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 Post subject: Suggestions...
PostPosted: Sun Aug 16, 2015 3:10 am 
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Joined: Sat Apr 21, 2012 2:31 pm
Posts: 8
Hi Wild,

There have been some great new map additions to the server. Thank you, to you and the other players responsible for that.

However, I would respectfully suggest that the map restrictions (redded out maps, 15 sec vote restriction, etc.), be finally removed.

If any players are concerned with maps being played too much then they can usually vote select democratically, the same as all players. If any issues present themselves after that then the player community as a whole can probably work out a solution to that.

Also, the new Burger Wars map(s) with increased difficulty are great... awesome in fact in terms of difficulty. However, they crash invariably... at least for me, and any players I've played with. The best achieved by me or the players I know has been ~1/3 map clearance before the server resets. Please let us know what can be done to help improve that.

Finally, I still get accused of cheating and/or manipulating the server in some way.

As you know, I don't have server permissions, so please somehow let players know that. Also, if any players would like to know the strategies I use to get the "scores" I get, or otherwise that result in these kinds of misunderstandings, then please let me know. If possible I'll let any1 spectate my games, or otherwise view/ask questions about how to achieve the same results.

Thanks!

4thG3N / Sw33tchuck / + maybe some other nicks I've fortgotten ;)


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 Post subject: Re: Suggestions...
PostPosted: Sun Aug 16, 2015 11:35 am 
Admin Wizard
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Joined: Mon Jun 20, 2011 5:40 am
Posts: 3028
Sw33tchuck wrote:
I still get accused of cheating and/or manipulating the server in some way.

Private Message me more details please.

Sw33tchuck wrote:
I would respectfully suggest that the map restrictions (redded out maps, 15 sec vote restriction, etc.), be finally removed.

Screw it, I'll change it. Let's see what happens! (I know what will happen)

Sw33tchuck wrote:
Also, the new Burger Wars map(s) with increased difficulty are great... awesome in fact in terms of difficulty. However, they crash invariably... at least for me, and any players I've played with. The best achieved by me or the players I know has been ~1/3 map clearance before the server resets. Please let us know what can be done to help improve that.

Sadly this is the difficult part. The server does actually crash at those times at those maps. The server is rebooted by our hosts due to our server using more than 98% CPU for 300 seconds

Every time this happens I see this in the event log from our hosts:
nfoservers.com wrote:
High-usage restart: CPU
Aug 15 2015 06:35:13 PM PT Your server was found to have been using >98% CPU usage for 300 seconds and was automatically restarted at this time. If you expect this degree of CPU usage for your server under normal conditions, please contact us, and we can look into an exception to these automated restarts for you.


At the moment I have been trying to counter the restarts by reducing the CPU by modifying the servers tick rate. This is only a temporary solution to the whole problem of monster siege games putting an insane load on our host's CPU. The normal tick rate ((( GateWays ))) has been operating for years has been 25 I have lowered it to 15 for more stability going as low as 5 in extreme cases. The game play as you would expect gets horrid but it's better than the alternative of a reboot. I have to be there to change the tick rate and not one size fits all which is the problem. Some games run really smooth so higher tick rates are desired some games run horribly unstable so I lower the tick rate. Very few of you know what Hypnotist does or what it is so I'll explain that. Normally the monsters on the server do not get along at all. A skaarj and a brute can stand in front of each other and get along. They will not fight each other even though they can see each other they are indifferent of each other's presence. Then a player comes along and stands behind the brute the skaarj sees the player and starts shooting at the player however the brute is in the way and some of it's shots hit the Brute and anger it which at that time the brute will start shooting back at the skaarj and once the brute's shots hit the skaarj the skaarj will start fighting the brute as well. In a normal map without Hypnotist this will cause a massive civil war in which all the monsters will start fighting and destroy each other. Another problem Hypnotist addresses is that it makes monsters aware to players buildings. Normally the monsters don't know what siege buildings are in the game and will ignore them. Hypnotist fixes that by checking to see if a monster can see a building and if it then tells the monster to attack it. The only building monsters will not attack is the core and the supplier in the beginning of the game however there are some exceptions to this. Skaarj berserkers if alerted must always have an enemy. If a skaarj berserker looses it's enemy or has no enemy while it's in it's aggressive state it will crash the server so skaarj berserkers are always redirected towards the core that's why you see giga skaarj rush the core at random times because they got disturbed by another monsters and it's enemy is set to that monster then Hypnotist corrects this behaviour by redirecting the skaarj berserkers to the core because again Hypnotist cannot set the skaarj berserkers enemy to nothing because INSTANT SERVER CRASH. Note: giga skaarj are descendants of skaarj berserkers so the same logic and behaviour applies to them. Also the skaarj berserkers are troublesome in general because they are the only monsters that will randomly pick a fight with any monsters in close proximity even with other skaarj berserkers! Hypnotist has a lot of responsibilities for manipulating monsters behaviour and make them do things they were never originally programmed to do. That is where hypnotist derives it's name from as it "hypnotizes" the monsters.

