Explain how bandwidth affects the Foundry

torontodave · February 2016

No I can't make a profile just for that =( That's not how the invasive tracker cookies from Facebook work. ;D You guys should all come back here to the official forums! ;D

reiwulf · February 2016

nuh ;D
you can just enter in an incognito window then if cookies worry you.
and it's much much easier in there where everytime someone posts a topic or replies to one, we get a fb notification that we can click instantly. It makes topic and conversation much faster. In here we have to continuously and manually check for new topics and replies.
also, there's much more freedom in there to talk about our points of view about the foundry and cryptic's management, without mods deleting posts and stuff. (which is understandable in the official forums, anyway).

valcontar73 · February 2016

We are a sect Torontodave!! We want you there!!

No really, is an amazing group.

Unknown · February 2016

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iandarksword · February 2016

I try to link pertinent discussions, like this one, when they are brought up so the folks that don't regularly check the forums can be directed to them here. It's no secret to Cryptic what we would like to happen with the Foundry, but the group is also a place where folks also air their frustrations without fear of being moderated. There are STO foundry authors and SCL campaign creators in the group as well, so it's kind of a conglomerate of UGC folks. It's the byproduct of being ignored by the devs team on the forums, folks will seek a place where like-minded individuals can share their thoughts and frustrations. It's also easier to access and share pictures from mobile phones.

instynctive · February 2016

Doesn't "The Maze Engine" sound like there should be a total Foundry overhaul included in the next mod..? ;-)

I do like the UCG group on FB... it's the only reason these days that I switch from using FB as my Guild page to using my personal account.

reiwulf · February 2016

magenubbie, believe me, the problem is not that cryptic doesn't know what we authors want, we have diretly told them more than enough times. We have given them ideas, we have listed bugs, we have offered to help them with it, even for free. So no, the problem isn't that. the problem is that they simply don't care enough about the foundry, there's no other reason.

mrgiggles651 · February 2016

iandarksword said:
the group is also a place where folks also air their frustrations without fear of being moderated.

There's a better way more useful for ingame and Foundry place than facebook for that, we're not allowed to mention it by name or post links though. Then again anywhere is better than facebook.

reiwulf · February 2016

if you mean that other forum, it has the same problem, we have to manually check for thread updates instead of getting a much faster way of talking to eachother. Not to mention devs don't chack that place either so it's just as useless as facebook if we want devs to see it.

instynctive · February 2016

reiwulf said:
if you mean that other forum, it has the same problem, we have to manually check for thread updates instead of getting a much faster way of talking to eachother. Not to mention devs don't chack that place either so it's just as useless as facebook if we want devs to see it.

A few things...

While the devs may not check over there, you can bet the mods do... and at least one of them has an account there and actively participates from time to time, just to get kicked in the balls for his efforts.
The FB group, I feel, is more for us anyway.
Like @iandarksword commented above, he will crosspost to the forum when he feels a topic is pertinent (like this one).
There are also hundreds of other threads in which we've brough up Foundry issues... I just mentioned the Foundry in the Mod 9 announcement, as an example.

So many people see "uselessness" in so many things... sure, the FB doesn't send texts to the devs every two seconds, saying FIX THE FOUNDRY FIX THE FOUNDRY FIX THE FOUNDRY, but again, I don't think there was ever any intention for the group to be anything but a gathering place for authors. So.. not useless.

reiwulf · February 2016

exactly, the group is focused on the foundry. that's why we enjoy it. the forum is just another NW forum, with the foundry being mentioned from time to time, but not the main focus.

hustin1 · February 2016

I'm thinking that the best course of action might be to concentrate, as a community, on pushing for a small set of low-hanging fruit (read: easy for devs to implement). Personally, I vote for being able to set x,y,z size parameters for any asset we place. That cannot be difficult to do, especially since live content has examples of the same asset being placed over and over with different sizes.

instynctive · February 2016

Getting us to agree on a handful of stuff might prove.. challenging.. lol

mrgiggles651 · February 2016

hustin1 said:
I'm thinking that the best course of action might be to concentrate, as a community, on pushing for a small set of low-hanging fruit (read: easy for devs to implement). Personally, I vote for being able to set x,y,z size parameters for any asset we place. That cannot be difficult to do, especially since live content has examples of the same asset being placed over and over with different sizes.

I posted a screenshot showing Cryptic doing exactly in live content that in the requests thread when Tyranny of Dragons came out. That makes that a feature that's been ingame for a year and a half already.

reiwulf · February 2016

a size changer would be awesome, there's many many many assets I have wanted to use at other sizes.

iandarksword · February 2016

There's no plans for anything with the Foundry beyond the Teleporter bug for the remainder of the year. I just read the AMA Reddit, so I'll simply reference the Princess Bride and say "Get used to disappointment..." I understand completely if many of you go MIA for a year or more. I guess I'll leave the light on, stoke the fire occasionally...

eldarth · February 2016

iandarksword wrote: »

There's no plans for anything with the Foundry beyond the Teleporter bug for the remainder of the year. I just read the AMA Reddit, so I'll simply reference the Princess Bride and say "Get used to disappointment..." I understand completely if many of you go MIA for a year or more. I guess I'll leave the light on, stoke the fire occasionally...

