I am on the ground I am on the ground I am on the ground I am on the ground HEY LISTEN



  • I'm making a crappy Minecraft server implementation and I decided to check the networking to see if the server was doing anything incredibly stupid.

    It wasn't.

    The client, on the other hand, was. Someone at Mojang thought it was a good idea to send 20 packets per second with 2 byte payloads even if nothing at all was happening in the game. This is over TCP, mind you.

    That's twelve kilobits of data per second being sent by the server. Twelve kilobits might not sound like a lot (heck, it's less than two kilobytes), but keep in mind that this twelve kilobits contains exactly zero data.

    The payload in each packet is identical: 0A01. That translates into "my feet are touching the ground". Twenty times per second, for every player on every Minecraft server.



  •  Have you tried spoutcraft? It does things differently. Maybe it also does this differently.



  •  The hillarious thing is that I instantly recognized this as being about Minecraft from the 25565 port number.

     Of course, I only know that because I start my Minecraft session by creating an SSH tunnel to the server I play on; not because I need the extra security, but because the compression helps mask the insanity.

     

     



  • I'm going to blame Notch for that, you can always blame Notch or Java for a Minecraft WTF. The reasoning is a shitty attempt at trying to detect flight so that server can kick the player off if no flight is turned on.



  • @delta534 said:

    I'm going to blame Notch for that, you can always blame Notch or Java for a Minecraft WTF. The reasoning is a shitty attempt at trying to detect flight so that server can kick the player off if no flight is turned on.
    Yes, ask the client if they're cheating. That's going to work.



  • Notch does not seem to be the sharpest tool in the shed with regards to both graphics code and network code.



  • @delta534 said:

    I'm going to blame Notch for that, you can always blame Notch or Java for a Minecraft WTF.
    I don't know about Java but as far as Notch goes I think this counterargument trumps pretty much everything: "I'm sorry I couldn't hear you over the sound of all the millions I'm making. How's that 9-5 job working out for you again?"



  • "Keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars!" - Casey Kasem



  • @DOA said:

    @delta534 said:

    I'm going to blame Notch for that, you can always blame Notch or Java for a Minecraft WTF.
    I don't know about Java but as far as Notch goes I think this counterargument trumps pretty much everything: "I'm sorry I couldn't hear you over the sound of all the millions I'm making. How's that 9-5 job working out for you again?"

    If it's stupid and it makes you millions of dollars then it's not stupid (unless you buy RIMM stock with your millions or ask JP Morgan to manage them for you).



  • @DOA said:

    I don't know about Java but as far as Notch goes I think this counterargument trumps pretty much everything: "I'm sorry I couldn't hear you over the sound of all the millions I'm making. How's that 9-5 job working out for you again?"

    He's not good at game design. He's not good at programming. He's not good at graphics. Fuck, he selected Java as the language to write this thing in! And Paypal as his payment processor! These are not intelligent decisions.

    Notch isn't talented in any way, he simply got lucky. It happens sometimes. Look at, say, George Lucas for example.

    I don't got nothing against the guy, although it would be nice if just for once he'd say "no comment" to a question from a journalist. But it does make me sad for the dozens of worthwhile products that have gotten ignored in the big Minecraft rush.



  • I have nothing against the guy and the amount of money he's made. It's things like trying to use a HD texture pack requires a mod to look right and possibly bring the game to a crawl depending on how big it is, when other games deal with it just fine are an issue. Also crashing with an out of memory error when 32 bit java is used on an 64 bit OS With the rendering distance set to max should no happen.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    He's not good at game design. He's not good at programming. He's not good at graphics.
    The first I just don't see. The second I'll take your word for it, because I haven't seen evidence to confirm or refute your observation. The third I consider to be unfair for reasons that I'm sure I've gone into before. @blakeyrat said:
    he selected Java as the language to write this thing in!
    I keep hearing this one and I can't say I disagree. However you have to keep in mind the requirements Notch was dealing with when selecting a language:

    • Compiled.
    • Memory managed because you have better things to do than chase memory leaks 
    • Cross-platform support because more customers means more money not to mention every casual gamer and his sister are using portable devices these days.
    • Proven OpenGL (or DirectX) support.
    • Game-related libraries/framework for keyboard/mouse input capture, sound, common math operations, etc
    • A language you, the developer is competent with because building a game is hard enough without having to figure out the programming language at the same time.

