MechWarrior: Living Legends

First of all, I read the mod.moddb.com MechWarrior page and saw this "Fully destructible environments in DX10". This concerns me a little bit as a DX9 user. Say I am hiding behind a building and to a DX10 user it's destroyed but to me it isn't. That causes a few problems. That's if I'm understanding what I read.

Don't worry, it's the server that determines destructability of the environment. We definately don't recommend it over internet as bandwidth goes from about 4-10 kbps per user to about 200-500 kbps... and server load gets pretty high as well. But we wanted to make sure to support it.

So when I've built my way to expensive new dx10 computer, I hardy get to destroy environments, as most games wont have the option turned on, because of the bandwith and server issue's ? ?

Am i misinterpreting ? ?

You need fast servers and lots & lots of internet bandwidth to get desctructive environments running properly in an online Crysis match.


For alot of people this just isn't doable. An ultra fast computer doesn't mean ultra fast online gaming, you need the bandwidth aswell.

As TheAnimal said, most of it is bandwidth. Fast servers, not so much.. Obviously you don't want to be hosted on a Pentium 4 but any of the newer Single Cores and Dual Core systems with 2-4GB should be good to go..

ToeBall would have more insight into this than I would though..

Well, put it this way... to host a DX9 game doesn't take very much. I've actually got a dedicated server up and running to see if any bugs show up over time. We did some load testing and it never really went over 30% supporting 4 users (some of our vehicles still cause funny physics errors which we're fixing) and typically hovered around 10% load. My uber-leet server is a dual P3-1ghz machine with 1.5 GB of RAM. bandwidth was around 3kbps per user so hosting a 32 player game isn't a problem. Dialup gaming is, not impossible, bt extreemly unlikely.

When DX10 is turned on, that same server, instead of peaking at 30% pegs both CPU's at 100% and has physics time going backwards cause it can't keep up. Bandwidth spikes to, as I said 200-500kbps during DX10 events. With a C2D or C2Q powering the server it's not a big deal on a LAN to run the fully destructable environment, but over the internet it might be pretty rouugh playing since, if you think about this, the server has to have as much bandwidth as the sum of the player's internet connections when the environment is getting torn apart, and lets face it, that's what mechs do..

If there has ever been a better reason for a LAN party, I've never heard it. 

Once I moved we gotta set something up .. gonna tell my wife I have "an important meeting" in your hometown - and then we get drunk and play a whole weekend! Muha!

 :'(

Man.. this is kind of a big mood-killer..
no DX10 .. that was the cherry on top of MWLL..

Guess I'll keep my euros in my pocket then..
DX9 requirements are a lot cheaper..

Nevertheless I'm still overjoyed by knowing MWLL is coming..

If again I am misinterpreting, pls tell me that there will be some, or at least one, DX10 server..
(me residing in Europe wont help either, will it?  bandwith wise.. I will upgrade it upon release MWLL)

imho DX10 is overrated :)

It depends.
There will be DX10 servers if people can afford a server to handle it, you could host one yourself. There ya go. There's one DX10 server! It's not impossible, it's just improbable!

Stupid me..  thinking the servers were only from  Crytek / Crysis / MWLL        Arrrgghh   
haven't been playing online games for a longgg time, the whole 'computer thing' I kinda let go off couple years back when my (IT)work was hell.. couldn't bring myself to be interested anymore.. (not long after, I quit the job and never went back to IT work)

But now.. Since I saw Crysis DX10 and short after I found MW:LL, only to see it coming out as a Crysis DX10 mod.. I was like   :o  ;D  8)
It got me right back into it. I check the hardware news daily, only to find a 'proper' hardware config to play this at a respectable resolution in DX10 with High settings..

I sincerely hope that a (or more) guru from Europe decides to host a server in DX10  :P
Perhaps i can look into it myself, however, with the current salary and mortgage I think I can only afford a high end client system (by not going on vakation)..

Rest assured.. either DX9 or preferably DX10, I will spend many hours on-line with this.. I just know it !

@Molkex: Great to hear that :D

Would it be possible to run a DX10 server/game but turn off the destructible environment? Is that possible? If the DE's are what is going to cause huge lag and/or network traffic, why not just switch them off, or have an option/version of the game without them. Then we could still see all the atmospheric eye candy without time running backwards on us  ;)

I thought you could enable most, if not all DX10 effects on DX9 with config file edits, or a downloaded config file. I think the only thing you -can't- have is destructible environments. I could be completely wrong cuz I just make t3h shiny, but I know my config enabled practically all DX10 effects under DX9 for a slight performance hit.

We kind of require destructible environments... At least to my knowledge we do, otherwise 'mechs would have a real hard time traversing ground that isn't a road.

