1. This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Learn More.

The looming excitement that might be TW warhammer II

Discussion in 'General Hobby/Tabletop Chat' started by The Sauric Ace, Mar 9, 2017.

  1. Paradoxical Pacifism
    Skink Chief

    Paradoxical Pacifism Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    1,632
    Likes Received:
    3,383
    Trophy Points:
    113
    i got it too

    However, on steam, it lists the estimated download speed at:
    7 days, 19 hours, at 49KB/s

    oof
     
  2. Aginor
    Slann

    Aginor Fifth Spawning Staff Member

    Messages:
    12,249
    Likes Received:
    20,130
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Aww man I should have thought of that. I am not at home for the next two days and could have downloaded it in the meantime...
     
  3. NIGHTBRINGER
    Slann

    NIGHTBRINGER Second Spawning

    Messages:
    77,500
    Likes Received:
    248,288
    Trophy Points:
    113
    That is crazy!

    Is steam just really slow or is it your internet?
     
  4. Paradoxical Pacifism
    Skink Chief

    Paradoxical Pacifism Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    1,632
    Likes Received:
    3,383
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Most likely the latter.

    Of course, download speeds can dramatically change over time and steam's estimated download speed remains the same until you restart steam (so it's a pretty negligible thing). Probably will take a day or so.

    Oh yeah, i remember steam told me it would take a year to download something at 1KB/s or something (don't remember the game, lol)
     
    Captaniser likes this.
  5. Aginor
    Slann

    Aginor Fifth Spawning Staff Member

    Messages:
    12,249
    Likes Received:
    20,130
    Trophy Points:
    113
    I used to have such slow Internet as well.
    It got a lot better in the last few years but it is still a big game and will load a while.
     
    Paradoxical Pacifism likes this.
  6. Lord-Marcus
    Slann

    Lord-Marcus Sixth Spawning

    Messages:
    8,394
    Likes Received:
    12,806
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Yarr Matey's!
     
  7. Canas
    Slann

    Canas Ninth Spawning

    Messages:
    6,799
    Likes Received:
    10,461
    Trophy Points:
    113
    What kind of ancient internet do you people have? I can barely remember the last time I had to wait more than 20 minutes for a full game to download o_O
     
    Paradoxical Pacifism likes this.
  8. NIGHTBRINGER
    Slann

    NIGHTBRINGER Second Spawning

    Messages:
    77,500
    Likes Received:
    248,288
    Trophy Points:
    113
    It's good to know that it isn't an issue inherent to Steam.
     
    Canas likes this.
  9. Aginor
    Slann

    Aginor Fifth Spawning Staff Member

    Messages:
    12,249
    Likes Received:
    20,130
    Trophy Points:
    113
    I have a way better line now, 50Mbit/s.
    Still hours to download a big game but fast enough for everything.
    But not too long ago (a few years) I lived in a small village and had 1mbit or even less. That sucked.
     
    Paradoxical Pacifism likes this.
  10. Paradoxical Pacifism
    Skink Chief

    Paradoxical Pacifism Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    1,632
    Likes Received:
    3,383
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Currently averaging around 500-600 KB/s

    Good enough for me, lol
     
  11. NIGHTBRINGER
    Slann

    NIGHTBRINGER Second Spawning

    Messages:
    77,500
    Likes Received:
    248,288
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Unless you want to download a big game in less than a week ;)


    There is no way that you can play multiplayer either I would imagine.
     
    Paradoxical Pacifism likes this.
  12. Canas
    Slann

    Canas Ninth Spawning

    Messages:
    6,799
    Likes Received:
    10,461
    Trophy Points:
    113
    mwha, would depend on what you want to do in multiplayer. Something like total war or an MMO-raid with 100's of models spells and whatnot walking around is probably going to be too slow. But games with less in it should work, and anything turn based should be fine (might take some waiting in between turns though :p)
     
    Paradoxical Pacifism likes this.
  13. NIGHTBRINGER
    Slann

    NIGHTBRINGER Second Spawning

    Messages:
    77,500
    Likes Received:
    248,288
    Trophy Points:
    113
    [​IMG]
     
  14. Paradoxical Pacifism
    Skink Chief

    Paradoxical Pacifism Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    1,632
    Likes Received:
    3,383
    Trophy Points:
    113
  15. Cristhian MLR
    Terradon

    Cristhian MLR Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    591
    Likes Received:
    1,350
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Crab people. Crab people.

    They looked like crab.

    They kissed like people.
     