    Java may suck in many ways, but I've yet to see someone that can from experience suggest a reasonable alternative that satisfies all these conditions. @blakeyrat said:

    And Paypal as his payment processor!
    Fair enough, even he admitted that one blew up in his face.




  • @DOA said:

    Memory managed because you have better things to do than chase memory leaks
    Garbage collection prevents memory leaks... how?



  • @DOA said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    He's not good at game design. He's not good at programming. He's not good at graphics.
    The first I just don't see.

    He made a framework you could build a game with, but he did not make a game. The Terraria guys made a significantly better game, and Minecraft has been doing nothing but ripping-off Terraria features for the last year.

    @DOA said:

    I keep hearing this one and I can't say I disagree. However you have to keep in mind the requirements Notch was dealing with when selecting a language:

    • Compiled.

    Why?

    @DOA said:

    Java may suck in many ways, but I've yet to see someone that can from experience suggest a reasonable alternative that satisfies all these conditions.

    Yeah but that's only because you added in "compiled" without having any reason for it.

    @DOA said:

    Fair enough, even he admitted that one blew up in his face.

    Paypal has blown up in EVERYBODY'S face EVERY TIME IT'S BEEN USED! How stupid do you have to be to use Paypal?



  • @Ben L. said:

    Garbage collection prevents memory leaks... how?
    Pardon?

    Garbage collection is not a silver bullet but I think we've established by now that it's far better than the alternative in terms of developer productivity.

    @blakeyrat said:

    He made a framework you could build a game with, but he did not make a game. The Terraria guys made a significantly better game, and Minecraft has been doing nothing but ripping-off Terraria features for the last year.
    I've only seen videos of Terraria so I'm not very familiar with it, but I have to say this sounds like personal preference to me. Maybe you're looking for arcade action in a game that's just not aimed at that kind of gameplay? Also keep in mind Terraria is only 2D. An extra dimension is nothing to laugh at when dealing with game mechanics.@blakeyrat said:
    @DOA said:
    I keep hearing this one and I can't say I disagree. However you have to keep in mind the requirements Notch was dealing with when selecting a language:

    • Compiled.

    Why?

    ...because compiled languages are inherently faster than interpreted ones? It must have been obvious from the start he was building a resource hog.

     



  • @DOA said:

    I've only seen videos of Terraria so I'm not very familiar with it, but I have to say this sounds like personal preference to me. Maybe you're looking for arcade action in a game that's just not aimed at that kind of gameplay?

    ... yeah. Maybe you should not speak of Terraria right after admitting you don't know anything about it. BEHOLD MY SUBMARINE!

    @DOA said:

    Also keep in mind Terraria is only 2D. An extra dimension is nothing to laugh at when dealing with game mechanics.

    Terraria is 2D and fun. Minecraft is 3D and boring.

    @DOA said:

    ...because compiled languages are inherently faster than interpreted ones? It must have been obvious from the start he was building a resource hog.

    1. No they aren't. Or at least there's no inherent reason they are.

    2) I wager the Java runtime is significantly slower than most language's JIT compilers, due to the Java-ness. Moreover, I don't really see the difference between executing bytecode and executing JIT-compiled code in the first place.

    3) But that's all moot anyway, because video games don't even come close to stressing a CPU. Skyrim doesn't go over 30% CPU usage on my machine, and that's when it's running the physics library on the CPU instead of in the GPU. That's also Gamebryo, possibly the most bloated game engine in use today. 30% CPU usage. Skyrim.

