Announcement Rolling Back Source Update

[Seiichi]

Yes, ok, but by "Windows 8+" you mean "Windows 8", "Windows 8.1" and "Windows 10"?

Yes, any operating system after Windows 10.

High quality previously only worked on Windows 7, but we found where the issue was and fixed it for the source update. It also gives us an idea of how to fix some GPU issues with DP.

 

[Seiichi]

We've made some progress and have resolved the major issues that we were having, but are still having to figure out why some zones are randomly crashing (this is something that also happens on the live server, especially NoT). We're also going to have to do testing to make sure functionality works properly.

I can't give ETA, even though I keep getting asked for them, but we're hoping to have this done as quickly as possible but with odd programming issues it can sometimes take much longer than anticipated, especially when you're dealing with code that was never properly made to be 64bit.

 

[Sylvester]

Yes, any operating system after Windows 10.

High quality previously only worked on Windows 7, but we found where the issue was and fixed it for the source update. It also gives us an idea of how to fix some GPU issues with DP.

Ah, excellent. This, for me, will be "the revolution". ^^

By the way, just out of curiosity, can you summarize for me where the problem was, please? ^^

 

[Seiichi]

Ah, excellent. This, for me, will be "the revolution". ^^

By the way, just out of curiosity, can you summarize for me where the problem was, please? ^^

It really only is about a 5% improvement over medium, and only makes a difference for some things and certain dragons.

As far as the issue, it is due to DP not being a proper 64bit program, and a dependency failing because of that.

 

[Sylvester]

It really only is about a 5% improvement over medium, and only makes a difference for some things and certain dragons.

As far as the issue, it is due to DP not being a proper 64bit program, and a dependency failing because of that.

So, if I understand correctly, when the source update rolls out, the setting for high quality textures will remain at high quality, unlike what is still being done at the moment? On the other hand, the visual gain will initially be very low (around 5%) and will be partially noticed at first.

For more extensive improvement, will it be necessary to upgrade the coding of the game to 64bits?

 

[Seiichi]

So, if I understand correctly, when the source update rolls out, the setting for high quality textures will remain at high quality, unlike what is still being done at the moment? On the other hand, the visual gain will initially be very low (around 5%) and will be partially noticed at first.

For more extensive improvement, will it be necessary to upgrade the coding of the game to 64bits?

We're removing the 32bit client, and there will only be 64bit available with source update.

5% is actually a fairly large amount for a MMO, especially one as old as DP. For the most part, you will only notice a difference on some models, and some textures. Here are some examples I had posted in the Discord:

For exclusive Dragons, the quality difference will be minimal as we already do a lot to increase the overall quality of textures. A lot of that comes with handpainting each texture, and also being anal retentive to the degree that Aiden and I are .

We do have some ideas/plans to increase quality somewhat later on, but it'll mostly depend on when we can and what we can do. Without re-doing everything from scratch there isn't much point, and at that point we literally should just be making a new game rather than working with DP.

Also, regarding an update, we have stopped getting errors and have stopped the zones crashing, however we need to do some clean up and optimization, and I will be having players test our test server for a few days to ensure there aren't any broken functionality. So far I have tested a few things that have been broken in the past, but other than that we're doing good so far.

EDIT: Removed images, and included as attachments

 

[Sylvester]

We're removing the 32bit client, and there will only be 64bit available with source update.

5% is actually a fairly large amount for a MMO, especially one as old as DP. For the most part, you will only notice a difference on some models, and some textures. Here are some examples I had posted in the Discord:

For exclusive Dragons, the quality difference will be minimal as we already do a lot to increase the overall quality of textures. A lot of that comes with handpainting each texture, and also being anal retentive to the degree that Aiden and I are .

We do have some ideas/plans to increase quality somewhat later on, but it'll mostly depend on when we can and what we can do. Without re-doing everything from scratch there isn't much point, and at that point we literally should just be making a new game rather than working with DP.

Also, regarding an update, we have stopped getting errors and have stopped the zones crashing, however we need to do some clean up and optimization, and I will be having players test our test server for a few days to ensure there aren't any broken functionality. So far I have tested a few things that have been broken in the past, but other than that we're doing good so far.

EDIT: Removed images, and included as attachments

Ok, I see the differences.

 

[Seiichi]

We're currently doing some long-term testing of the source update, mostly checking for performance and any crashes or complications.

Our largest concern is script stability, and the performance and stability of zones and whether or not they can stay online for a full week with little impact.

EDIT: So far we've done a day with just Laedis (the most problematic zone) and are now going to test a full maintenance cycle (though Wednesday to Wednesday) of all zones running so that we can monitor performance and stability. We're also going to look at doing some improvements to the client to increase FPS a little, and also see if we can fix the lag issue when you have quests that require an item.

After we finish this test, we will probably allow players to go on and test the source update separately so we can see if there are any major differences between the current server and the test server.

 

[Seiichi]

Source update has been running for 24 hours with all maps active, and we haven't seen any errors or performance issues yet... We're going to let it run until Wednesday/Thursday next week, and see if any issues or performance problems come up, and then probably allow some players to test for any issues in gameplay or features.

 

[Seiichi]

So there were no stability issues running for the full week, so we will be looking at moving to the next phase of testing sometime this week or weekend.

I've also ordered a faster server so Light doesn't have to do long maintenances where it's literally just waiting for the server to start and stop.

 

[Seiichi]

We're currently waiting on the new server hardware we purchased from our data center, which we will be migrating to once it is available.

Part of this is due to some of the performance issues the current server has been facing, and also because I like pretty new servers that run fast and don't take 10 years to shut down and start zones .

We're expecting the server sometime within the next week or two, as it is being shipped in to the data center

 

[Seiichi]

The server should be arriving today (there was a delay in the delivery) so we will be preparing it for this coming maintenance. It should hopefully resolve some of the performance issues we've been having (mainly with apartments), but we'll have to play it by ear.

We're working on finishing up some things on source still, and once that is done we will move on to recruiting some players to test.

Well those issues were resolved quickly.