Persistent World 4.5.1 - download and general discussion

[Nimueh]

Sorry for sounding whiny earlier Vornn I just didn't know if it was acceptable to rollback or not and was stressed and concerned.  Anyway. 

I seem crash really fast with my 3GB of RAM (Yes, I know...) and others who had considerably more seemed to last a whole lot longer.
Logic implies that there was some sort of link between them

I only crashed once total and I am running 8gb ram.  When I did crash it was the run time error people have been getting.  I wasn't doing anything except sitting in the middle of our commoner town logged in as admin. 

I'm tempted to put beta6 back up and run the default scene for a while, gathering the computer specs of players who have crashed.  If it helps, the update could just be causing a memory leak, or it could have too many features? 

 

[Vornne]

  This suggestion sounds very silly, but what if the weapons and armors restrictions were increased by one strength point (excluding bows and shields)?

As a bug fix? Unlikely to help, since the same agent modifier operations would still be run, just with different calculated values.

I haven't figured out how or (Not sure if that is the newer OS' taskmanager) with what S0mebody measures the RAM use of specific programms.

As Splintert said, the Windows XP task manager works pretty much the same way, just with a slightly less flashy appearance: alt-tab out of Warband, right click on an empty part of the task bar (middle bottom of the screen), click "Task Manager" - alternatively use the ctrl-shift-escape shortcut; click the "Processes" tab, then find "mb_warband.exe": it should have a column for the memory usage.

I'm tempted to put beta6 back up and run the default scene for a while, gathering the computer specs of players who have crashed.  If it helps, the update could just be causing a memory leak, or it could have too many features? 

Now that the cause of the crash has been narrowed down to leaking a certain amount of memory, gathering system specs of people crashing is not really likely to be useful any more: what now needs to be figured out is the actions or features in the latest version that trigger Warband to leak memory. It's not a problem of too many features added or module system code that leaks memory, since the module system does not have any ways or responsibility to manage memory: it is a bug in Warband that is probably not exposed in conventional usage, so I will have to try work around or avoid it when the cause is identified.

 

[Nimueh]

Well we appreciate your hard work, this is easily the best game I have played in years even if it is just a mod.  I bet taleworlds would make it a DLC even if you didn't want it. 

Even though this is in the future, any plans on porting to bannerlord if it ends up being a worthy replacement to warband? 

I hope they make scene editing more friendly in the next version. 

 

[Vornne]

Even though this is in the future, any plans on porting to bannerlord if it ends up being a worthy replacement to warband? 

Far to early to think about: I don't know if it will even run on linux (which I exclusively use) or if there will be the same sort of facilities for modding as current M&B - they are creating or using an entirely different engine, from what I've heard.

I have slapped together a bunch of experimental patches, each reverting the client side parts of features that seem vaguely possible to cause a memory leak. These should only be applied by people who are consistently crashing just to test and report back; they are not fixes in any way, and could cause various bugs that should be ignored - just connect to a server that otherwise causes your client to crash quickly, reporting back if any seem to avoid the memory leak. They should be applied singly, not combined, on top of a freshly extracted PW_4_beta6 main release package each time (or make a clean backup of the module directory, to use instead).

http://pw.hosthazard.com/PW_4_beta6_test_music_patch.rar
http://pw.hosthazard.com/PW_4_beta6_test_mod_patch.rar
http://pw.hosthazard.com/PW_4_beta6_test_lists_patch.rar
http://pw.hosthazard.com/PW_4_beta6_test_loot_patch.rar
http://pw.hosthazard.com/PW_4_beta6_test_herd_patch.rar
http://pw.hosthazard.com/PW_4_beta6_test_profile_patch.rar

 

[NOVICIUS]

(1)Herd animals starve and die if they can't move far enough at terrain level, unless manually fed.
(2)Animals are prevented from reproducing if they are not in a herd with at least one other adult.
(3)Assign wildness values to herd animals, affecting herding difficulty and attack reactions.

1.Could you say something more about it? What "they can't move" and "far enough" would mean here? More less.
2.How this acctually works? Herd normaly spawn animal after animal. Is that mean that I need two spawns to create herd?
3.Is that mean I can make wild animals (spawn by map prop) really wild and those bought by player not wild at all? Is that effect animals "desire" to run away.

Also (if you have spare time) could you describe (again ) animals general behavior system. I am trying to have dear herd in forest only but they run away from spawn area and settle far from it. This is without any player action involved. Is there anyway to limit area in which herd would stay?
(suggestion) Maybe barriers for animals only?

 

[Яowan]

(1)Herd animals starve and die if they can't move far enough at terrain level, unless manually fed.
(2)Animals are prevented from reproducing if they are not in a herd with at least one other adult.
(3)Assign wildness values to herd animals, affecting herding difficulty and attack reactions.