    I think you're stuck in some weird fantasy 2002-land, where it's always 2002 forever! FOREVER! (Then again, even in 2002 the Gamebryo Morrowind wasn't really stressing my mid-range computer's CPU at all.)



  • @DOA said:

    ...because compiled languages are inherently faster than interpreted ones?

    This is wrong.

    @The Universal Truth said:

    Theoretically, any language may be compiled or interpreted, so this designation is applied purely because of common implementation practice and not some essential property of a language. Indeed, for some programming languages, there is little performance difference between an interpretive- or compiled-based approach to their implementation.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Terraria is 2D and fun. Minecraft is 3D and boring.

    I find Minecraft hugely boring but I just looked at Terraria and it reminds me of a mix between Supaplex, Megaman and a Geocities website with "Welcome to my website" following the cursor.



  • @Speakerphone Dude said:

    @DOA said:

    ...because compiled languages are inherently(in my experience) faster than interpreted ones?

    This is wrong.So fucking what?

    FTFM


  • @Ben L. said:

    @Speakerphone Dude said:
    @DOA said:

    ...because compiled languages are inherently(in my experience) faster than interpreted ones?

    This is wrong.So fucking what?

    FT181.FM

    There. At least your lame comment will save me from typing the url next time I want to listen to the same 5 songs playing in a loop.



  • @Speakerphone Dude said:

    @DOA said:

    ...because compiled languages are inherently faster than interpreted ones?

    This is wrong.

    @The Universal Truth said:

    Theoretically, any language may be compiled or interpreted, so this designation is applied purely because of common implementation practice and not some essential property of a language. Indeed, for some programming languages, there is little performance difference between an interpretive- or compiled-based approach to their implementation.

     

    While I guess there would be "little performance difference" between the compiled or interpretive approaches of a language like Brainfuck (the interpretive version may even be faster by virtue of taking less memory and thus paging less often), I do think that the implementation of a higher-level language is faster when you don't have to parse all numbers on-the-fly, lookup every variable or method name in a hash table, etc. I don't care about "entirely compiled before distributing" vs. JIT, though: I consider them both "compiled".

     



  • @Ben L. said:

    The payload in each packet is identical: 0A01. That translates into "my feet are touching the ground". Twenty times per second, for every player on every Minecraft server.

    At least it's not sending the full "my feet are touching the ground, here's where I am and where I'm looking" twenty times per second.

    It gets worse by the way. IIRC the official server uses the frequency of receiving these packets to gauge time for some things (like kicking you if you move faster than a certain speed, but if you send those packets twice as often, you can go at twice the speed)

    It's at least better than a certain mod that allows admins to spawn items where it was recently discovered that all authentication checks are done on the client, and the developer won't fix it because "it wasn't designed for security."



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Terraria is 2D and fun.

    I don't know.

    @blakeyrat said:

    Minecraft is 3D and boring.

    I disagree.

    @blakeyrat said:

    video games don't even come close to stressing a CPU. Skyrim doesn't go over 30% CPU usage on my machine
     

    How did you log that? Thing is that my fan is fanning like crazy when I ply teh gamez so I can only assume it's maxing my CPU (or regularly spikes it enough to heat it up real good).



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I wager the Java runtime is significantly slower than most language's JIT compilers, due to the Java-ness.

    Close, [url=http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u64q/which-programming-languages-are-fastest.php?java=on&gpp=on&calc=chart]except that the opposite is true[/url].
    To quote blakeyrat,
    @blakeyrat said:
    I think you're stuck in some weird fantasy 2002-land



  • @dhromed said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    video games don't even come close to stressing a CPU. Skyrim doesn't go over 30% CPU usage on my machine
     

    How did you log that?

    The super high tech amazingly creative method of having Task Manager running while playing and looking at it with my eyeballs.