    Paradoxical Pacifism likes this.
  16. Aginor
    Slann

    Aginor Fifth Spawning Staff Member

    Messages:
    12,249
    Likes Received:
    20,130
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Fun fact:
    I played WoW with 384kbit Internet back then, including 40-man raids.
    If the netcode is good that can work. It is the maximum though. World vs World matches in Guild Wars 2 were pretty much impossible.


    Yesterday I downloaded TWW2 in around two hours btw. I then played Kroq-Gar a bit. Nice so far.
     
    Paradoxical Pacifism likes this.
  17. Canas
    Slann

    Canas Ninth Spawning

    Messages:
    6,799
    Likes Received:
    10,461
    Trophy Points:
    113
    WoW back in the day wasn't a terrible drain on stuff though. The details on character models and especially spells wasn't amazing so the amount of data needing to be send wasn't too horrific. Nowadays 40-man raids can easily lead to lag even on decent set-ups simply due to the absolute massive amount of stuff flying around that all needs to be processed at once. It's kinda horrific...
     
    Paradoxical Pacifism likes this.
  18. Aginor
    Slann

    Aginor Fifth Spawning Staff Member

    Messages:
    12,249
    Likes Received:
    20,130
    Trophy Points:
    113
    It may not need to though.
    I mean: For a lot of stuff there is no need to constantly transfer it over the net. For example for the items. Those are loaded once, and then only when the notification of a change comes. How they look, and to a lesser degree their stats (because the server handles much of it), can often be transmitted in a very short way.
    The company I work for transmits pretty complex data (as a programmer I would dare to say they are of similar complexity and size, and transmitted 30+ times a second for several entities) and those are transmitted over very thin lines, some of them have GPRS speed (~200kbps).
    That's possible because the clients are fast enough to pack and unpack everything, and make assumptions about where stuff is going. So if the sync works decently, you can get away with transmitting a lot less stuff a lot faster.
    Of course I don't know how WoW's netcode evolved over the years, but back then it scaled pretty well, even with "transmogrified" items and the other stuff introduced with the Cataclysm addon.

    Spells for example look complex on the GUI but in most cases the only things transmitted about them over the net are their entity of origin (usually the caster), the time when they were cast, and the target entity (or coordinates if it is an area spell). The server checks those, transmits the same information to the clients, and the rest is done by the clients. So while those may be tough on the client hardware, they are often not too severe for the netcode. The transmitted data for a fireball cast to a coordinate could look like this:
    32bit playerID (there are not more than 4 billion characters on the server, 16bit ability id (WoW doesn't have more than 65535 abilities, 16 bit ability properties (65535 possible combinations to take variants into account), 3x32bit coordinate for x,y,z (real WoW coordinate systems are probably more simple, that's enough resolution for real world applications) for the point it was aimed at, 32bit timestamp (could also be shorter).

    Those are 24 bytes. So let's assume you transmit the 3d position of every entity (let's assume 20 players and as many enemies, all objects have coordinates, a few important attributes such as if they are moving and where they are facing) four times a second (IIRC WoW syncs only twice a second) , and every entity can trigger four abilities per second, then you have a bit more than ~80 kilobits per second that you need, even if you don't compress. And that's a brute force approach, I am sure their devs came up with something more efficient than that.


    Guild Wars 2 and Age of Conan also have great netcode btw. For debugging purposes (there were some processes running amok and hogging net resources, which sucked when you had slow Internet and I tried to help the developers by finding out what was the problem) I once limited the network bandwidth for those processes using a net limiter software, and I was amazed that in AoC you could play 20 man raids with less than 100kbps of bandwidth. At least once you were on the dungeon map. It loaded for quite a while in open maps, but on a limited scale (20 players and the map instance with the enemies and so on) it was astonishingly fast.

    But then.... code grows, and developers get used to having more resources to their disposal. So they probably use them less efficiently than they did in earlier times.
     
    Papalugy likes this.
  19. Canas
    Slann

    Canas Ninth Spawning

    Messages:
    6,799
    Likes Received:
    10,461
    Trophy Points:
    113
    I think it's very much less efficient nowadays, or at least they've changed something with how things are done when you swap shards. When you join a group for a world boss and you suddenly need to load in 40+ entities all throwing around spells and what have you everything slows to a crawl regardless of the connection. I think the issue might simply be the loading in of loads of things at once though, and with sharding and the lfg-tool existing now you tend to simply do that a lot more.
     
  20. Aginor
    Slann

    Aginor Fifth Spawning Staff Member

    Messages:
    12,249
    Likes Received:
    20,130
    Trophy Points:
    113
    I guess that happens to every software at some point. It is like a Jenga Tower. You add more and more stuff until it becomes inefficient and eventually falls apart.
     

Share This Page