So, about patch 0.24

[blundertwink]

On 2/12/2021 at 3:48 PM, Hazaatan said:

Server tech? I read some posts that said they were on amazons servers.  Are they running their own show?

Yeah, there's no substantial "server tech" NQ is making.

 

The most complex thing they've built is the translation of voxels to meshes on their servers. That's legit complicated, but hardly earth-shattering. 

 

They do not use their own servers or maintain their own game engine. There's a good reason most professional studios that make MMOs stand their own servers and make their own engines -- or if they are going to use an engine, they pick something robust...not a second-rate engine like Unigen2 that has like 5 or 6 games to its name. 

 

If they were trying to sell this "tech" to other parties, it probably wouldn't be worth much -- a professional studio that is making an MMO wouldn't dare touch this.

 

The idea that NQ has some sort of cutting-edge "super tech" is just not correct. It's voxels to meshes. That's the novel thing they've made with 6+ years of dev time. Single shard is kind of a joke (for reasons beyond the fact that server pops wouldn't support more than one instance anyway lol) 

[blazemonger]

57 minutes ago, ShippyLongstalking said:

The most complex thing they've built is the translation of voxels to meshes on their servers. That's legit complicated, but hardly earth-shattering. 

 

The idea that NQ has some sort of cutting-edge "super tech" is just not correct. It's voxels to meshes. That's the novel thing they've made with 6+ years of dev time. Single shard is kind of a joke (for reasons beyond the fact that server pops wouldn't support more than one instance anyway lol) 

 

The voxel mesh tech is actually not new nor created by NQ, JC explained this in an interview in September. They use a well established technique for this which is found in many places.

 

The server tech NQ has designed for DU is not new nor unique either, it is a very commonly used method to achieve the same thing in many different applications, the difference here is that they are adopting it to accommodate agame which has some special requirements. They have succeeded in some parts (the single persistent world actually works very well most of the time) but others are not doing so hot (especially their backend for functionality like RDMS and Industry is shaky at best and they have had to take some rather drastic measures to keep it alive). 

 

If you are interested check this video which explains the server tech they designed (i would prefer calling it that as they really did not develop anything new here)

[blundertwink]

14 hours ago, blazemonger said:

The voxel mesh tech is actually not new nor created by NQ, JC explained this in an interview in September. They use a well established technique for this which is found in many places.

wow ... i assumed this was new/proprietary because i hadn't seen it in a game before (plus DU has been in dev for a long time now), but that's interesting! Couldn't find that specific interview, but plenty of papers discussing various techniques on how to approach this problem. still pretty neat, honestly. 

 

but like...what do the devs actually do all day? From what I can see of 0.24 there's very little feature dev. Maybe it's a ton of optimizations and fixes...? probably shouldn't hold my breath. 

 

if they're gong to spend all this time on so few things, at least they'll be super robust and bug-free (lol)? 

 

i figured 0.24 would be their big push -- the first major feature release since beta after all this time -- but meh. A barely-implemented mission system isn't really that exciting. org wallets? how does that take them more than a few days....? 

[blazemonger]

On 2/15/2021 at 12:33 AM, blazemonger said:

Devblog 4: PTS and new textures/assets using Quixel and Speedtree (end Feb)

Aaand.. right on queue