Update & Migration of the Tech Stack (question topic)

[Rajaa]

Hi,
I want to ask about new version of Java. How will that reflect gameplay? Will launcher be more stable about crashes and disconnect (during current rdx event it closes often when there are stronger waves in reactor and traveling from Mars to ez-35)?
Any more improvements (aside of launcher option to remind about update of version)?

 

[Vesperion]

My question would be if we won´t have to "force relog" everytime cus the game starts to get laggy the more you land on planets in a single session until it´s unplayable cus the cache doesn´t clean itself every once in a while.

The crashes of the current RDX however seem to be a common given since the very 1st event of cus there the crashes where also present but i guess this more related to the fact that the game needs to handle more contend at the same time with several instances in compare to normal game situations.

Another thing is adding some more options eventually so that we could tune up/down the volume of Sounds/Music seperatly from each other instead of having the option of Music/Sound only or Music + Sound or non of both.

Also an option to disable the "shaking" would be nice cus sometimes i want to have the camera close to the ship and battle but cus every hit shakes the camera like crazy the closer it gets it´s not really fun to see a "close up" combat so that the camera is always at max distance for me.

 

[Highway]

The Java change should at best not change any gameplay directly. Thats what we need to test if everything works as usual after compiling the code with another java version.

But under the hood the newer java version can resolve some crash issues that where not directly connected to the game code and offer better memory management options that can help in performance. But most importantly it helps our dev to write code more efficiently than before.

The crashes reported during the RDX event might be the crashes PG suffers from time to time, which are very hard to fix since they are in a native library in D3D9 rendering code. Since the event spawns a lot of enemys and effects this might increase the crashes as well. As a test I would try to disable sound in the game in the options and try if it works more stable that way.

 

[Rajaa]

The crashes reported during the RDX event might be the crashes PG suffers from time to time, which are very hard to fix since they are in a native library in D3D9 rendering code. Since the event spawns a lot of enemys and effects this might increase the crashes as well. As a test I would try to disable sound in the game in the options and try if it works more stable that way.

A lot of enemies and players spawn does effect cache and as a result launcher closes itself. This event is one of most lag and crash because number of enemies does increase from wave to wave, and equivalent to number of players that do same result crash around big waves.
It would be good to sort out code for filtering the cache after time like the "Log status" (next to mission completion status) which is too filled like old Mission board and system/online messages help in that where performance is slower (i know it takes longer and is hard, but in future after main updates it would be good).
Mostly after every 1-2 sm on Mars we must relog to clean cache, but we can manage
I would say that if we turn off pg music and effects does delay crash a little, but not for too long (since i dont use pg music much because of ancient blasters sound ).

 

[HGus]

My question would be if we won´t have to "force relog" everytime cus the game starts to get laggy the more you land on planets in a single session until it´s unplayable cus the cache doesn´t clean itself every once in a while.

That is not a problem with cache, but memory management. Every time we land on a planet, the client creates a new object in memory with the planet data, instead of reusing the data stored in previous referenced instances (the "cache"). When we leave the planet (by orbiting), the code "forgets" to dereference the object, thus the Java garbage collector cannot free the memory.

Two possible solutions (for devs):

1. Keep track of data for an already used planet in a session, or at least while the player is in the same system, so it can be quickly reused by new (in memory) instances of the object. Data to be reused is the static kind (map, type and spawn spots, etc.), discharging the dynamic ones (currently spawned enemies and players on surface).
2. Fully dereferencing the planet data in the memory, so the client will need to reload them from disk (or online) and the garbage collector can make its work. A little slower, but cleaner and easier to track.

 

[Highway]

Sadly this is more complicated as it sounds. From our logs it looks like we a memory issue in the GPU memory allocation. So itself this is not java related at all but the native code might have some issues. Lets hope that this is not a classical memory leak( that will be tricky to find) and instead something we can address by having timed process that frees some memory in a certain interval.

 

[gonzaabel]

That you have said about the GPU memory issue, it's the cause of the FPS drops??

 

[Highway]

Yes it can also be affect performance but most importantly it should fix most client crashes that plagued the game for a long time. Lets hope the fix tomorrow works to resolve this.

 

[gonzaabel]

Ohh it sounds awesome!!!
For me is strange get the client closed unexpectly unless when I have playing the ravenDynamics event. The FPS drop by the event forces me to relog each 30~60 minutes.
Normally without an event if I remember correctly it starts losing FPS about 1 hour ingame and over 2-3 hours I need to relog the client to play again with 60FPS. (I have 4GB VRAM)
In the past when I have lowest video card (256MB of VRAM to 1GB) I think the game crashes was more often.
So said this hopefully it can be fixed with the tomorrow's update

By the way, good work with this tech update and the work to get fixed the lag of Gaia. It is really apreciated for all of us, so thank you! :mrorange:

 

[danidank2]

What happens to those of us who still have the client that provided us with gamingo?
by:danidank2 server:gaia

 

[Fission]

Since Gamigo is not anymore with splitscreen, you should migrate the account or use the splitscreen client. So you will benefit from all the features.

 

[Highway]

What happens to those of us who still have the client that provided us with gamingo?
by:danidank2 server:gaia

Gamigo did not have any special installer you can just install the new one and everything will work as usual.

You can find them here: https://support.splitscreenstudios.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/158/63/latest-game-client-versions