    @dhromed said:

    Thing is that my fan is fanning like crazy when I ply teh gamez so I can only assume it's maxing my CPU (or regularly spikes it enough to heat it up real good).

    Is it the CPU fan, or the GPU fan, or the case fan? The latter two you'd expect to speed up regardless of language.



  • @Xyro said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    I wager the Java runtime is significantly slower than most language's JIT compilers, due to the Java-ness.

    Close, except that the opposite is true.

    Wow that is the most confusing website ever linked here. I've stared at it for like 3 minutes and I still have no clue what any of the numbers mean, how to read the ugly tiny chart, or why the holy shit they only tested the .net languages in Mono.

    But go back to my post and read FUCKING POINT THREE and then you will be replying to the ACTUAL POINT OF MY POST instead of just pedantic dickweeding around.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @DOA said:
    ...because compiled languages are inherently faster than interpreted ones? It must have been obvious from the start he was building a resource hog.
    1. No they aren't. Or at least there's no inherent reason they are.

    2) I wager the Java runtime is significantly slower than most language's JIT compilers, due to the Java-ness. Moreover, I don't really see the difference between executing bytecode and executing JIT-compiled code in the first place.

    3) But that's all moot anyway, because video games don't even come close to stressing a CPU. Skyrim doesn't go over 30% CPU usage on my machine, and that's when it's running the physics library on the CPU instead of in the GPU. That's also Gamebryo, possibly the most bloated game engine in use today. 30% CPU usage. Skyrim.

    I'm sorry, but I'll buy the interpreted language argument when I see a Minecraft killer written in whatever interpreted language it is you have in mind.

    As far as CPU usage goes I think you are greatly underestimating the potential Minecraft has to devour your machine. Unlike the vast majority of games (AAA titles included) any new mechanic that is introduced into the game has the potential to be duplicated a ridiculous amount of times because you know people will take it to the extreme. Take redstone circuits for example. Passing "electricity" from one block to the next needs trivial processing power but when you start to deal with hundreds if not thousands of such blocks it adds up. And of course right next door to the fancy circuitry is going to be a gazillion friendly mobs (chickens and the like) because someone wanted to built the largest farm evah and each one of those has to do collision detection and the like and right next to that there'll be something else that needs some processing per frame and before you know it your CPU fan is going full tilt trying to prevent a meltdown. Normally you can trade memory usage for CPU processing but in Minecraft you already have your back against the wall in regards to memory footprint so you don't have a lot of choices. 

    Minecraft's greatest problem is not its graphics or gameplay or language of choice. It's the fact that the resources of the average modern PC are nowhere near enough for this kind of game to reach its full potential. I'm pretty sure that if we all got quantum computers tomorrow, Mojang would make a Minecraft version that would blow your mind.

     



  • @DOA said:

    I'm sorry, but I'll buy the interpreted language argument that when I see a Minecraft killer written in whatever interpreted language it is you have in mind.

    Minecraft itself runs in C# on Xbox. Probably consumes a lot fewer resources than the Java version, too, considering how little CPU power the Xbox has compared to a typical gaming PC.

    Now obviously Minecraft isn't a "Minecraft-killer", but it does prove that Java was not necessary for the game.

    @DOA said:

    As far as CPU usage goes I think you are greatly underestimating the potential Minecraft has to devour your machine. Unlike the vast majority of games (AAA titles included) any new mechanic that is introduced into the game has the potential to be duplicated a ridiculous amount of times because you know people will take it to the extreme. Take redstone circuits for example. Passing "electricity" from one block to the next needs trivial processing power but when you start to deal with hundreds if not thousands of such blocks it adds up.

    You know how I know you haven't played Skyrim? (Or at least haven't downloaded any mods for it.)

    @DOA said:

    Minecraft's greatest problem is not its graphics or gameplay or language of choice.

    I doubt that.

    @DOA said:

    I'm pretty sure that if we all got quantum computers tomorrow, Mojang would make a Minecraft version that would blow your mind.

