselves as we are small team and honestly there are people better at it than us.. but we support multiple ones throughout the year. next one is the Mystery Mayhem one.. we'll have devs casting i think, and giving away a team signed statue. yeah Exodus is better at it than us

19.8.2015
Q1) Xanoxis: Jables, please tell me there will be hotfix today
jables: hotfix is under way.. i don't have an answer as to when it hits. will depend on testing and how hard issues are to fix. but all the engineers are working on that

Q2) Captain Conundrum: when did work on Titans start?
jables: design started on it 10 months back

Q3) Xanoxis: ummm, Do you feel Titans was a right move, and how you feel about it launch so far?
jables: TITANS was a good move i think. It allowed us to go farther than the original plan of PA, and we would never have been able to afford to to that with just continued updates

18.8.2015
Q1) [DOPE]adamcharman: are you going to incorporate the rank showing in lobby thing into the game, or is that staying a mod feature?
jables: more than likely will stay a mod. vanilla will stay as is, and we added the hooks for modders to make it however they want

Q2) [DOPE]Admiral_Scrub: will we ever be able to report internet trolls? some people just play PA to troll and be really rude and stuff. spoils the game
jables: you can report it to support@uberent.com and we do look at replays to see things. I know people have been banned based on behavior. would be nice to have it in game too.. will possibly get that for future, but not 100% sure

Q3) entz: jables, PA seems to suffer from a lack of players... Did you plan something against that ? Like advertising or sales...
jables: yes. We actually have somethign pretty rad coming up. i'll talk more on that in a bit.. have to afk sorry.
note: PA: Titans was released 20 minutes later

17.8.2015
Q1) [RLM]MainMethod: whats the next big thing for pa
jables: Mystery Mayhem is a tournament based on next thing for PA.. though if we told what it was, it'd ruing the mystery

Q2) entz: What is you favourite build order for vehicles ? =D
jables: I'm not great.. but 1st factory 3 tanks, 1 aa on repeat, 2nd factory 4 inferno, every other factory up to about 8 either 2 tank 1 inferno, or 1 tank 2 inferno depending on their army

Q3) [RLM]MainMethod: what is this hover layer i keep hearing about
jables: hover layer would be a layer needed to make hover units work.. currently we have orbital, air, land, sea, and sub layers. you could probably hack a hover looking unit in without it.. but to do it right and have pathfinding handle it, would want the layer

14.8.2015
Q1) nixtempestas: Do you guys use balance mods/stuff from balance mods in internal play tests to try them out for vanilla?
jables: #1 we play wtih them for fun, but most actual internal playtests are focused on official releases.

Q2) TracerTong: will reclaimable wreckages for all units be added to the game?
jables: #2 We'll see how that plays out. currently it's useful for the buildings that have it, but i can't make promises for future

Q3) (P)MangoMango: Do you have a better version of the system editor that you keep to yourselves?
jables: #3 we use the same editor as everyone else we just released the internal one to public use.

continue to read here

Wow, this sounds really like a mystery.

No spoilers!

New questions logged. Tomorrow and the day after tomorrow I won't be around to log questions, somebody else please do that (for example the person who asks) and post here.

Sounds like a job for @proeleert!

Question for Jables: When will we see all the CSG for the planet editor? As i would like to get my hands on the metal planet looking crater found on orange team boss world, so I can add to my planet designs.

I just want to take some time and say thank you @jables for this series. We all know it is crazy hard to develop a early access game from kickstarter with hundreds of fans screaming out their vision here and there. You have had a lot o criticism on your style, where you drop concepts and things without saying why to the community. To me your Q&A is a direct answer to that. To me it seems like people are much more accepting when they get to hear the reasoning behind things. For instance why the hovercraft concept where dropped (hard pathfinding) or why this and that isn't being worked on (simply longer down the to do list)

So again thank you, I think it is good that we in the community can get answers to our questions and keep it up

(sorry about all the incorrect grammar )

Just one small point, jables didn't say hovercraft are a total no go atm, rather 'a pain in the butt' and something they are still experimenting with definitely no promises but still potential for them down the road...

Allright : 06.08.2015

#1 Quitch : Are you planning to allow the modding of sounds and if so where is it on the backlog?
jables : Okay so sounds. I'd have to ask tbt. I would assume you could just replace current sounds, but what was asked for by modders in the past would require releasing the entire sound project, which I was told we would not do
soooo answer to question is, you can replace things locally, but having access to overall sound project for modding is probably not going to happen
yeah not all my answers are good. sorry man

#2 (P)MangoMango : are you going to add more Tactical Missile defence/offense?
jables : So tac missile stuff
we aren't planning on doing new units for PA.. so I doubt you see a change on current
we are doing neat experiments though.. we'll see what comes from them
which is super vague and awesome haha.. we'll make the promises when we know we will release them

#3 (P)BattleBear : is that balance wise or gameplay wise in units having other roles/functions
jables : all of the above
we are doing experiments on a ton of things.. so honestly it is all of the above
but nothing to mention until we decide they are good.. some are showing a ton of promise
but aren't for sure
so no promises until they show promise. SEE WHAT I DID THERE?

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