Portal:News/IRC Transcripts/10 December 2010

10 December 2010 Trion developer chat with Steve Chamberlin and Peter Ju. Features PvP discussions and more.

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• <%chamberlin> Hi everyone! I'm Steve Chamberlin, the development director for Rift's programming team. At Trion's California studio, I was the first engineer hired to work on what eventually became RIFT.
• <%chamberlin> I did full-time programming for a few years working on our custom development tools, graphics engine, and client/server tech. Now I'm a technical manager, and do programming maybe 5% of the time.
• <%PeterJu> I'm Peter Ju, the Lead Engineer on Rift. I'm responsible for the general technical direction of the project.
• <%PeterJu> These days I work directly on AI, the content scripting system, and the rifts/invasions/footholds system.
• <%chamberlin> Pete is Mr. Rift.
• <%Abigale> Very cool of these guys to join us today. As you can imagine, they have been pretty busy with our beta events :)

• shyntyrr asks: What sort of dynamic elements can we expect from this technology? Will these events be player influenced at all?
• <%PeterJu> So what I like to do because I'm not a super creative person is to give our content designers a nice toolbox to play with and they can come up with dynamic events
• <%PeterJu> So I can talk a bit about the toolbox we give designers
• <%PeterJu> We give them a lot of ways to change the environment on the fly in our world
• <%PeterJu> They can override the skybox, ground textures, they can spawn in props and other environmental additions on the fly
• <%PeterJu> They have the abilty to stop and start a bunch of scripting on the fly as well

• Ravel asks: Can you explain what sort of content can be added dynamically as opposed to what content needs a patch for being distributed?
• <%PeterJu> sure
• <%chamberlin> Audio files, textures, 3D models, and so on need a patch, just as in other games
• <%PeterJu> But the scripting of these elements don't have to be
• <%chamberlin> How those assets are combined is dynamic using Pete's toolbox
• <%PeterJu> Right, so you can kind of think of it as legos
• <%PeterJu> they can build stuff up from the assets without downloading anything but if you want different core assets that will require a patch

• Aethir asks: what is your view on user plugins/addons/mods for rift. could there be support for those later on, and what do you think about addons for mmos in general?
• <%chamberlin> We love plugins and mods. Unfortunately this is one of the things that didn't make our launch window due to time constraints, but we'd very much like to add them post-launch.
• <%PeterJu> It is important that we do plugins and mods right, we don't want mods that would essential "play the game for you"

• Kleemann asks: hi, are you able to optimize the mainthread to better balance cpu load and to get better fps and performence ingame?
• <%chamberlin> Kleemann, our rendering lead has been busy splitting out more threads from the main game loop just this week.
• <%chamberlin> We now have at least 4 major threads, I think, plus a number of others doing background work

• Sempermalum asks: Is collision detection in pvp to stop characters from simply walking through casters to stop their casts being looked at all, or will there just be no collision detection ingame?
• <%PeterJu> There is no character vs. character collision in Rift

• shyntyrr asks: 2.How large of a population will the servers be able to support (per server)?
• <%chamberlin> We're targeting 1500 players per server

• Ravel asks: Will AI include group behaviour in which mobs are aware of each other to combat the players more effectively?
• <%PeterJu> Yeap, AI's are aware of all friendlies and enemies in the area and what the current status of everyone nearby, so there will be group behavior. There will be smarter and dumber mobs of course, it is a matter of tuning by the designers how clever they will be

• Spraga asks: last weekend beta 1 how many players where on each server?
• <%chamberlin> I'm not sure we're supposed to answer that :-)

• Lemonystars asks: When you say that AI is handscripted, what do you mean?
• <%PeterJu> So if you are refering to mob AI. It isn't handscripted except for boss fights
• <%PeterJu> So there is not variance over the difficulty of mobs
• <mack> rather than just an AI blanket on types of mobs
• <%PeterJu> right
• <%PeterJu> Sorry, the distinction for me between "scripted" and not
• <%PeterJu> is what a designer has control over is "scripted" and what I have control over is coded