    I highly doubt that.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    @DOA said:
    @blakeyrat said:
    He's not good at game design. He's not good at programming. He's not good at graphics.
    The first I just don't see.

    He made a framework you could build a game with, but he did not make a game. The Terraria guys made a significantly better game, and Minecraft has been doing nothing but ripping-off Terraria features for the last year.

    @DOA said:

    I keep hearing this one and I can't say I disagree. However you have to keep in mind the requirements Notch was dealing with when selecting a language:

    • Compiled.

    Why?

    Probably because compiled languages are typically faster than interpreted ones.

    (Let's not get into edge cases here, I'm just trying to make a general point.)



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Wow that is the most confusing website ever linked here. I've stared at it for like 3 minutes and I still have no clue what any of the numbers mean, how to read the ugly tiny chart

    Basically you line up language benchmarks on one side and run times and other metrics of said benchmarks on the other and in the middle you get a friendly paper clip asking you if you want to write a letter.
    @blakeyrat said:
    or why the holy shit they only tested the .net languages in Mono.

    Because the benchmarking is done on Linux, and since .Net is only cross platform by certain weird definitions of the phrase, they had to use Mono. Obviously, the point isn't to compare Java on its prime architecture with C# on its prime architecture, it's just to show the benchmark reports. I don't know how JVM languages stack up against .Net languages, but I'd be very surprised if the same algorithm in Java had a noticeably different run time than in C#, at least if you're allowed to neglect startup time. Feel free to show me otherwise, because I'm genuinely curious. Previously Googling for answers only led me to a lot of stupid speculation from blogs and forums, that and several inconclusive microbenchmarks that didn't put one consistently above the other. (FWIW I program in both, but only Java will run on our Unix servers, being cross-platform and all.)

    @blakeyrat said:

    But go back to my post and read FUCKING POINT THREE

    @blakeyrat said:
    3) But that's all moot anyway, because video games don't even come close to stressing a CPU.

    Then why are you complaining about Java..?

    @blakeyrat said:

    replying to the ACTUAL POINT OF MY POST

    YOU DARE ACCUSE ME OF HIJACKING A THREAD??



  • Because Java is awful for reasons that have nothing to do with performance, duh. Do I really have to spell things like this out?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    The super high tech amazingly creative method of having Task Manager running while playing and looking at it with my eyeballs.
     

    Wow.

    Ok maybe I should try this new-fangled thing of running a game in a window or something (because I only have one luddite monitor)

    @blakeyrat said:

    Is it the CPU fan, or the GPU fan, or the case fan?

    CPU. GPU fan is manual speed only. My aftermarket fan can't be controlled automatically. My case fans generally don't make a sound at all.

     



  • @Xyro said:

    Close, except that the opposite is true.
     

    That site realizes it's the wrong question and responds thusly:

    No. Which of these programming language implementations have the fastest benchmark programs?

    So yeah.



  • Hey, dingbats. Java was a huge advantage for Minecraft because it allowed people to check out the free version in their browser, thus lowering the "try before you buy" barrier to essentially zero. This may very well be what pushed Minecraft over the edge from niche curiosity to cultural phenomenon.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Because Java is awful for reasons that have nothing to do with performance, duh.

    But... but you brought up the slowness.

    Btw, what is your biggest gripe with Java again? If it's 1) the language features, then I heartily agree with you. If it's 2) the verbose API, then I won't disagree out loud. If it's 3) vague security concerns about introducing a malware vector, then, well, I think we've had this discussion before... It's only issue in the wild are basically ones that could have used any available language platform. But I have a feeling it's 4) lingering bad feelings from the 90s.



  •  @Zylon said:

    Hey, dingbats. Java was a huge advantage for Minecraft because it allowed people to check out the free version in their browser, thus lowering the "try before you buy" barrier to essentially zero. This may very well be what pushed Minecraft over the edge from niche curiosity to cultural phenomenon.

