ID:2261460
 
It's been a weird week for development, but nevertheless I've pushed forward on 512 stuff and things are moving ahead, although not at full steam. Among other distractions, I was looking at some 511 issues. There's still an issue with null appearances in some cases, even in 1385, which makes no sense, but I added some better sanity checks for the next release. Also, I'm still trying to suss out a very weird performance issue in an isometric world, in a report from Crazah. It's been slow-going there. (Also I was derailed this week by other issues I won't go into depth on, but they're all BYOND-related.)

But the rest of the time I've mainly been back on 512 features, which means back to struggling with the problems of turfs from different Z levels being in visual contents. After much frustration I finally figured out a good method for that, only to run across some other issues.

When I was testing the other day, I discovered that rebooting after creating a turf with visual contents caused major major problems including freezes, wrong appearances being used, etc. I've been chasing that bug for two frickin' days, but today I finally nailed it. This is one of those things I'm glad I caught now, because hoo boy would it have been a pain to track down later. (What it was, was a list of turfs in the client structure not being reset. This was causing some appearances to deallocate improperly with refcount errors.)

Hopefully next week will be distraction-free and I can zoom through the remaining visual contents stuff (including documentation) so that can all be put to bed and I can get to the next 512 features. I think resource management really has to be high on that list.

A big thanks to everyone who continues to support BYOND through Membership and donations. It's a big deal, and I really appreciate it. Summer is finally here, so when you come in from the pool, put that BYOND Membership to good use and play some great games!
In response to Maximus_Alex2003
Maximus_Alex2003 wrote:
Now don't be such a nut.
I have to ask, will we ever see any kind of return of the multithreaded systems, or at least something to offload network/map updating separate from the game so we can use that one core to its full potential for game-related stuff? I mean it was done before, and it worked half, I'm sure it is doable somehow, and otherwise I am sure that there are plenty of qualified/experienced programmers around here that can help you with it.
I may or may not get a membership soon!
In response to Laser50
Laser50 wrote:
I have to ask, will we ever see any kind of return of the multithreaded systems, or at least something to offload network/map updating separate from the game so we can use that one core to its full potential for game-related stuff? I mean it was done before, and it worked half, I'm sure it is doable somehow, and otherwise I am sure that there are plenty of qualified/experienced programmers around here that can help you with it.

A lot of the multithread code is still in existence, but it would need serious revisiting.

The problem is, "worked half" actually means it was crashy and those crashes were next to impossible to diagnose. It was a tremendous time sink, and it actually didn't deliver all that well on performance.
Yeah, I did notice the crashes and whatnot, too bad it did not work out the way it was supposed to, but that's programming, unfortunately.

How about just the map sending thread? If I have been following discussions right it is still taking about 10-30% of a tick, so moving it elsewhere could be a good step ahead and a good way to see what works and what doesn't for future releases.. Then again I am not experienced in any of this, my first suggestion would be to add (limited) threading capabilities to DM and just see how the community is able to turn it into something useful, but that may not be feasible at all.

Don't forget there's always people around to assist, it may not be me but I am damn sure there are plenty jumping up and down if they'd be given a chance to help.
The map threading was still just as off as the rest. It's a very tricky business.

And no, no one can help with this. There are very few people I would trust with the code and the learning curve is like a brick wall. Figuring out an intensely difficult threading problem is not something I can just throw at a volunteer.
In response to Lummox JR
You're underestimating the combined willingness, dedication, and insanity some people have.
In response to Popisfizzy
Popisfizzy wrote:
You're underestimating the combined willingness, dedication, and insanity some people have.


I concur.
I only browse these forums once a full moon and I've seen plenty of people that were more than willing to help, some are long time contributors (That even donated pretty large sums), so I wouldn't really believe they would do any harm considering the money they've thrown into this thing.

BYOND will have to get back up and running at some point, in my honest opinion of you keep developing this all by yourself BYOND will probably be nonexistent within the next 3 years (And that's a big estimate) due to the fact that it simply won't ever keep up or get far enough to gain popularity.
AND MY AXE!

...Wait... Shit...
Ter13 are you going on a killing Spree with my AXE
In response to Argon999
Argon999 wrote:
Ter13 are you going on a killing Spree with my AXE

Well that certainly rules you out, Pip.
In response to Lummox JR
Lummox JR wrote:
And no, no one can help with this. There are very few people I would trust with the code ....


Ter13 what you going to do with my Axe then
In response to Argon999
Argon999 wrote:
Ter13 what you going to do with my Axe then

Boil it mash it, stick it in a stew. (I've got like, 12 hours of material. Come at me bro.)
In response to Ter13
Ter13 wrote:
Argon999 wrote:
Ter13 what you going to do with my Axe then

Boil it mash it, stick it in a stew. (I've got like, 12 hours of material. Come at me bro.)

What if the Axe breaks?
My Axe don't break it's Immortal
In response to Argon999
i didn't ask about YOUR axe. nobody cares about your inferior, dainty, wood-chipper of an axe.
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