• Spraga asks: is there any plans to use Rifts for random generated World Bosses?
• <%PeterJu> yeap
• <%PeterJu> Yes there is
• <%PeterJu> I kind like to think of rifts as our way to overlay interesting content into the main world and invasion is our way to move that intereseting content around the main world

• nateryl asks: How often do we have to fight back invasions?
• <%PeterJu> So that is what we are kind of working on now
• <%chamberlin> we learned a lot from beta 1 about rifts and invasions with large player populations
• <%PeterJu> Trying to figure out the right heuristic to determine how many rifts to spawn and how difficult of a invasion to spawn
• <%chamberlin> I'd like to go back and address the beta population question
• <%PeterJu> yeah, I'm working on tweaking the coordinator right now actually
• <%chamberlin> I'm told not to give exact numbers, but I'll say this
• <%chamberlin> the servers were very busy, but they held up fabulously
• <%chamberlin> it went way smoother than we'd thought it might
• <xaed> that's pure awesomeness!
• <Mira> woot!
• <%chamberlin> and I'm now pretty confident we'll reach our server scaling goals
• <%PeterJu> lol, fabulously scott hartmans told you to use that word huh?
• <%chamberlin> and not have a crazy lag-fest

• shyntyrr asks: What new server platform capabilities does Rift use? And how does this differ from the standard faire we're used to?
• <%chamberlin> so a Rift server is actually a collection of a few dozen different processes for AI, physics, game combat, etc
• <%chamberlin> so a Rift server is actually a collection of a few dozen different processes for AI, physics, game combat, etc
• <%chamberlin> the work is divided up by function, rather than by geography
• <%chamberlin> this was a pain in the ass to get working, but now it means we can scale up by just adding more AI or game processes
• <%PeterJu> We divide our servers by task rather than by straight geography
• <%chamberlin> and if everyone in the world decides to go to a single spot, it doesn't kill the servers
• <Guest1225> interesting design
• <%chamberlin> it also means that if one process crashes, the server as a whole keeps running
• <%chamberlin> and only a few people are affected
• <%chamberlin> and it gets restarted fast enough so that a lot of times, you don't even notice
• <%PeterJu> So for example if an AIServer goes down
• <xaed> How does that affect latency? As compared to having a server geographically located?
• <nateryl> sounds sort of like how Eve tackles some of their server functions
• <%PeterJu> you would just see a bunch of npcs disappear but you are not kicked from the server
• <%PeterJu> and in a few seconds the npcs reappear
• <%chamberlin> no noticeable impact on latency due to this design

• Aethir asks: is rift developed in a platform independent way so an OSX (or linux) release could come later on?
• <%chamberlin> most of our platform-specific code is in our graphics engine
• <%chamberlin> we haven't specifically abstracted away all platform dependencies, but a Mac/Linux port would definitely be possible given the time to do it

• shyntyrr asks: The US Servers will be located in Dallas, European in Amsterdam. What was the deciding factor on where the servers will be situated and are there any plans for an Oceanic location?
• <%chamberlin> we went for places with cheap hosting and fat pipes to the internet :-)
• <%chamberlin> we actually had lots of people from Australia on during the beta 1 event, and alpha
• <%chamberlin> there are no current plans for an Oceanic datacenter at this time, as far as I'm aware

• Warehouse asks: Can you explain how the real time editing works? (how a developer can tweak things while the servers remain online)?
• <%PeterJu> So in terms of real time editing on the servers, in general we want everything to be coordinated and scheduled ahead of time so that no one has to worry about that stuff, but there are hooks and controls in there to change game parameters on the fly as well as starting authored scripted events on the fly
• <%PeterJu> there are also hooks into our rift/invasion/foothold system
• <%PeterJu> These hooks are for emergencies and when our cs dept just wants to have fun I guess

• jeezus asks: Will there be more european servers in the future? Had 200ms latency in the beta 1
• <%chamberlin> yes, for beta 1, the Europe servers weren't actually online
• <%chamberlin> they'll be up for beta 2
• <%chamberlin> including French and German specific servers