    Someone should make a .Net plugin.

     



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @DOA said:
    I'm sorry, but I'll buy the interpreted language argument that when I see a Minecraft killer written in whatever interpreted language it is you have in mind.

    Minecraft itself runs in C# on Xbox. Probably consumes a lot fewer resources than the Java version, too, considering how little CPU power the Xbox has compared to a typical gaming PC.

    Now obviously Minecraft isn't a "Minecraft-killer", but it does prove that Java was not necessary for the game.

    Just because you can run Minecraft on a console doesn't mean you shouldn't be looking for performance. Besides even without any game development experience it's painfully obvious that the vast majority of non-trivial games are built on compiled languages.@blakeyrat said:
    You know how I know you haven't played Skyrim? (Or at least haven't downloaded any mods for it.)
    I have played Skyrim but no I haven't tried any mods. I'm not sure why we're discussing Skyrim mods.

     



  • @DOA said:

    Just because you can run Minecraft on a console doesn't mean you shouldn't be looking for performance.

    No; but it does say that the "use Java because it has better performance" argument is shit. Which is the point I was trying to demonstrate.

    @DOA said:

    Besides even without any game development experience it's painfully obvious that the vast majority of non-trivial games are built on compiled languages.

    The engines are, the games are not. Fuck, World of Warcraft is built in goddamned Lua!

    @DOA said:

    I have played Skyrim but no I haven't tried any mods. I'm not sure why we're discussing Skyrim mods.

    Because you were trying to make the ridiculous argument that Minecraft does more CPU work than Skyrim does. And I'm trying to make the counter-argument that if Minecraft is stressing your CPU more than Skyrim, that's more due to Minecraft being terrible code and less to do with the amount of behaviors its simulating.

    Now if you look at the base Skyrim game, I could see maybe thinking it's doing less work than Minecraft (although even then I'd think you'd be dead-wrong-- think about how much is going on in their skeletal animation alone when there's 25+ NPCs on the screen). But if you download, say, a Minecraft mod that puts 300+ characters on the screen at once, or dumps 5,000 cheese wheels on the ground and lets them physics-around, it's clear than Gamebryo is doing a shitload more work than Minecraft while using a shitload less CPU power.



  • @Xyro said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    Because Java is awful for reasons that have nothing to do with performance, duh.

    But... but you brought up the slowness.

    No I fucking didn't! Look:

    Me: Minecraft is shit because Notch wrote it in Java, which is shit
    DOA: Notch had to use Java because it's the only cross-platform language that performs well-enough, here's some reasons
    Me: 1) Your reasons for assuming Java performs better for Minecraft-like tasks are stupid, 2) but that doesn't matter since video games haven't been CPU-bound for like 10 years
    DOA: If CPU performance doesn't matter, why are you complaining about Java?*
    Me: Because Java is terrible for reasons that have nothing to do with performance, duh.

    There. Get it? See how the conversation went? Is it getting hammered into your tiny little brain finally? Good. Now go away.

    *) This is some kind of crazy weird circle-back argument I don't understand at all. Note that I never said Java performs poorly, nor did I ever make the claim that Notch shouldn't have used Java because it performs poorly. The only statement I made about Java performance is that "i wager" is performs equivalently to a JIT-compiled language, like JavaScript running in the V8 engine for example. I've seen no evidence either supporting to refuting that claim so far. But that claim was moot anyway, since it had nothing to do with my actual point. Which is: video games are not CPU-bound and haven't been for ages, therefore performance of your programming language doesn't matter much, therefore you're an idiot if you choose a shitty language with a shitty runtime instead of a good language with a good runtime.

    The fact that Xyro ALSO thinks I was somehow saying that Java is slow just means-- I dunno? I guess that nobody on this fucking forum can read plain English? Or that they're too busy listening to the little gremlins from Neptune dancing around in their skulls to pay attention to the real world? I don't know.