1.Could you say something more about it? What "they can't move" and "far enough" would mean here? More less.
2.How this acctually works? Herd normaly spawn animal after animal. Is that mean that I need two spawns to create herd?
3.Is that mean I can make wild animals (spawn by map prop) really wild and those bought by player not wild at all? Is that effect animals "desire" to run away.

Also (if you have spare time) could you describe (again ) animals general behavior system. I am trying to have dear herd in forest only but they run away from spawn area and settle far from it. This is without any player action involved. Is there anyway to limit area in which herd would stay?
(suggestion) Maybe barriers for animals only?

What (1) entitles is that animals will die if they cannot move around enough, which I assume is simulating the grazing of the animals on grass, then moving to a new area once that area lacks it.
So, that means any animals, wild or purchased (they are still the same) will die if they do not have enough roam space, unless they are fed manually by the player/s.
With (2) Vornne means there needs to be more than one animal for them to give birth; this is really only related to buying animals, as the herd spawners (a single one) will spawn a herd, which means multiple animals over x period of time.
I believe with (3) Vornne means you can ajust the herd spawners to dictate their difficulty to herd and whether or not they flee when attacked, e.g. Cows can be set to be completely oblivious and easy to herd, and that they will not flee when attacked, while Deer can be set to be very wild and will flee when approached or attacked, and will be very difficult to herd with a herding crook.

You can use 'ai_barrier' to prevent the animals from leaving the forest, but it also prevents players from using horses to enter the forest too.

 

[S0mebody]

Testing patches. Have asked our players to pick one patch to test and list that they are testing it, this way we can get 6 people testing simultaneously.

Going to take a while, server populations are so low currently that it will take 2 hours or more to fully test each one.

First 3 patches under active test.

Early results for the Music patch, with 17 players have seen RAM use rise to 1.9GB then drop back to 1.3GB. Am AFK testing whilst TP inside a building though.

 

[NOVICIUS]

(1)Herd animals starve and die if they can't move far enough at terrain level, unless manually fed.
(2)Animals are prevented from reproducing if they are not in a herd with at least one other adult.
(3)Assign wildness values to herd animals, affecting herding difficulty and attack reactions.

1.Could you say something more about it? What "they can't move" and "far enough" would mean here? More less.
2.How this actually works? Herd normally spawn animal after animal. Is that mean that I need two spawns to create herd?
3.Is that mean I can make wild animals (spawn by map prop) really wild and those bought by player not wild at all? Is that effect animals "desire" to run away.

Also (if you have spare time) could you describe (again ) animals general behavior system. I am trying to have dear herd in forest only but they run away from spawn area and settle far from it. This is without any player action involved. Is there anyway to limit area in which herd would stay?
(suggestion) Maybe barriers for animals only?

What (1) entitles is that animals will die if they cannot move around enough, which I assume is simulating the grazing of the animals on grass, then moving to a new area once that area lacks it.
So, that means any animals, wild or purchased (they are still the same) will die if they do not have enough roam space, unless they are fed manually by the player/s.
With (2) Vornne means there needs to be more than one animal for them to give birth; this is really only related to buying animals, as the herd spawners (a single one) will spawn a herd, which means multiple animals over x period of time.
I believe with (3) Vornne means you can adjust the herd spawners to dictate their difficulty to herd and whether or not they flee when attacked, e.g. Cows can be set to be completely oblivious and easy to herd, and that they will not flee when attacked, while Deer can be set to be very wild and will flee when approached or attacked, and will be very difficult to herd with a herding crook.

You can use 'ai_barrier' to prevent the animals from leaving the forest, but it also prevents players from using horses to enter the forest too.

Thank you mate. It really helps. I can imagine terrain which can be forest "wall" and in the same time look like not suitable for horseriding. Yet my question still remain. Very technically: how big that "free range"  has to be ? This is essential if I intend to limit this area.

Also on (2). I believe that buying animals work in the same way as herd spawners. The difference here is only that it is a player who start the process. My best guess would be like this: in case of buying animals player should wait until his herd grows a bit. If he kill first animal which spawn the reproduction is over and his money invested in,wasted. If he waits then animals keep spawning until at least two adults remain in herd. I am just guessing here.

 

[S0mebody]

Music patch (#1) crashed @ 2,983.6 GB RAM used.

 

[ZeroFighterR]

Patch #2 used so far 2 hours ingame, 1,138gb used.

 

[MarkvA]

Same. Stable at 1.2 gigs for the last two hours with patch #2.

 

[S0mebody]

RCC have tested all 6 now and the results:

1, 3, 4, 5 and 6 still result in memory leak and crash.

