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Espa

Server Performance Increase Ideas

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Hey guys! Just had a thought I'd like to share, but not sure at all if it would actually improve server performance so I'll need our more Tech-Savvy people to chime in :D

If you guys have any other creative ideas to improve Server Performance, please let us know!

The Idea!

Alright, so simply my idea is to take all of the existing items that spawn over the CLE on the floors of designated buildings and placing them within World Containers inside the buildings, such as boxes, wardrobes, crates, tables, and etc..

By doing this, I believe it would remove the burden these items would place on the Server Load by removing these from actively being loaded across Chernarus, but rather would only activate when in the presence of a player who was TAB'd over it (Searching it). If I'm correct, it would take hundreds of items off the server load and increase server performance as well as getting players in the habit of actually searching homes instead of looking to see if anything is sitting in a room and then boogieing out.

Ideas, criticisms, creative solutions? Whatcha think? 

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5 minutes ago, Espa said:

Hey guys! Just had a thought I'd like to share, but not sure at all if it would actually improve server performance so I'll need our more Tech-Savvy people to chime in :D

If you guys have any other creative ideas to improve Server Performance, please let us know!

The Idea!

Alright, so simply my idea is to take all of the existing items that spawn over the CLE on the floors of designated buildings and placing them within World Containers inside the buildings, such as boxes, wardrobes, crates, tables, and etc..

By doing this, I believe it would remove the burden these items would place on the Server Load by removing these from actively being loaded across Chernarus, but rather would only activate when in the presence of a player who was TAB'd over it (Searching it). If I'm correct, it would take hundreds of items off the server load and increase server performance as well as getting players in the habit of actually searching homes instead of looking to see if anything is sitting in a room and then boogieing out.

Ideas, criticisms, creative solutions? Whatcha think? 

That would actually work yeah. Im sure it was considered to make items predetermined on server startup but actually SPAWN IN when the container is opened.

 

There might be a reason why it's not that way for all loot.

 

Im thinking cause in an apocalyptic scenario loot will be scattered because people would throw everything everywhere in a panic to get valuables and head for the hills, yknow?

 

Good thoughts on it friend:)

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By removing them from the CLE you will cause a disbalance in the spawning rate of the items, and the loot economy could be rendered useless :/

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1 minute ago, exwoll said:

By removing them from the CLE you will cause a disbalance in the spawning rate of the items, and the loot economy could be rendered useless :/

I agree with this

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1 minute ago, exwoll said:

By removing them from the CLE you will cause a disbalance in the spawning rate of the items, and the loot economy could be rendered useless :/

I don't mean removing them from the CLE, just in how they're loaded in from it. Like, the designated amounts would remain the same but only activate in the proximity of a searching player - Then unactivate once the player has left the search. 

3 minutes ago, dorn956 said:

Im thinking cause in an apocalyptic scenario loot will be scattered because people would throw everything everywhere in a panic to get valuables and head for the hills

And I totally get it from a realistic point of view to find things on the ground would be better, but if this change were to dramatically increase server performance (Thus the whole game), I'd opt for a better running game haha

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Would be hard to get an idea about this. I suggested a similar thing for trash and useless items , aswell as hoses interiors, but there wasn´t any reply from the devs about how would this work out. 

I only hope they are reading these suggestions and taking in count. The only thing you get from them in this subforum is a like from time time XD

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Just now, Espa said:

I don't mean removing them from the CLE, just in how they're loaded in from it. Like, the designated amounts would remain the same but only activate in the proximity of a searching player - Then unactivate once the player has left the search. 

And I totally get it from a realistic point of view to find things on the ground would be better, but if this change were to dramatically increase server performance (Thus the whole game), I'd opt for a better running game haha

I love your willingness to sacrifice atmosphere for performance. Even though I don't agree with that specific circumstance of a trade, I do appreciate that you have the games better benefit in mind. Seeing the bigger picture. Beans to you, my man.

 

I think a compromise would be to simply reduce the number of items not in world containers instead of eliminating them completely. Was that what you were aiming for?

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9 minutes ago, dorn956 said:

I love your willingness to sacrifice atmosphere for performance. Even though I don't agree with that specific circumstance of a trade, I do appreciate that you have the games better benefit in mind. Seeing the bigger picture. Beans to you, my man.

 

I think a compromise would be to simply reduce the number of items not in world containers instead of eliminating them completely. Was that what you were aiming for?

Thanks man! I'm essentially just thinking of any creative ideas to reduce server load and lag so that the core game itself runs as it shoud. The idea that hundreds of items are sitting in places all over Chernarus just taking up server resources just doesn't seem like the most efficient or effective use of limited resources. 

So any way to cut down on that use is a plus to be used elsewhere or just for the servers benefit. If certain goods could be left out in the open, like tires and guns, so be it! I just want DayZ to feel much smoother for everyone. 

Also, the addition of having to check over certain areas with TAB to find all the loot would make looting take a bit longer and thus more satisfying/realistic.

Edited by Espa

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For those who want to get a better view of Espa's idea: in all/certain Arma 3 DayZ(-like) mods loot is contained in containers like a cardboard box, suitcases, bags, etc. You need to select the gear option on a specific container to see the loot inside.

Personally I'm against this idea because it will take away a massive chunk of the immersion. Not only that, looting would be very easy and tedious. Above all that, it will actually only help a little bit with performance.