  • Hey MY gremlins don't dance, they sit around waiting for the chance to wave thier dickweeds pendentically; but they DO NOT dance.

     

     


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    Or that they're too busy listening to the little gremlins from Neptune dancing around in their skulls to pay attention to the real world?

    I think that dhromed has somehow convinced them that touching electric fences is something you do for fun and profit. Unfortunately, the profit is almost entirely realized in the form of successful trolls against blakeyrat.



  • @DOA said:

    I'm not sure why we're discussing Skyrim mods.

    Because Skyrim manages to run tons of game logic for each and every item in the game world that has scripts attached, manages to run (completely non-intelligent, but still very) dynamic conversations between NPCs and has NPCs moving around the entire game world on a daily / weekly / monthly schedule, interacting with other NPCs or gameworld objects as they do so.

    It all does this on a homebrewn script language: you can literally edit almost each and every behavioral aspect of the game. Exactly what all the bigger mods for the game do. And even with a few hundred under-optimized mods eating away at your CPU, it still manages. (Not that Bethesda's original code is that good, mind you. I remember reading about a few prime examples of WTF-ery in there as well.)



  • @Ragnax said:

    (Not that Bethesda's original code is that good, mind you. I remember reading about a few prime examples of WTF-ery in there as well.)

    Oh hell yeah. Just from using their modding tools, I could rail off hundreds of WTFs in their engine, starting from, "jump height isn't attached to a character or a race, but to THE WORLD"* and going to, "there's zero capability for fuzz-testing or unit-testing of AI behaviors or quests."

    And that's not even getting into the perplexing nature of the Papyrus language itself. (And the meta-question: why did they make it instead of using an existing off-the-shelf embeddable language?)

    *) Especially mystifying because every previous Elder Scrolls game had jump height attached to the character, going back to Daggerfall.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Just from using their modding tools, I could rail off hundreds of WTFs in their engine, starting from, "jump height isn't attached to a character or a race, but to THE WORLD"*...

    *) Especially mystifying because every previous Elder Scrolls game had jump height attached to the character, going back to Daggerfall.

    In earlier games, a character's jump height was modified by a skill value — "Jumping" in Daggerfall, "Acrobatics" in Morrowind and Oblivion — but that skill no longer exists at all in Skyrim. My guess is that whoever removed that skill got a bit lazy and stupid and detached it from the character entirely.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    The only statement I made about Java performance is that "i wager" is performs equivalently to a JIT-compiled language, like JavaScript running in the V8 engine for example.

    ... but but but
    @blakeyrat said:
    I wager the Java runtime is significantly slower than most language's JIT compilers, due to the Java-ness.

    ???

    Blakeyrat, are you actually two people?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @DOA said:
    Besides even without any game development experience it's painfully obvious that the vast majority of non-trivial games are built on compiled languages.

    The engines are, the games are not. Fuck, World of Warcraft is built in goddamned Lua!

    Even if more than one languages are used (which obviously not always the case) it's the engine that does the heavy lifting and as such my argument stands.@blakeyrat said:
    Because you were trying to make the ridiculous argument that Minecraft
    does more CPU work than Skyrim does. And I'm trying to make the
    counter-argument that if Minecraft is stressing your CPU more than
    Skyrim, that's more due to Minecraft being terrible code and less to do
    with the amount of behaviors its simulating.
    I never tried to compare Minecraft to Skyrim, it was you that brought it up in the first place and I really don't see how it is a fair comparison seeing as when it comes to game mechanics they are very different monsters. @blakeyrat said:
    DOA: If CPU performance doesn't matter, why are you complaining about Java?*
    I don't remember saying that.@blakeyrat said:
    it had nothing to do with my actual point. Which
    is: video games are not CPU-bound and haven't been for ages, therefore
    performance of your programming language doesn't matter much
    I see no evidence for this. Even if it's true... well, meet Minecraft. I don't care how optimized your code is, I don't care what language you've written it in, I don't care if you have sold your soul to the devil, once something starts to get duplicated over and over again, you'll need all the performance you can get. As an example I dare you to come up with an algorithm that allows you to detonate a couple of hundred of TNT blocks and calculate their effect on their enviroment in a world that is populated by about 10 million interactable objects at any one time (you were saying about Skyrim?) in a way that's not CPU bound.



