Not Enought Hamsters

[Askip]

The treadmill that is an excuse for the GS system must be powering a PS2 with a 14.4 modem, I could not hunt in OTF last night due to the major lag caused by the Landing invasion.

When will Simu enter the 21st century? How much crunching power can it take to drive a text based game? Sheesh.

:D

[Taernath]

It's a systemic problem inherited from GSL. Can't fix it without rewriting the game.

[Parkbandit]

The treadmill that is an excuse for the GS system must be powering a PS2 with a 14.4 modem, I could not hunt in OTF last night due to the major lag caused by the Landing invasion.

When will Simu enter the 21st century? How much crunching power can it take to drive a text based game? Sheesh.

:D

You are playing a 30 year old, text based, roleplaying game.

Unplayable lag is part of the nostalgia.

[Parkbandit]

It's a systemic problem inherited from GSL. Can't fix it without rewriting the game.

I know that is what they say.. but that would matter if the computer hadn't advanced at all.

Here's a chart comparing 1995 to today.



Part

1995 PC

2012 PC



Memory

8mb at $400 per 4 MB

4 gigabytes is common…, which is 4,000 megabytes



Hard Drive

400 to 1000 megabytes

500 Gigabytes is low end… which is 500,000 megabytes. 500 GB can be as low as $80. Terabyte drives are common (1,000,000 megabytes) for less than the cost of a 1994, 400MB drive



Processor

33MHz

4,000 MHz+ with multiple cores and countless optimizations (clock speed is not a clear measurement for processing power)



Video

24-bit accelerated

PCI Express 2 (replacing PCI, and then AGP) with 1-2 Gigabytes of dedicated RAM, for about $250



Monitor

14” CRT

22” wide screen LCD/LED



Sound

Sound Blaster 16 (16-bit)

24-bit, PCI Express, 3d, quad core processors with onboard RAM



Modem

28.8

Obsolete, except for users in very rural areas



Optical Disk

2x CD-ROM

BluRay, DVD, some CD-ROM left…

[Parkbandit]

Let's just say the chart didn't translate well... because the difference between computers in 1995 and today broke it.

https://www.relativelyinteresting.com/comparing-todays-computers-to-1995s/

And yea.. I'm not fixing it.

[Taernath]

Let's just say the chart didn't translate well... because the difference between computers in 1995 and today broke it.

https://www.relativelyinteresting.com/comparing-todays-computers-to-1995s/

And yea.. I'm not fixing it.

It's not a hardware issue though. You can upgrade the servers to state-of-the-art tubes and it probably wouldn't change much. GSL, apparently, can only handle so many inputs before clogging up. That's why there's lag during invasions and large player events.

[Stumplicker]

Even modern games that work like this lag when you get too much data pushed through in text form. For example, try playing a Paradox game (EU4, HoI4, Stellaris) at high speed on a computer with a just ok processor. Gemstone is marked up text, going through in large quantities to many different computers at once, with nothing based clientside. Yes, computers are faster now, but unless as Taernath said, you rewrite how the game functions on the base level, which is basically remaking it entirely, you don't fix this particular issue.

[wetsand]

I already know the answer to this;

But just think how smooth future development and coding would be if Simutronics hired a small team to rewrite the base code in a better more robust language/engine. Once that was completed there would be literally millions of people that posses the knowledge to add/develop code, instead of the few that seem to have a death grip on the system based on the fact they are the only ones that know the system.

[Neovik1]

How did GS run well back when there was 2k+ people playing?

[Stumplicker]

How did GS run well back when there was 2k+ people playing?

It had fewer ambients, shorter text, and your connection was slower. It didn't run faster. There was less data going through and you could only receive it at 14,000 baud. The problem is only noticeable now that we all have future-internet and the text is all seven times as long as it was in 1995. Weren't no wizards casting AoE fireballs that sent 150 lines to 15 people in the room every 3 seconds in the 90s. It also wasn't all marked up in XML for the client as far as I know at that point.

[Avaia]

How did GS run well back when there was 2k+ people playing?

I was thinking about this earlier and I can't really recall, but my suspicion is that it didn't. That there was a general level of lagging to the game that we were just used to. Certainly during invasions the game would start to freeze up. Lag is nth degree more annoying these days because most of the time there is none whatsoever.

[Gelston]

GS was always lagging back then. We just blamed it in AOL.

[Taernath]

How did GS run well back when there was 2k+ people playing?

Roughly the same as it does now. There were more concurrent users but lich didn't exist and automated scripting was limited to Wizard FE stuff.

