The Purpose of Ticking

[Funkmaster_Rick]

So guys! What ever happened to the original purpose of the tick they added? Was it supposed to, you know, improve gameplay? Make navigation of the game faster?

Well, it definitely improved gameplay: i just renewed my WoW subscription.

[ThZ]

not surprised im the first to react, your statement is quite eh, stupid.

A tick is a basic principal behind (pretty much any game) Utopia, its the passing of time... in Utopia its 1 hour, other game like WoW use cooldowns or are FPS based like Diablo II (ftw!)

what you should ask is "why does the tick take so much longer then it used to", and then i coudnt agree more with you. You'd have to win quite some darwin awards to go straight against the usual 'flow' of improvement like this... (slower with better technology)

[beelzebozo]

Well, he did say "the tick they added". That implies that he is talking about the ~3 min downtime at the beginning of every hour and not the "basic principal behind...". Oh, this would also imply that you are stupid. Since you failed to get that implication and all...

[ThZ]

Well, he did say "the tick they added". That implies that he is talking about the ~3 min downtime at the beginning of every hour and not the "basic principal behind...". Oh, this would also imply that you are stupid. Since you failed to get that implication and all...

but since he said 'What ever happened to the original purpose of the tick they added?' you are wrong.

this in fact does not mean that you are stupid, beelzebozo, only a bit fast with your conclusions...

the awnser should be: nothing. they never added a tick, the tick was there from the beginning, its only because they ****ed up the entire game they need this 3 minute tick.

[beelzebozo]

but since he said 'What ever happened to the original purpose of the tick they added?' you are wrong.

But since it's raining outside you are wrong. Though not necessarily stupid this time...

[TheRock]

CRIPPLEFIGHT

In the old days, every province was a separate text file. The files were only updated when interacted with, either by a player logging in or another player doing something to them (op, attack, message, etc). Updates happened only on demand, so kingdom page data was always at least slightly out of date.

On the new code, OMAC decided that all provinces would be updated every hour change. This required an enormous amount of server resources, to the point where the game would stall and die every hour because it was trying to deal with all the requests from players (TRAIN MY OGRES *****) while it was updating 10,000 provinces. To fix it, OMAC set up the ticking system, so that players are locked out and can't make requests that hog resources from ticking.

It's really just a system to get all provinces updated as early as possible.

[Azz]

The thing I don't entirely understand is that under the old code, when it peaked at 150-200k players or whatever it was, there must've been times when there were 10k players online at once. Which means, even with the only-update-when-requested system, the old code (despite running on period hardware and on the inefficient textfile system) preumably, at least at times, had to update 10k+ provs on the hour change. And (and maybe it's just alzheimer's setting in) I don't remember the old code coming to an unbearable crawl as ticking commenced (though I do remember OOP being slow).

I don't get, then, why the new code, on spangly new 21st-century hardware (one would assume), with the supposedly more efficient database system, can't deal with updating 10k provs each hour. I'm not saying it's a trivial achievement but I just can't fathom how the old code could deal with it apparently so much more efficiently than the new code.

[Luth]

++1 Azz

and btw, things like the kd page are NOT in fact updated at every tick. it's random thru the hour taking anywhere up to 30 minutes.

[Mandatar]

Azz,

Try to read more carefully what TheRock said. The swirve engine had no ticking. There was merely a text file for each province, and a counter. If interaction was needed with a province, the text file would be updated to the current counter and written back again.

As for player load. The old server never had more than 60k players. The limit was 50 kds, 50 islands and 25 provinces per island on a server (62500 slots). I think this limit was not due to performance, but as prov IDs were likely 16 bit.

This does not change the fact that Omac created horrible code that doesn't perform. Surely having a large object in memory to load a prov id is more resource-consuming than putting it in a 16 bit memory location, but that doesn't justify poorly designed code.

It's the main reason I quit playing, I simply could not afford to make my login moments last 5 times (or more) longer.

And for the record Rick is right, Omac added ticking :)

[Funkmaster_Rick]

Well, now that a couple of people have brought a few points to the table, I see where a lot of the problem is coming from. Without knowing more about how the current incarnation of code works, I don't feel like there's much room for comment. However, I posted this thread while they had the hour-long tick last night, so much rage was involved.

Our new galactic overlords shall have a hell of a time balancing usability with all the other important factors that, at the moment, impede it. As long as tick times are reasonable, I'll keep playing. But the system is awkward.

[Korp]

There was a ticking in the old code too, it was almost always done some minutese between xx:25-xx30. People seem to forget about that tho, maybe they dont rememer it cause it wasnt announced? ...

[Azz]

Azz,

Try to read more carefully what TheRock said. The swirve engine had no ticking. There was merely a text file for each province, and a counter. If interaction was needed with a province, the text file would be updated to the current counter and written back again.

Yes, which is what I said, no...???

But on the old code if you were online at the hour change you saw your prov variables change right away (or at least the next time you loaded a page). And, though I can't remember, I imagine that meant that, at certain times, there were ~10k provs needing updating at about the same time. This seemed to occur much more smoothly than the current ticking process.

[Gwynn]

It has been 5 minutes and only 16% has been completed...a turtle moves faster

[Grimmeh]

CRIPPLEFIGHT

That episode was so fckn funny haha

[DeVille]

"Ticking is 64% complete"

And the new code is a vast improvement over the old code becuz ..

Oh yeah, hackers came to the old code.