In short summary Hypnotist does the following:
* Stop monsters from fighting each other.
* Stop monsters from hurting each other or themselves.
* Gives monsters the ability to see and attack siege buildings.
* Prevent skaarj berserkers from crashing the server
* Allows players to find out how many remaining monsters there are with the console command: mutate HypnotistRecon

The drawbacks....
Hypnotist has went under many code revisions and right now as it stands it is about as efficient as it's going to get while maintaining basic functionality.
Hypnotist put additional load on the server's CPU as it has to iterate through every monster on the server and check the state it is and variable values of the monster and then take action accordingly. Problem is the mod is very intense on the server's CPU with all the checks. each tick() the server has to iterate though every pawn in the game. a pawn is defined as players, spectators, bots, monsters, siege buildings, gun turrets present on some maps. So say there is 2000 monsters 5 players 75 buildings 2 cores and 1 spectator add that all up and that should tell you how many iterations hypnotist has to make in a single tick which is the smallest moment of game time there is think of it as a single frame of logic. Depending on what the server's tick rate is set to dictates how many ticks per second the server performs. The server normally runs at 25 as a tick rate so that would be 25 ticks per second times the amount of hypnotist iterations (2083 * 25) very roughly 52075 iterations a second. I haven't looked over hypnotist's code to see all that it does nor have it all in memory at the moment to give you the specifics but I do believe this mod is not helping the server CPU wise. I have done some studies recently on it's performance to see if I can get a noticeably difference for a side by side comparison of a server that runs hypnotist and one that doesn't. That video is here:


So what this huge wall of text is getting at is I'm considering discontinuing hypnotist is place of programming a smart version of every single monster which I'll have you know is exactly why I invented hypnotist in the first place to avoid doing this but it looks like I pushed hypnotist to it's limits and continuing to try to make it more efficient would sacrifice performance and not make it effective or practical. Another options is...........sigh........ to talk to our hosts and see what they can do for us. If I can talk them into removing the auto reboot in place of a CPU cap instead maybe just maybe it could be a win win situation. I hope... Having smart monsters would give me full control over their behaviour and I could make them do so much more so even if I talk it out with the hosts I might replace hypnotist anyway with custom coded monsters. I have already STARTED working on new monsters so I think in the meantime I'll talk to our hosts.

- nOs*Wildcard

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 Post subject: Re: Suggestions...
PostPosted: Mon Aug 17, 2015 2:51 pm 
Gauntlet Janitor
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Joined: Tue Nov 19, 2013 12:47 am
Posts: 36
Your efforts and talents are greatly appreciated!
Many thanks,


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 Post subject: Re: Suggestions...
PostPosted: Tue Aug 18, 2015 4:08 am 
Admin Wizard
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Joined: Mon Jun 20, 2011 5:40 am
Posts: 3028
amotherslove wrote:
Your efforts and talents are greatly appreciated!
Many thanks,

Thank you for the appreciation.

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 Post subject: Re: Suggestions...
PostPosted: Thu Aug 27, 2015 4:00 pm 
Gauntlet Captain
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Joined: Tue May 15, 2012 8:38 am
Posts: 567
TLDR ;)

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 Post subject: Re: Suggestions...
PostPosted: Mon Sep 14, 2015 9:54 am 
Krall
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Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 5:32 am
Posts: 294
Location: TN
Just wow. I think this is the most complicated mod out of any other mod I know so far. :shock:

I have some idea atm... about the lone jackass ranger making ss/shp, if no one else in the team (detect if there is any other player) touch the ss/shp at a # of time, the ss/shp could self-destruct, return RU to the player like a removal...

and I had something else in mind and darn I forgot. :oops:


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