The reason for this is because they load in every container item as soon as you're in the render distance. I really wonder why they chose for this particular method because you can clearly see this when you run up to a big camp, you will get an huge desync bubble. This is all the items loading in. Not only is it weird that they would let the items in tents load in at around 200 m but it's also highly immersion breaking because you immediately know that you're in the vicinity of someone's camp.

Still, if it would be an huge increase in performance, I don't want to lose that immersion. I rather have them tweak, try and reiterate on the netcode than to lose such a big chunk of immersion, which is a big thing in DayZ.

Edited by IMT
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Just now, Espa said:

Thanks man! I'm essentially just thinking of any creative ideas to reduce server load and lag so that the core game itself runs as it shoud. The idea that hundreds of items are sitting in places all over Chernarus just taking up server resources just doesn't seem like the most efficient or effective use of limited resources. 

So any way to cut down on that use is a plus to be used elsewhere or just for the servers benefit. If certain goods could be left out in the open, like tires and guns, so be it! I just want DayZ to feel much smoother for everyone. 

If they don't already - cause only devs would truly know - maybe items should spawn in when players are in the vicinity of X Km's? Not sure how it would work but it's good food for thought. Maybe it'll work like background updates or something. The item and all information will load up one at a time and simply "fade in" to existence after it's done loading. Maybe some items are easier to render than others and they should not all render at the same time, but in order by priority or how easy it is to load them up. That might assist with trash-caused lag.

 

Or even this - all items are generated upon server startup (which is how I believe it already is), and then items not within x Km's of a player will be compressed to a smaller memory format. So this way they are preloaded and all the engine needs to do is unzip them instead of load all of it up. I think that makes sense? I'm not the best with understanding how those things work but it sounds correct to me

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You both bring up pretty good points here, and I believe that looting method was in Epoch, but I would hope that for the new system that the new Arma series and the continuance of DayZ would be run on a much more powerful setup in Enforce. Like I said before, I'm not really sure how much this would improve performance and I do see the downside to this in resulting from taking away from realism in scattered goods, but there has got to be a better way of optimizing the server resources brought upon by the CLE. Dorn's idea is pretty decent actually. . But only if it could be implemented in such a way that you don't notice the game uploading the items onto the field in a mini-second stutter, or a visual discoloration, etc.

The Netcode I know nothing about, actually. If that's a big reason for it also, I would love to know why it hasn't been the top priority

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1 minute ago, Espa said:

You both bring up pretty good points here, and I believe that looting method was in Epoch, but I would hope that for the new system that the new Arma series and the continuance of DayZ would be run on a much more powerful setup in Enforce. Like I said before, I'm not really sure how much this would improve performance and I do see the downside to this in resulting from taking away from realism in scattered goods, but there has got to be a better way of optimizing the server resources brought upon by the CLE. Dorn's idea is pretty decent actually. . But only if it could be implemented in such a way that you don't notice the game uploading the items onto the field in a mini-second stutter, or a visual discoloration, etc.

The Netcode I know nothing about, actually. If that's a big reason for it also, I would love to know why it hasn't been the top priority

You know how if you're running with your render distance way high you see buildings start to magically appear one by one and textures just pop into place after the base blob has been set? Normally that doesn't stutter any fps. I'm thinking items can spawn in with that method.

First the data, then a primitive low-poly mesh with primitive solid colored textures, and then a detailed mesh, followed by detailed textures, followed by shadow implementation, how it effects lighting, collision mechanics (if applicable), and finally (if I'm not missing anything, which I probably am), intractability. 

What do you think, Espa?

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The idea sounds good, but it is the opposite. The server does not have to render or render anything, the server "only" manages a database with all items, containers would then also represent an item and would be another entry in the DB. The CLE itself has rather low priority in the core program which concerns the time factor, the exchange of the player data and also active actions from AI are first priority. The idea with the containers brings the server even more work, but with the client it looks different, this benefits from "less" polygons.

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1 hour ago, Espa said:

You both bring up pretty good points here, and I believe that looting method was in Epoch, but I would hope that for the new system that the new Arma series and the continuance of DayZ would be run on a much more powerful setup in Enforce. Like I said before, I'm not really sure how much this would improve performance and I do see the downside to this in resulting from taking away from realism in scattered goods, but there has got to be a better way of optimizing the server resources brought upon by the CLE. Dorn's idea is pretty decent actually. . But only if it could be implemented in such a way that you don't notice the game uploading the items onto the field in a mini-second stutter, or a visual discoloration, etc.

The Netcode I know nothing about, actually. If that's a big reason for it also, I would love to know why it hasn't been the top priority

The netcode has always been a priority for them as far as I know but it is a complicated subject. I'm pretty sure they want a good tuned game in the end as well which plays stable, low or high pop.

53 minutes ago, Sqeezorz said:

The idea sounds good, but it is the opposite. The server does not have to render or render anything, the server "only" manages a database with all items, containers would then also represent an item and would be another entry in the DB. The CLE itself has rather low priority in the core program which concerns the time factor, the exchange of the player data and also active actions from AI are first priority. The idea with the containers brings the server even more work, but with the client it looks different, this benefits from "less" polygons.

It will make a difference for sure but I agree that the CLE isn't the one which causes performance issues. It's indeed the player iself, vehicles and AI which are the most resource intensive.

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A form of proximity-based compression scripts would probably be suitable to help reduce lag. However, I myself do not know how difficult it would be to have assets essentially compress as simply as I'm wording it to be. I'm not sure if that's a simple task or not to actually execute the compression - let alone make the coding for it to happen.

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