AMA Quote:
"1) We're working on fixing some of the most frustrating foundry bugs, but as it stands right now, we're not planning on adding anything new to the foundry this year. I know that's frustrating, but sadly other things are taking priority."

Yep. Forum posts, detailed bug lists, hundreds of suggestions, a five page DETAILED report on MAKING Foundry profitable by an actual economist, and numerous solutions to all their foundry issues both in forum and to individuals up through management.

They DO NOT WANT TO MAKE MORE ZEN. As they'd say in Princess Bride... "Inconceivable!"
Free Content, PvP solutions, More Zen. Epic marketing fail.

I'm done. I'll be creating over in SCL.
I seriously doubt this title is going to last another year.
If anyone wants to "take over" the Epic Shore Contest, let me know and I'll get you the prize AD and Mount.
...and if anyone wants to take over maintenance of the eternally ignored bug list, also let me know and I'll see if mods can change ownership.

mrgiggles651 · February 2016

eldarth said:

If anyone wants to "take over" the Epic Shore Contest, let me know and I'll get you the prize AD and Mount.

I'll take whatever AD remains I provided (I forgot how much was given out in the first contest). The mount was provided by someone else and is not mine, so someone else can claim that. I still have the items I bought at auction off you in my ingame mail, so I can provide screenshots of my actual ingame account.

instynctive · February 2016

I'm done even with my continued experiments in the Foundry. I know.. "boohoo so sad". But yeah.. actually, it is.

There will be a lot less bandwidth used for Foundry purposes now.

Actual bandwidth. Not "hip dev slang".

ambisinisterr · February 2016

eldarth said:
I'm not sure where you think he went astray, but I think he's completely right -- the 3-D model is the 3-D model, there is no post-processing that is done to it. It is placed into the scene/area by an entirely different toolset, but the model IS the model.

I would have to disagree when looking at the performance difference between Foundry Content and Dungeon Maps.

Certainly models are used. I never argued that. I said that they adjust how models are rendered in official content. That doesn't mean I think it applies to all work but definitely to core elements. An easy example is the load time different if a Foundry Map has a ton of grass effects compared to the load time of areas such as Pirates Skyhold which is very grass heavy.

I guess the best way to put it is that the environment is rendered in a more efficient manner by the developers. Rocks, grass, trees. Detail work such as your hourglass are still simply models.

The model being the model is the entire reason why I came to this conclusion long ago. Caverns of Karundax is probably the easiest example that you can see the terrain literally painted with hundreds (likely thousands) of rock models. The difference in time it takes to load a much smaller resource using Foundry quest is unbelievable. Much smaller (polished) Foundry Content will have similar or more often than not longer load times than 'model heavy' developer content.

The rest of your statement was, again, nothing I disagreed with. I was ONLY disagreeing with your comments on the resource limits and NOTHING about the fact that most resources are likely as easy as adding in variables AFTER somebody in charge made a decision to give them to authors.

instynctive · February 2016

Moot point, @ambisinisterr ..

I think pretty much all of us are done with the Foundry.

essenti · February 2016

ambisinisterr said:

eldarth said:
I'm not sure where you think he went astray, but I think he's completely right -- the 3-D model is the 3-D model, there is no post-processing that is done to it. It is placed into the scene/area by an entirely different toolset, but the model IS the model.
I would have to disagree when looking at the performance difference between Foundry Content and Dungeon Maps.

Certainly models are used. I never argued that. I said that they adjust how models are rendered in official content. That doesn't mean I think it applies to all work but definitely to core elements. An easy example is the load time different if a Foundry Map has a ton of grass effects compared to the load time of areas such as Pirates Skyhold which is very grass heavy.

I guess the best way to put it is that the environment is rendered in a more efficient manner by the developers. Rocks, grass, trees. Detail work such as your hourglass are still simply models.

The model being the model is the entire reason why I came to this conclusion long ago. Caverns of Karundax is probably the easiest example that you can see the terrain literally painted with hundreds (likely thousands) of rock models. The difference in time it takes to load a much smaller resource using Foundry quest is unbelievable. Much smaller (polished) Foundry Content will have similar or more often than not longer load times than 'model heavy' developer content.

The rest of your statement was, again, nothing I disagreed with. I was ONLY disagreeing with your comments on the resource limits and NOTHING about the fact that most resources are likely as easy as adding in variables AFTER somebody in charge made a decision to give them to authors.

The triangle count, primitive batching, alpha sorting, all these things can be very open ended for Foundry content. Cryptic has profiling tools (in addition to far better level editing tools) which allows them to get the in-game maps looking and running as smoothly as possible. While I hope that the "publish" functionality tries to handle quite a bit of optimization, it is not the same as having artistic and developer level control over performance like those in-game maps are afforded.

