That's actually not possible either. An Instance is exactly that. It is an instance of a given map. We can't change the lighting on one instance and not on another. We could hypothetically have multiple copies of a map with different lighting on each, but that's a bunch of file bloat, and would require you to load between maps, not just instances.
Adding two new night maps, one for Risa and one for Bajor, would only double the storage requirement for two of the existing maps. Granted, Risa is one of the larger maps, but considering how many maps there are in the game, I doubt this is a large percentage of your total storage.
There might also be tricks you can use to save space. If I understood your previous posts correctly, then the meshes and textures would not change, only the lights, the light probes, and the skybox. So it should be possible in principle to store one copy of the meshes and textures and use them on two different maps.
Also, I still don't understand why you can't create a map without light probes. Why can't you mark a map with a flag that tells the automatic probe-generation tool to skip it?
Perhaps we can cut down on the size of ground and space maps in various storyline missions. Delta quadrant missions and even newer STFs contain a ton of polygons (asteroids everywhere) which I'm guessing have got to be server-side intensive as much as they are a strain on even modern CPUs.
A night version of Risa and Bajor would be explored and made use of year round unlike such story missions that don't even require visiting most of the map and where players don't spend more than a few minutes alone in to do much more than scan for a tiny handful of R&D materials.
STO does strain modern PCs at full graphics in action-dense environments with lots of players as it is, so I'm pretty sure if players want acceptable FPS in it they'll have more than enough to handle extra Risa & Bajor maps.
Actually polygon count does not have any impact whatsoever on the servers. All art and assets are stored and rendered locally by the client.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid." - Q
STO does strain modern PCs at full graphics in action-dense environments with lots of players as it is, so I'm pretty sure if players want acceptable FPS in it they'll have more than enough to handle extra Risa & Bajor maps.[/quote]
Some of the Delta patrols choke PC's like that, yes.
Actually polygon count does not have any impact whatsoever on the servers. All art and assets are stored and rendered locally by the client.
Good point. I'm just trying to figure out how this file bloat could possibly adversely affect the servers, latency/network usage, and local PCs, and where they could cut some slack to reduce it in order to give at least Risa a night instance as a fair tradeoff for their lighting 2.0.
STO can only grow, and if nothing old gets removed as more new maps are added, that means we haven't hit some workable capacity yet. Might as well start now, remove something in order to offset the load of a night Risa, otherwise let's add it as the cool new thing for a Risa 2018 event.
Actually polygon count does not have any impact whatsoever on the servers. All art and assets are stored and rendered locally by the client.
Good point. I'm just trying to figure out how this file bloat could possibly adversely affect the servers, latency/network usage, and local PCs, and where they could cut some slack to reduce it in order to give at least Risa a night instance as a fair tradeoff for their lighting 2.0.
STO can only grow, and if nothing old gets removed as more new maps are added, that means we haven't hit some workable capacity yet. Might as well start now, remove something in order to offset the load of a night Risa, otherwise let's add it as the cool new thing for a Risa 2018 event.
A Risa night map wouldn't really add much load on the servers. They would need to create new instances for the Risa night map, but people who are in the night instances aren't in the day instances, so they would need fewer day instances during peek times. There's probably a slight increase in overhead, but I doubt it's very large.
By "file bloat", Tacofangs was referring to the space needed to store the graphics assets for the map. But the servers don't display anything, so graphics aren't needed. The extra files would slightly increase the load on the patch servers as players download the new files, but we're talking at most about doubling the space for two maps.
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Adding two new night maps, one for Risa and one for Bajor, would only double the storage requirement for two of the existing maps. Granted, Risa is one of the larger maps, but considering how many maps there are in the game, I doubt this is a large percentage of your total storage.
There might also be tricks you can use to save space. If I understood your previous posts correctly, then the meshes and textures would not change, only the lights, the light probes, and the skybox. So it should be possible in principle to store one copy of the meshes and textures and use them on two different maps.
Also, I still don't understand why you can't create a map without light probes. Why can't you mark a map with a flag that tells the automatic probe-generation tool to skip it?
A night version of Risa and Bajor would be explored and made use of year round unlike such story missions that don't even require visiting most of the map and where players don't spend more than a few minutes alone in to do much more than scan for a tiny handful of R&D materials.
STO does strain modern PCs at full graphics in action-dense environments with lots of players as it is, so I'm pretty sure if players want acceptable FPS in it they'll have more than enough to handle extra Risa & Bajor maps.
STO does strain modern PCs at full graphics in action-dense environments with lots of players as it is, so I'm pretty sure if players want acceptable FPS in it they'll have more than enough to handle extra Risa & Bajor maps.[/quote]
Some of the Delta patrols choke PC's like that, yes.
Good point. I'm just trying to figure out how this file bloat could possibly adversely affect the servers, latency/network usage, and local PCs, and where they could cut some slack to reduce it in order to give at least Risa a night instance as a fair tradeoff for their lighting 2.0.
STO can only grow, and if nothing old gets removed as more new maps are added, that means we haven't hit some workable capacity yet. Might as well start now, remove something in order to offset the load of a night Risa, otherwise let's add it as the cool new thing for a Risa 2018 event.
A Risa night map wouldn't really add much load on the servers. They would need to create new instances for the Risa night map, but people who are in the night instances aren't in the day instances, so they would need fewer day instances during peek times. There's probably a slight increase in overhead, but I doubt it's very large.
By "file bloat", Tacofangs was referring to the space needed to store the graphics assets for the map. But the servers don't display anything, so graphics aren't needed. The extra files would slightly increase the load on the patch servers as players download the new files, but we're talking at most about doubling the space for two maps.