• nipper asks: Will European players be able to play on a USA based server?
• <%chamberlin> yes, North American and European players can cross-play
• <%PeterJu> yes, players can cross-play

• Lemonystars asks: Does dynamic mean that developers will be playing with us in Telara through scripted events?
• <%chamberlin> we actually did have developers manually spawning invasions during beta 1
• <%chamberlin> but that's not the way it will ultimately work
• <NightDemon> pretty sweet
• <%PeterJu> the technology is in place for that
• <%PeterJu> I think what we are trying to figure out right now
• <%PeterJu> is how to best use the tech
• <%PeterJu> well, I think one thing we learned from beta 1 is that it is always good to have emergency hooks that we can use for special circumstances

• ZeroKewl asks: will the game support dualcores or quadcores?
• <%chamberlin> yes definitely-- as mentioned earlier, just this week we did some more work to split up the main game loop into more threads

• nipper asks: By cross-play, Does this mean a European character can be taken to a USA server and vice versa?
• <%chamberlin> No, your character lives on a single server. But you can connect to servers in the other region, and create new characters there.

• Warzhark asks: How close is the beta to actual working conditions for user based systems. during beta there was an obvious mem leak and graphics seemed a bit sluggish, is your team working on improving this?
• <%chamberlin> definitely
• <%PeterJu> yeap
• <%chamberlin> performance is not yet where it needs to be ultimately, and we get that
• <%chamberlin> it is a big focus for us now
• <%chamberlin> one of the things I've been working on myself is a tool for analyzing the automated performance data that we collect from alpha players
• <%chamberlin> so we can see where the hotspots are, and focus optimization efforts there
• <%PeterJu> actually that memory leak was really only exposed from beta, because it required a lot of players entering and exiting your view
• <%chamberlin> yeah, and we actually patched a fix for the memory leak on the second day of the beta even
• <%chamberlin> actually we delivered several patches during the 3 day event, for bug fixes and content tweaks
• <%PeterJu> we try to respond quickly

• NightDemon asks: Will I be able to run away from mob in Rift, or will they chase me across the zone?
• <%PeterJu> you will be able to run away from a mob, we have a seemless world, so there is no zone boundary you can run to
• <%chamberlin> they will leash back after a point

• nateryl asks: Are rifts generated in random spots across the world map or do certain spots have a tendency to get them more often?
• <%PeterJu> you will be able to kite though
• <%PeterJu> certain spots have a tendency to get them
• <%chamberlin> there are preferred sites for rifts, yeah
• <%PeterJu> we try to avoid places that would make people mad if they were spawned in

• Dariuas asks: What are the chances of having a zone wide rift? Or the spilling of multiple rifts in one location, such as a life and death rift opening in the same location at the same time, to perhaps create a spirit rift
• <%chamberlin> this is one of the things we're working on this week in fact
• <%chamberlin> in response to beta 1 experience
• <%chamberlin> if multiple rifts of different types open near one another, they will battle each other, yes
• <Dariuas> But never work together?
• <%PeterJu> maybe in the future
• <%PeterJu> lol, no, i'm saying that they currently hate each other, but things change

• Guest7044 asks: So is it true that Rifts may appear in Instanced Dungeons?
• <%PeterJu> they may, I'll let the instance team answer that one

• Drusillus asks: Question When will you start acknowledging new VIP beta keys so folks can begin to download the client for B2?
• <%chamberlin> should be early next week

• jeezus asks: What happens to chrachters created in beta event 1, if there is no invite to beta even 2 for that account?
• <%chamberlin> they're still kept
• <%chamberlin> if you come back in a later beta event, you'll be able to play them further
• <%PeterJu> yeap
• <%PeterJu> I believe beta accounts will be wiped on release
• <%PeterJu> mainly because we are doing to extreme tests in beta

• nipper asks: Will there be a cross realm PvP battlegrounds much like what WoW has set in place?
• <%PeterJu> yes, we will have cross realm pvp battlegrounds

--- Original logs at Riftirc.com