Not every model we players see in game will be ready to drag and drop right into the Foundry, but that doesn't mean all of them are like that (because they likely have not been customized for specific maps and it's actually far more time consuming to build maps that way).

However, @ambisinisterr , your description of long Foundry map load times does not necessarily reflect on the models... Keep in mind that the Foundry content (like the map files, dialogs, etc) are not stored locally on your PC until you request the quest from the Foundry server (after that, a copy stays on your PC, but it gets patched as necessary, most likely). This would be an actual bandwidth issue, but I suspect it wouldn't eat up much more time than the on-demand patching already does. The long load times are likely on the server side.

Cryptic doesn't keep a running instance of the thousands of Foundry maps loaded and waiting on the server... The instance you play in is spun up only when it's required. It's comparable with entering a Stronghold after all players have left your Stronghold for awhile. You will get unusually long load times as the server spins up your guild's Stronghold instance. Those massive Stronghold map load times are quite a bit longer than even my own high asset count Foundry maps...

This spinning up I am talking about is no small feat, and if all those zones like Pirate's Skyhold had to be spun up every time you entered it, you would likely see long loading times there too. You can see this happening on the preview server when you enter zones that no one else has been in for awhile... really long load times.

What amazes me about NW is the fact that the foundry is capable of doing this instancing so well with user generated content. It is something I am and have always been quite impressed with. There is nothing quite like the foundry; it's truly an amazing and unique aspect of Cryptic's games. It is a shame to watch as they let this fine piece of engineering basically go to waste--as more and more players ignore it--because the powers-that-be are unable or unwilling to capitalize on the massive potential that is the Foundry.

eldarth · February 2016

Anyone have actual user numbers for the different platforms?
I'm strongly suspicious that the PC version actually has far, far fewer than game console versions and they've basically decided that the PC version is nothing more than a beta test platform for console versions.

instynctive · February 2016

eldarth said:
Anyone have actual user numbers for the different platforms?

I'm strongly suspicious that the PC version actually has far, far fewer than game console versions and they've basically decided that the PC version is nothing more than a beta test platform for console versions.

That was pretty apparent with the whole Mod 6 thing. PC players were screaming about the required number of Vigilance Quests, and the ungodly amount of grinding just to get back to where we were before that disaster hit... and nothing was done, until XBoxers started screaming for a change.. Seems to me that is was 2-3 weeks later when the EE stuff was cut in half.

Personally, I don't like getting on the "Paranoid Train", but...

durynte · February 2016

mrgiggles651 wrote:
> ambisinisterr wrote:
> > Bottom line is that Foundry Content does not contibute to
> > progressions so from a player standpoint it is a waste of time.
>
> Exactly the point, the [largest] NWO [customer segment] views
> progression as more important than story.

I tend to agree and I was thinking of why this might be.
To me, there are two things that dominate my adventuring experience in NWO.
The first is fast action combat. After some ten enjoyable minutes I get somewhat bored of it, and prefer my toon to just oneshot all the mobs, to get the progression goals finished.
The second is the density of mobs on the level and campaign maps, of which most of them to me feel kind of smallish.
I have a map of Faerûn from wikia.com, it's quite a large place to explore, but this expectation does not translate into NWO maps. (Except for the map opening the way to Sharandar, I'm always looking forward to this.)

> You don't have to play for progression, nothing forces the
> playerbase to do so. You can contentedly play nothing but
> foundry and not care about being iLVL whatever.
>
> Foundry: story
> Regular content: progression

Well, my premier reason to return to NWO, after two times quit and starting all over anew, was the library of foundries to explore. The first two times I got carried away with the progress duties.

> [...] I think the foundry authors want people to appreciate
> the stories. Adding rewards to foundry will not make the
> playerbase appreciate the story, it will make them grind
> the content as quickly as they can to get the reward.

Yes. How about to state things a little bit different then:
It is actually a nice gesture of Cryptic/PWE to let the foundry be in place, when the foundry nets them nothing but a few story focused customers. Company profit to be had is from progression obstacles to be overcome with moneytime.
If so, saying thank-you instead of complaining seems to be more appropriate, to me. But I've not yet tried authoring a foundry and so I lack some experiences which might be frustrating.
There has not, not yet, been a foundry I was disappointed with, when I finally found a time slot for it to enjoy. To those of you who still keep it up: Thank you very much! You are nevertheless doing well!

Sincerely

Edit: typos

mrgiggles651 · February 2016

One of the patch notes for today:
"Players with Razer Chroma peripherals can now access certain integrated lighting effects."

Foundry improvements:

How many Razer Chroma owners are there in the playerbase? It's popular enough they have bandwidth?

iandarksword · February 2016

Razer is now doing a giveaway, right after the patch. Coincidence? I think not. Must be nice to be a sponsor...

instynctive · February 2016

iandarksword said:
Razer is now doing a giveaway, right after the patch. Coincidence? I think not. Must be nice to be a sponsor...

$2600 must not buy a lot of sponsorship then.

Explain how bandwidth affects the Foundry

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