In single player you could force all DX10 settings through console variables (such as dynamic sunbeams, etc).  It would run fine too as long as you had a good DX10-capable video card that didn't blow chunks.  You could have destructable enviornments in DX9 and DX10 for single player.

In Crysis multiplayer, the same is possible HOWEVER destructable enviornments were restricted to DX10, along with day+night cylces.

But, it turns out you don't need DX10 for descructible enviornments and day+night cycles.  I've played on a server once that was modded through the admin console to run a day+night cycles, and it was DX9.  There is also sucessfully a DX9 multiplayer destruction physics mod in the works last I heard.

Our levels have all been running TOD in DX9. That wasn't part of the mod unless someone did that before I joined.

It was always possible in DX9, but Crysis multiplayer for whatever reason by default in the server what-nots has it disabled for DX9.  Don't ask me why :P

Well... won't take too much... All I gotta do is addict my CoD4 clan into this game and arrange a place to set a LAN, and we are ready to go... But Clan fights will have to be LAN fights too to make it fun huh? So would be interesting... Having a bit more socialization in Game Fights... Geeks learning social skills... weird!

I work for cablevision in the NY/CT/NJ/LI area and our lightpath has some massive bandwidth (up to 1000MBPS per connection). Granted it would be expensive as hell for you guys, but if you're at all concerned aside from bandwidth with the read/write functions on the harddrive (if there are any...) depending on how many dedicated servers you set up, SSD's are the way to go.

EVE online switched from Raid over to SSD's and they showed a 4000% increase in performance.  And let me tell you, lag used to be HORRIBLE just for thumbnail views!

Nah, our servers only are harddrive intensive while loading the levels, takes between 9 sec on a mode 5 raid with 15k rpm hdd's and 34 seconds on my dual p3 with a single 7200 rpm IDE drive... a couple of gigs of ram are recommended. This is all DX9 testing, btw.

Solid state hard drives are still very expensive and are not mainstream yet. I have however been waiting eagerly for these for awhile. :D

They're not mainstream, but they're so quick with the read/write functions that you don't need anything too large. The only thing that's going to be coming down in price soon will be LCD monitors by 30-40% of ASP this year. Might be a good time to pick up a 24". Those damn 30"ers will never come down below 1k >:O

Now, do you really need a nice 30"?

I mean, I still think my 21" widescreen is big  :D

I don't need them for real estate, but i've got a 21" CRT that does 2048x1536. I need the pixel estate, not the screen size. Unfortunately, the only thing that beats my CRT is a 30"er. Anything less and the native resolution drops to 1920 which doesn't justify the purchase for me. Nevermind the CRT costing me 180$ at the time, so in comparison, it's a sour deal all around.

Interesting. My next door neighbor is an engineer for AT&T. I was just complaining about my crappy DSL connection (they're coming to look at it) and he was telling me about the next-gen connection speeds - 12 MBps, x2 (24Mbps) - somehow dual lines...will be the next big thing. Put that with those SSDs and a good system...

stock cablevision speeds at 15/2, and boost (next tier) is 30/5 and then you have lightpath. (down/up mbps)

once i get my mmo done (which will take me a few years to do >_>) i plan on having 1000mbps once i get 1500 subscribers. So .666 mbps per user, or 83KB/s potential bandwidth per person. Since the way i'm going to have the damage physics done, i should be able to handle the burst data streams to users for destructible mechs.

EDIT: BTW, my rig at it's best on air:

Q6600 @ 3.6
Abit IX38 @ 1950FSB
4GB DDR2-800 @ 975
2x2900Pro's @ 800/850 each.

It's a tame monster. Should chew up operations as a server if i need it. By the time my mmo is ready i'll probably have a skulltrail server with 16 cores on it with an SSD raid array maybe and use my current rig as a backup server.

We got 16 and 25 MBit already in bigger cities. Though I don't recommend it in populated areas - lines tend to get clogged up by all the high speed users and that kills the big speed advantage on the line :)

As for the SSDs: As soon as they get cheaper I get me one. With SSDs you can actually use Vista at good speeds. Seen it in a Thinkpad with Vista, loaded up in 20 seconds. Awsce!

From Fudzilla.com:
02-07-2008:
" The new Core series will be backed by a two-year warranty and the MSRPs for the 32, 64 and 128GB models are set at $169, $259 and $479. "

Ouchies.

But then again, you never really gave a shit about space or money when you got those 15,000 RPM raptors eh? And these outperform raptors at speed AND at space. Granted they need to get a bit larger in terms of space for anyone to REALLY consider it on the mass market, but it's still an excellent jump in the field of hard drives. They've only been the slowest thing in our PC's since your fathers brother's computer >_>

Do Raptors come in 15K RPM? I thought 10K was it. The ones I was talking about were SCSI.

