Test Update 01/14/2015

Discussion in 'Test Update Notes and Bug Roundup' started by KevinMcP, Jan 13, 2015.

  1. Souliwarr Apprentice

    Okay, I don't know where I should be posting this but if anyone knows then please feel free to tell me.

    I believe that the new August Cultural Armor should take both Fearlinked and Elder seals, this way people who have the old regal armor can still use those items in the new August Armor, and they can just replace the seals as they go. Of course the effectiveness of any spell focus seals are compromised after level 100, but for melee classes this is a big help.

    I have seen many people wearing cultural that could benefit from this change, and it also stimulates the overall economy because these new player made items will then be in demand. Currently, there are very few of these sets circulating, because let's be honest, the solo seals suck. You can just get a set of group gear and be better off than putting the time and effort into making the August Armor with solo seals.

    Personally, I am still using Regal armor because I like the stats and effects and I am sure there are people out there doing the same. Especially on regular servers where these raid seals are no trade, and just rot in the bank unless used elsewhere, enabling people to place these seals in August Armor will most definitely have its advantages all around.

    Thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope the developers actually read this stuff. I think this has been an issue for a little bit of time now, as far as placing Veiled seals into Glorious armor, etc. However, you are able to place both Cosgrove and Phantasmic seals into Extravagant armor, so I wouldn't believe this to be too far-fetched of an idea.

    Thank you,
    Grandmaster Souliwarr
  2. Ngreth Thergn Developer

    Ah. Cool. Well, have fun! Hopefully the adjustment in agro radii helps.
  3. Ngreth Thergn Developer

    We read. We don't respond to every post, especially the rants with no substantial data or suggestions (this is not one of those. This is a nice reasoned post. thank you.). We just can;t respond to every post AND continue to actually design the game. I will forward this on to the people in charge of itemization and tradeskills. I can't promise a response, just that it will be forwarded on.
  4. Souliwarr Apprentice


    Great! Thank you very much, I just wanted to make sure that (1) I was placing this in the right place and (2) that this would be seen by those who can make a difference.

    Grandmaster Souliwarr
  5. Ngreth Thergn Developer

    Not necessarily the correct place. Since this was not a bug with the patch it was probably best in the Veterans lounge :) But, I am not begrudging that, just letting you know.
  6. Draco Journeyman

    Has the Beta reward been added yet? An update was just completed on live servers was under the impression that we wont see it until update...
  7. Feradach Augur

    Ngreth stated in post #50 in this thread that the beta reward was being pulled from the live patch. It was also not in the live patch notes, so the answer to your question would be no...it has not been added yet.
  8. JChan Developer

    Let me ask you first, what is your memory mode set to in the options? Have you tried "Least memory usage"?

    We've seen many client crashes when zoning due to simply being out of (contiguous blocks of) memory. Additionally, zoning many times or entering high memory zones also increases the chance that the memory will "fragment" quicker or reach that point quicker. Meaning there isn't enough memory for the block that we're trying to allocate.
  9. Savager Augur

    Ain't nobody got time for dat!
  10. Axxius Augur

    If this helps, here's how to reproduce a crash that happens to several people in our guild, I believe they already have the Least Memory Usage set:
    1. Log in: Palatial Guild Hall.
    2. Banner to Arx Mentis raid instance.
    3. Anchor gate back to the guild hall.
    4. Banner to Argin-Hiz raid instance.
    The same people always crash after this same sequence.

    Yes, I understand the memory management issues, contiguous blocks and all that (I'm a programmer), but can't you do anything about it? Instead of letting the client crash when it's unable to allocate a block of the required size, how about releasing all allocated blocks and pretending that the client has just started? Or something along those lines. Anything is better than simply letting it crash.
    Fanra likes this.
  11. JChan Developer

    We do actually force a flush of the zone's texture and geometry data when you zone. We can do this because they're all done in a memory pool. However, most of our memory allocations aren't in a defined memory pool and can't be readily flushed. We have the ability to do a full flush, but it's not really usable i.e. you'd have to a full login with selecting your server and character again (at that point it'll have the same usability flow as crashing and forcing a restart of the client).

    We're constantly making tweaks to our memory footprint and our memory allocations and there is no one magic solution that's going to resolve these issues. Additionally, all changes go back to the old trade-off question: "Should it use more memory or should it use more CPU?"
  12. Obiziana Augur


    Always more CPU. In this day and age there's almost always a surplus of compute power on most PCs/laptops/etc. While EQ is still 32 bit memory will always be the limiting factor.
    svann likes this.
  13. Axxius Augur

    The partial solution I have in mind is this: since the textures are loaded the last (as you can see if you zone into a busy place like GL on a slow machine: you will first see the textureless gray objects), check if the memory blocks of the required sizes are available, and if they aren't - simply don't load the rest of the textures. The 'gray world' would still be a lot better than crashing. Additonally, you can show a warning message to the player that they need to close and restart EQ some time soon.
  14. JChan Developer

    Unfortunately, that's not always the option at this time. We still need to make sure the game functions under our minimum specs.
  15. Silv Augur

    This confused me a bit... are you saying "least memory usage" is the better option to deal with these types of issues instead of allowing EQ to use more? It seemed counter-intuitive to me but I'm not a program person. I know this is a bit off topic for the test patch bug thread but it's kindof turned in this direction.
  16. JChan Developer

    If you have streaming textures turned on that's what we do. Additionally, running in the "least memory usage" profile caps the usage of high quality textures to a much lower memory usage number. On top of that running in that "least" profile also lowers the threshold in which we start to downsample testure memory.

    Typically though much of the out of memory issues are related to the geometry of the zone trying to allocate too large a block for the available memory.
  17. JChan Developer

    Yes.

    Setting your options to use the "least memory usage" as well as turning on "Stream Item Textures" are the first steps to take to reduce crashing due to out of memory issues (which typically happen when you zone as well as when you've zoned multiple times since you've restarted your client). Additionally, setting "Terrain Texture Quality" to "Minimum" will reduce the crashes as well.

    The issue we're trying to address here is basically trying to find large enough slices of available memory for the zone you're about to enter and not having it.

    For an analogy: imagine that we have a gigantic submarine sandwich and it's delicious and we all want some of it. It hasn't been cut yet and we all want different sizes of sandwich. Also, we don't want to have our sandwich to be made of different sections of the sandwich. We want to have a continuous chunk. "Least memory usage" is basically saying we don't have a lot of sandwich here please only take what you need or possibly a little less. "Most memory usage" is like saying we have a lot of sandwich available take as much as you want. When you're zoning is when really hungry people are coming to take a piece of the sandwich some zones like Morell's Castle are these really hungry people. They require a lot more sandwich (memory) than the Arena. When the client crashes due to out of memory, it's when we're out of sandwich of the size that someone needs.
    Suifeng likes this.
  18. Obiziana Augur

    I like giant sub sandwiches....