2 appears to be stable with around 1.3GB RAM committed.

We are recommending our players try patch #2, and our staff are adopting it too.

Server population is 40+ on the VoS map.

 

[Nimueh]

Good work guys!

 

[Splintert]

So what exactly does "mod" patch do?

 

[Nimueh]

It probably does a lot of stuff, which could mean that it will be narrowed down to individual features in a next line of test patches.  I'm assuming at least.

 

[Vornne]

Thanks heaps to all the people that tested the patches. Patch #2 (with "mod" in the name) tests removing code related to the agent speed, damage, accuracy, and reload modifiers when using weapons or armor the troop does not meet requirements for: I am hoping that some of the code meant for server side is being mistakenly run on clients, and there is a way to fix it without reverting things. Please tell me that it works when just applied to the clients, not the server?

If you recommend players use the patches in normal play, be aware that there might be other bugs introduced: I didn't carefully test each patch to make sure it was correct, just removed things and checked it compiled correctly.

It probably does a lot of stuff, which could mean that it will be narrowed down to individual features in a next line of test patches.  I'm assuming at least.

You are correct.

Novicius: I will explain about animals later.

 

[S0mebody]

This is client side only, not touched server

 

[Nimueh]

While we are at it there is another bug reported.  Players who get knocked off a horse can glitch through any walls anytime afterwards. 

 

[BlitzKrieg-BoB]

Heh, Bit late to respond but the default map did indeed crash for me.
Seeing how I am appearantly very adept at crashing in a short amount of time, I also tried the 2nd test patch and I am quite happy to say it works for me as well.
Old news appearantly, but at least it's proof that we are indeed on the right track here.

So now I guess we gotta wait until you have worked your magic with the code again?
*Keeping fingers crossed that we get to keep the new str requirement system*

 

[Vornne]

1.Could you say something more about it? What "they can't move" and "far enough" would mean here? More less.

"Can't move" means that the herd leader animal didn't move far enough away from its last position when the herd moved (the leader always moves first, the others in the herd follow soon after). "Far enough" is more than about 5 - 10 meters away (I can't remember exactly and am at work), which you will easily know when playing: the animals randomly bawl (moan / roar / whatever you want to call it) when starving from lack of movement near the terrain level (so hiding them in your castle bedroom is not a good idea unless you have stacks of wheat for feed). The animal pens on some current scenes are probably too small for proper grazing: at least the pen at the little crafting village in Andros was causing all the cows inside to line the fence bawling, not reproducing and eventually starving to death. How long they take to starve depends on the amount of meat from killing a healthy animal, so baby animals die quickly, deer and boars last a while, but cows can live off their fat for longer. If the animal starves to death the corpse will have much less meat, if any.

2.How this acctually works? Herd normaly spawn animal after animal. Is that mean that I need two spawns to create herd?

Not necessarily, though two animal spawners with the same animal and time interval would be more likely to create a herd, since newly spawned animals are attached to a nearby existing herd (which could be one animal) if it is close enough. There seemed to be quite a few complaints that wild herds quickly flooded the server up to the animal limit setting, reproducing too quickly for farmed herds to compete with, that they got stuck in unreachable places, and also that players were encouraged to lock their animals away in tiny little rooms for easy management, so the emphasis was changed a bit from hunting many wild animals to having to look after a herd out in the open, where the animals can move and other people interact with them. Remember that the alternate attack mode (press "x" with default key bindings) of the herding crook will stop the animal moving and force it to attach to a new herd if the existing one is too far away.

3.Is that mean I can make wild animals (spawn by map prop) really wild and those bought by player not wild at all? Is that effect animals "desire" to run away.

It is not a server setting, just a value built into the mod so that deer are as unpredictable to herd with the crook as before, darting off at a wide variation of angles, boars are a bit more relaxed, and cows are very docile, moving more slowly, consistently, and almost always going directly away from your position - when hit with the herding crook as a troop with herding skill.

Also (if you have spare time) could you describe (again ) animals general behavior system. I am trying to have dear herd in forest only but they run away from spawn area and settle far from it. This is without any player action involved. Is there anyway to limit area in which herd would stay?
(suggestion) Maybe barriers for animals only?

There is the hard coded AI limiter props which also stop horses and bots, but I would not want to add extra code to the animal movement scripts: they use quite a lot of server resources already, even when optimized in various ways (not as heavy as the ship movement scripts, though), so adding more expensive iterations over scene props to check distances does not seem a good idea. Animals should generally not try to drown themselves in deep water or walk straight off cliffs, so you could try use those things to your advantage.

This is client side only, not touched server

Good .

While we are at it there is another bug reported.  Players who get knocked off a horse can glitch through any walls anytime afterwards.

You already reported that in the other thread, and I replied.