  • @Someone You Know said:

    In earlier games, a character's jump height was modified by a skill value — "Jumping" in Daggerfall, "Acrobatics" in Morrowind and Oblivion — but that skill no longer exists at all in Skyrim. My guess is that whoever removed that skill got a bit lazy and stupid and detached it from the character entirely.

    I think the Fallout: New Vegas guys (who didn't need it) at some point removed it, possibly because it was implemented in a way that wasn't Papyrus-compatible. Since Skyrim was started by doing a copy-and-paste of the New Vegas database, it stayed removed and they never bothered to fix it. (Seriously, some items, like charred books, are identical between the two games.) 99% of the stuff Skyrim lauded as being new was actually added in New Vegas. The only thing they lauded as being new that was actually new was their Radiant AI system, which barely works and isn't any fun anyway.

    The thing is, Skyrim doesn't need the jumping either-- but they were also planning on adding modding support right? It didn't occur to them that the VERY FIRST THING a modder might do is try to mod in a Oblivion-esque Acrobatics skill?



  • @Xyro said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    The only statement I made about Java performance is that "i wager" is performs equivalently to a JIT-compiled language, like JavaScript running in the V8 engine for example.

    ... but but but
    @blakeyrat said:
    I wager the Java runtime is significantly slower than most language's JIT compilers, due to the Java-ness.

    ???

    Blakeyrat, are you actually two people?

    I don't see the inconsistency you are apparently seeing.



  • @DOA said:

    As an example I dare you to come up with an algorithm that allows you to detonate a couple of hundred of TNT blocks and calculate their effect on their enviroment in a world that is populated by about 10 million interactable objects at any one time (you were saying about Skyrim?) in a way that's not CPU bound.

    You could also write a mod for Skyrim that's CPU-straining (although it would be tough, frankly the game engine and/or Creation Kit would probably crash before you reached that point.) Who cares?

    Yes, obviously any world simulation is going to start being CPU bound if you do ridiculous things in the world. Your argument is llike a 5-year-old saying, "you can run a mile? Well can you run a HILLION MILLION JILLION MILES!?"



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @Someone You Know said:
    In earlier games, a character's jump height was modified by a skill value — "Jumping" in Daggerfall, "Acrobatics" in Morrowind and Oblivion — but that skill no longer exists at all in Skyrim. My guess is that whoever removed that skill got a bit lazy and stupid and detached it from the character entirely.

    I think the Fallout: New Vegas guys (who didn't need it) at some point removed it, possibly because it was implemented in a way that wasn't Papyrus-compatible. Since Skyrim was started by doing a copy-and-paste of the New Vegas database, it stayed removed and they never bothered to fix it. (Seriously, some items, like charred books, are identical between the two games.) 99% of the stuff Skyrim lauded as being new was actually added in New Vegas. The only thing they lauded as being new that was actually new was their Radiant AI system, which barely works and isn't any fun anyway.

    The thing is, Skyrim doesn't need the jumping either-- but they were also planning on adding modding support right? It didn't occur to them that the VERY FIRST THING a modder might do is try to mod in a Oblivion-esque Acrobatics skill?

    Interesting...I do remember thinking that people were overly excited about the new crafting system, given that pretty much the same thing was in New Vegas. Now I really want to go up against Alduin with a T-51b and a Fat Man.

    I think the Radiant AI concept has a lot of potential; I would have liked it better if it had been used more in the major quests, to give them a little more variety. Though I suppose that would make testing these games even more of a nightmare than it already must be.


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