Totulhu said:
High quantity of parties will make game lag for shure.
both of these are correct answers. I had bandits fixed for spawning in Warsword Rigale, which came out about a month after Warsword Calradia (2016) and was intended to be a demonstration and test of code. I also addressed some but not all sources of lag with an overall 30% speedup. I think the difference was quite visible. I've since improved the technologies used and shared them with Nameless Warrior; whether he has time to integrate some/many depends on how busy each of us is. I was PLANNING to come over here and help a bit, as a minor dev, but got my hands full elsewhere at the moment.
I did solve the forwever peace yesterday, so its fair to say that ASPECTS of the games many many layers are still worked on, even at other mods. Its not just Nurgle vs Chaos vs Skavens. Its core systems layers that are quite similar for every mod, in the same way a doctor can compare body organs from one person and the next. Of course, one might be a hobo who dies in the gutter drinking rot gut and the next a million dollar actress in perfect health, but you know, parts is parts...
For example I see no stutter or lag whatsoever in Phantasy 2018. I do have parties capped at about 1100; Warsword Conquest had around 1450. There is no water travel, which probably wasted 20% of the system bandwidth flipping icons and detecting shore. The scheme used in Phantasy 2018 was to split bandit creation across 3 non-intersecting timers at 7.something, 9.something, and 17.something cycles so they never really overlap and most background tasks were protected for every register call made so that background and foreground threads running concurrently would not cross communicate the reg contents, which is a flaw for diplomacy based code. This allowed both threads to run in Warband without needing "force single threading mode" enabled in Warband advanced options. Certainly the bandits can spawn more often and all of the parties, with correct "hunt bandit camp" quests given by each lord/king/queen and for that matter at the local tavern, which actually pulls up the same quest.
Right now I have a completely different magic system than Nameless Warrior, and they intentionally were made in isolation, so that Guspav's layer of things could be kept local to his mod. It turned out to be a blessing for me not to have worked on Nameless' magic system, as it allowed the two systems to stay completely different in every aspect. I think the depth this team here went (and they have MANY artists, a dedicated scener, a dedicated coder, and even an Ombudsman) - well, it should be something when its shown. I sure hope they show a twitch play or something like this someday. But its an oddity I don't have time to dive into other than limited technical advice, pretty much none of which Nameless needs. He's truly my peer; I wouldn't claim either of us is better, although he is more details oriented and I'm more "it can evolve its ok if it needs a few revs" kind of guy. So he's super fussy about whats shown, unlike me (from all my daily updates its obvious my project wasn't "finished").
I think the decisions were already taken to remove icon flip and other bandwidth hogs, and the proof that the lag can be completely eliminated while still having a high party count is already tested. Warsword Conquest had > 45 towns and 18 factions+, while Phantasy 2018 is 29 towns and 13 factions, and fewer lords. So there are differences; Warsword Conquest had considerably more lords, ladies (perhaps they go), and the number of kingdom parties per town/castle was higher. I spawn fewer per settlement and slower spawns now, with perhaps too many bandit parties still spawning. I see most of my traders getting eaten by bandits still. But I'm confident Nameless Warrior will balance all that out. It was never anything I participated in -- he's do factions, armies, items, party types, and I was more systems layers that are common to every mod. So the mod you see is not anything I touched. I see the part that is more the bowels (in good and bad senses) and not anywhere near the skin layers. I used different hairs than were used in Warsword Conquest 2016, which I think Nameless Warrior wanted to change anyway as the ones last time had gaps in coverage and mesh issues. Warsword Conquest always had superior models and vastly superior performance for technical considerations like LODs and shader use for each armor or item. Its a pity GW is involved but noone would even know "what the mod is about" without it, so I suppose you take the good with the bad and live with it.
Just my take on what I see/have seen. I certainly did trim 30%, but I did much better this year. MUCH better. Nameless already knows where I thought the speed and bandwidth waste was, and I shared some working examples of how I sidestepped problems that were without solution last year. its not the same thing as writing a mod; but at least the problems each mod has exist for many. I don;t think my help really moved the mod greatly, but at least it didnt hold it back either.
- GS