Yeah the 15k SCSI raptors. it's 5400/7200/10000/15000/SSD

my god 15krpm!? that's insane! Are they loud when they are seeking?

Naw it's ok. The sound of the turning disks is at higher frequency, that's about it. At least for the ones I heard :)

That's just crazy speed. Personally i still use a pretty standard 7200 and am very happy with both of them. Not even sure how big of a difference it would be stepping up. Wouldn't it bottleneck the Sata connection at that rate?

Specifications for SATA II are 300 MB/s - so I wouldn't worry about that at all :D

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#SATA_3.0_Gbit.2Fs

As you can see here : http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/HDD-SATA-VelociRaptor,1914-10.html disks are still far off those limits (when used as a singled drive). And since it's a serial connection you should still have all the speed with 2 disks in RAID0. SSDs might be faster in the future and touch the limits of SATA II

Sorry for digging up an older topic but is it possible that MWLL can have basic physics in Multiplayer DX 9? Just wondering, because while i have vista and a 9600GT, Vista and DX 10 don't like each other.

I haven't had any problems with Vista and DX10 at all, at least not in Crysis.

Pay for it anyways, you will run dx9 at a level where it looks absolutely fantastic and doesn't lag you a bit.

Direct X 10 is integrated into the vista OS it should work perfectly without any effort on your part.  Can you explain what you mean by they don't like each other?

Aurora Paradox

Yes we have succesfully intergrated physics from dx10 into dx9. the only stipulation is that the server must be running the dx10 version of the map. Regardless of wether or not the client has dx10 or dx9 they will experience destructible physics.

 :o That is frellin sweet!

Ooo nice to know.

I imagine though such things shouldn't be done overboard on maps simply due to server load if too many physics are going on.

Then again I have no idea how Crysis handles physics in reguards to servers/clients and how efficent it is at it.

It's EXTREMELY bandwidth intensive. I wouldn't recomend using it outside of LAN play.

Hugh! ToeBall has spoken! :D Can't wait for a LAN party to try that stuff out!

So does that mean we're gonna have a LAN party at Toeball's? WUT

Better, I can get at the pipe at the University of Houston... 260 megabits of server goodness...

Hell, I'd fly out for a LAN at Houston!  ;)

Wouldn't be awesome if we could get MWLL at those big LAN events?  :o

Although I think the only mod they ever allow at those would be CS :P

That's up to the fans. CS was a great mod with a big fanbase. I may be biased but I think MWLL is an even better mod with a much better and bigger fanbase.

Bigger? No. Better? Yes.

CS is enormously massive.

Vista seems to hate all my 3d games. :(

Maybe its the fact that it's running in 64 bits, but XP runs Crysis at about 24 fps, Vista runs it at about 7, same settings, just one is DX10, one is nine.

Even when they both are on nine, Vista still runs a good 10 fps slower than XP.

While Vista does run things a tad slower I have had no problems running any of my games.  Then again, I turned off all the "snazzy" features such as SuperFetch and Indexing because they drag the system down bad.

That's odd. I actually have 4 fps advantage in Vista 64 running Crysis over XP 64. They probably optimised it for the newer CPU's. My Q66 runs a higher load in Vista and the OS eats more RAM but the Q66 is under $200 now and RAM is cheap. It may be more of a resource hog but it does run faster if you give it more resources. The problem I have is that it's not the most reliable of OS's as alot of stuff tends to break. I find myself reinstalling every 3-6 months which is not too good. I've already switched my laptop to Fedora 9 64 bit and only use Vista when I can't go without, like working on MWLL.

department of redundant redundancy!!!

Wait! Quantifying the quantification is redundantly redundant?  :P

I always wanted to work for the Department of Redundancy Department.

Toe, have you battened the hatches down for Ike's arrival?

I don't know and I'm also uninformed!!

The department of redundant redundancy approved the redundancy so as to not obfuscate the issue and make the communicable emphasis on the retardedly stupid nature of CS and how massive and enormously large it is!

Yup, everyone I know is doing their best Tina Turner impression and getting ready to be hit by Ike. Stocked up on food and ammo and got plenty of fuel for the generator... bring it on.

How will this impact the mod effort?   ;D

I mean, I hope all goes well for you and yours.  ;)

We have all decided to batten down the hatches until Toeball emerges, so he doesn't feel like he's alone in this effort to stand up to Ike and not take his shit anymore.

You mean he's been making those German shi....errr....adult movies again?

Well, I got off work early today and don't have to be back till Monday so hopefully I'll get some work done, assuming I don't have to power my computer instead of the fridge with the generator.

omg that was so bad, yet I lol'd.... :D

That officially makes you a bad person, Tiger.  :D