I remember being at the assassination of Empress Mynal'a'lly'''anl'ana in 2002? - once they dropped the room silence the lag was so bad you couldn't do anything until you were thrown in jail.

[Avaia]

It had fewer ambients, shorter text, and your connection was slower. It didn't run faster. There was less data going through and you could only receive it at 14,000 baud. The problem is only noticeable now that we all have future-internet and the text is all seven times as long as it was in 1995. Weren't no wizards casting AoE fireballs that sent 150 lines to 15 people in the room every 3 seconds in the 90s. It also wasn't all marked up in XML for the client as far as I know at that point.

I wonder how much more data per second(or whatever fraction of a second you measure such things in) is being run through the servers now than there was 20 years ago.

[Stumplicker]

I wonder how much more data per second(or whatever fraction of a second you measure such things in) is being run through the servers now than there was 20 years ago.

More I'm sure, but that's not really the lag part. You can always get a faster internet connection. The lag comes from the processor not being able to handle all the simultaneous plain text being sent at the same time in an invasion, or a big Reim group, et cetera, through presumably a single core. XML is notoriously laggy as a markup language. That's why games that used it most often were limited to turn based affairs, like Civilization 3 and 4. Paradox games don't use XML, but they do use a lot of plain text that gets processed a lot of times very quickly, and they run into the same problem. You can even notice the lag from it on a single computer by turning links on and off in Stormfront (do so at a dreavening without the ;dreavening script running for maximum effect). Your processor has trouble handling just one thread of XML and assigning links to it. The server itself sends dozens of those threads simultaneously when you get big groups of people together seeing lots of the same thing.

[Methais]

Game’s been crashing more often too.

Probably Estild’s fault.

[Methais]

How did GS run well back when there was 2k+ people playing?

I remember hitting my next attack command when my RT showed 2 seconds left so that my attacks would come out on time.

Plus everyone was on dialup, and the only scripting was .wiz and .cmd scripts, which weren’t nearly as capable of the stuff Lich can do.

People travelled from place to place manually, uphill both ways, sometimes having to stop to check our map printouts for the spots our muscle memory fucked up on or hasn’t developed yet.

AND BY GOLLY WE LOVED IT!!!!

[Clunk]

I remember hitting my next attack command when my RT showed 2 seconds left so that my attacks would come out on time.

Plus everyone was on dialup, and the only scripting was .wiz and .cmd scripts, which weren’t nearly as capable of the stuff Lich can do.

People travelled from place to place manually, uphill both ways, sometimes having to stop to check our map printouts for the spots our muscle memory fucked up on or hasn’t developed yet.

AND BY GOLLY WE LOVED IT!!!!


Is Clunk the only one who still travels that way?


And, nearly every time I join a group that is travelling by script, I make sure to turn my room descriptions off.



Clunk

[Avaia]

I remember hitting my next attack command when my RT showed 2 seconds left so that my attacks would come out on time.

I had forgotten all about that! There was an art to timing the lag, it's true. Ah, memories. :medieval:

[Gelston]

The game went down a lot more often than people are remembering too.

[Stumplicker]

That AOL chatroom used to fill up so fast when the game crashed.

[Gelston]

I miss the old AOL forums. They didn't call them forums though, they called it something else. It had Zepaths maps and everything on there.

[RichardCranium]

I miss the old AOL forums. They didn't call them forums though, they called it something else. It had Zepaths maps and everything on there.

Bel's BBB or something like that.

[Gelston]

Bel's BBB or something like that.

No. It was forums connected to the game on AOL. I'm pretty sure they were owned by GS.

[Taernath]

All I remember was there was a chat room and links to sites like Bel's and Zepath's. Eventually webrings became a thing and everyone joined that.

[Gelston]

All I remember was there was a chat room and links to sites like Bel's and Zepath's. Eventually webrings became a thing and everyone joined that.

I think it was an AOL Bulletin Board system or something. You didn't leave AOL's UI to use it.

[Nordred]

I've still got my Bat-Hamster alter scroll.

[Candor]

Is Clunk the only one who still travels that way?

Nope :)

[Neovik1]

I remember hitting my next attack command when my RT showed 2 seconds left so that my attacks would come out on time.

Plus everyone was on dialup, and the only scripting was .wiz and .cmd scripts, which weren’t nearly as capable of the stuff Lich can do.

People travelled from place to place manually, uphill both ways, sometimes having to stop to check our map printouts for the spots our muscle memory fucked up on or hasn’t developed yet.

AND BY GOLLY WE LOVED IT!!!!

Hahah! I definitely don’t miss having all the maps printed out on my desk. I remember having to draw a map on paper at one point. I remember playing some space text based game back then where you traded with different player ran planets. But can’t remember the name.

[Neovik1]

Definitely great times!

[Murrandii]

eh….

How about a couple of servers then? In this town, you use server A, in that town, you pass via server B and so on.

Or just split the big stuff on a dedicated server (like those sanctum stuff).

[audioserf]

Hahah! I definitely don’t miss having all the maps printed out on my desk. I remember having to draw a map on paper at one point. I remember playing some space text based game back then where you traded with different player ran planets. But can’t remember the name.

That was probably Federation, which I played on BBS that also had L.O.R.D (Legend of the Red Dragon) those were good times!

[Stumplicker]

eh….

How about a couple of servers then? In this town, you use server A, in that town, you pass via server B and so on.

Or just split the big stuff on a dedicated server (like those sanctum stuff).

That goes back to the "rewriting the entire core engine of the game" part of things, which is what has to happen for something like that to work. They just aren't going to put that kind of development into the game, especially not on something that would likely cause a giant wave of new bugs and crashes for years going forward. I know I wouldn't in their position.

[Neovik1]

That was probably Federation, which I played on BBS that also had L.O.R.D (Legend of the Red Dragon) those were good times!

Federation sounds right. You haul stuff from a warehouse you buy on a planet and sell to another planet for more. That’s all I could really remember. Think you had to talk to the planet owners so you could setup a warehouse on their planet or something.

[Taernath]

That was probably Federation, which I played on BBS that also had L.O.R.D (Legend of the Red Dragon) those were good times!


Players can take a certain number of actions every day. Actions could be to fight monsters in the forest, attack other players or to attempt to slay the Red Dragon itself. In addition, every day a player can send a "flirt" to another player character which may range from a shy wink, to sex, to a marriage proposal. Sometimes this can be done more than once a day. Sex may result in contracting sexually transmitted diseases, and female characters might become pregnant.[2]

Goddamn, games were different back then.

Anyone remember another choose-your-own adventure type game where you had to fight a dragon? I'm pretty sure it was on Prodigy and the final battle gave you a list of places to stab the dragon, but only one worked (his spine) and if you did anything else you'd die and have to start over. It took me forever to finish it, but once I did I went looking for other games like it and found Gemstone.


Federation sounds right. You haul stuff from a warehouse you buy on a planet and sell to another planet for more. That’s all I could really remember. Think you had to talk to the planet owners so you could setup a warehouse on their planet or something.

TradeWars 2002?

[Candor]

Federation sounds right. You haul stuff from a warehouse you buy on a planet and sell to another planet for more. That’s all I could really remember. Think you had to talk to the planet owners so you could setup a warehouse on their planet or something.

Yeah it was probably Federation - I also played it. I remember having to wait in line for several days to do a quest (only one player could do it at a time, and there was a waiting period between attempts) so I could eventually own a planet. I got tired of the game before that happened though.

[Neovik1]

Goddamn, games were different back then.

Anyone remember another choose-your-own adventure type game where you had to fight a dragon? I'm pretty sure it was on Prodigy and the final battle gave you a list of places to stab the dragon, but only one worked (his spine) and if you did anything else you'd die and have to start over. It took me forever to finish it, but once I did I went looking for other games like it and found Gemstone.



TradeWars 2002?

I think it might of been federation. I remember playing both GS and this game at the same time when GS was on AOL.

[Donquix]

I think it might of been federation. I remember playing both GS and this game at the same time when GS was on AOL.

There was Dragon's Gate and Federation also on aol. I'm assuming it was the former. Federation was EVE jr. and i didn't get deep into it but man...if there was a dragon in that bitch.

[drumpel]

Is Clunk the only one who still travels that way?


And, nearly every time I join a group that is travelling by script, I make sure to turn my room descriptions off.



Clunk

I used to only travel by hand and the odd SF script (generally from landing to EN). However, I did used to have the whole, entire walk from Landing North Gate to Ta'Illistim gate memorized. I knew when to toss up 506 for the swamp spots and rope ladder/bridge to cross.

The walk from Solhaven to IMT? No problem, knew it all.

IMT to Landing? Not a problem.

Only thing I still retain is how to get to Bonespear from North Market in Solhaven....I've gotten lazy in my older age and use ;go2 too much......nah, I just like typing less these days.