Space Engineers

[GasBandit]

I got on Space Engineers to check something last night. And I noticed something else... every time I get on space engineers, I immediately start receiving steam messages about it >_< I think I need to quietly prune my friends list.

Anyway, the new models look

But I'm amused at how clunky the controls are and how bad the framerate is. Gonna have to tinker with it, there's no reason it should be just as bad on my GTX1060 as it was on my R9-270X.

 

[PatrThom]

Anyway, the new models look

.......yes?

--Patrick

 

[Dei]

.......yes?

--Patrick

Can you not see the picture?

 

[drifter]

I couldn't see it either, all I got was an image tag. @PatrThom it's this:

 

[GasBandit]

I figured out my performance issues. Was running in windowed fullscreen, which apparently Nvidia dual monitor setups HATE, and also somehow triple buffering got turned off. All better, now. Though, Planetside performance is still 30-40fps, but that's better than the 15-20 I generally used to get, and I've got all the stuff cranked all the way up, now.

But then I sit there in my old base, and sigh, and say, is it worth the effort? There's nothing out there I haven't experienced already >_<

I seem to be having a lot of trouble lately maintaining an interest in... much of anything.

Also drilling is still shit. 1 voxel update every 3 seconds???

 

[PatrThom]

Can you not see the picture?

No, and even when I quoted to reply, there was nothing there in the quote.
Curiously, it's fixed now.

--Patrick

 

[GasBandit]

No, and even when I quoted to reply, there was nothing there.
Curiously, it's fixed now.

--Patrick

Were you at work when you first viewed it, and does your work perhaps block twitter? Because it's hotlinked from twitter.

 

[PatrThom]

Were you at work when you first viewed it, and does your work perhaps block twitter? Because it's hotlinked from twitter.

Nope. At home, same computer before and after.
I also had an attack of the log in/you are not logged in/log in/you are not logged in for a bit, but that seems to have resolved itself, too.

--Patrick

 

[Dave]

I saw the picture the first time.

 

[GasBandit]

They said it couldn't be done. Was never gonna happen. But now the dev branch... has added the ability for programmable blocks to utilize antennas to send data to other grids.

That's a pretty big deal.

 

[PatrThom]

In effect, Hyperspace Communication?

--Patrick

 

[Eriol]

Given that I'm a C# expert by most standards, and I couldn't find a straightforward guide to how to make those damned blocks work by themselves (or mod API example for C# that wasn't full of major WTFs for that matter), I don't hold out a lot of hope for this kind of thing to be genuinely usable by most.

 

[GasBandit]

In effect, Hyperspace Communication?

--Patrick

Not exactly - or rather, communication between players doesn't require a programmable block, so really, we have that already. It's just now multiple grids (ships/stations) can now pass data to each other, wheras previously that was only possible if they were physically connected via connector or merge block.

This would now make it feasible to, say, automate a network of drones to perform certain tasks without player input.

The guided missile type engineers are also very excited about it.

Given that I'm a C# expert by most standards, and I couldn't find a straightforward guide to how to make those damned blocks work by themselves (or mod API example for C# that wasn't full of major WTFs for that matter), I don't hold out a lot of hope for this kind of thing to be genuinely usable by most.

Probably not most, but there's a small handful of script monkeys out there who make some really impressive shit. Given that it can then be distributed via the steam workshop, it then makes whatever the really good script enthusiasts make available to the common player, like was done with MMaster's automatic LCD script, which I can't play without anymore.

 

[PatrThom]

Ah so by "grid" you meant "schematic" not like "grid Epsilon."

--Patrick

 

[Eriol]

Ah so by "grid" you meant "schematic" not like "grid Epsilon."

Every piece of a ship that is NOT on the other side of a piston, rotor, or connector (And SOMETIMES merge block, depends on other things in that case) is part of the same "grid". Basically, if you bring up the control panel window and the pieces are all the same color, they're on the same grid. If there's a color switch, it has more than one grid.

 

[GasBandit]

Ah so by "grid" you meant "schematic" not like "grid Epsilon."

--Patrick

Yeah, a "grid" is techspeak in these games for an individual entity that is comprised of blocks but treated as a singular unit.

And what Eriol said.

 

[PatrThom]

Well, if it doesn't require an entire extra block taking up space to do it (as the "receiver"), this might finally mean the advent of those switchable thrusters I posited earlier.

--Patrick

 

[Eriol]

Well, if it doesn't require an entire extra block taking up space to do it (as the "receiver"), this might finally mean the advent of those vector thrusters I posited earlier.

If you ever get that to work, I'm making an X-Form. I'm sure there's already a plethora of Laser mods, so this is all I need.

 

[GasBandit]

Well, if it doesn't require an entire extra block taking up space to do it (as the "receiver"), this might finally mean the advent of those switchable thrusters I posited earlier.

--Patrick

I don't know if grids joined by rotors still need an antenna or not. If they don't, there's nothing stopping that from happening now already, except for doing the coding. If it does require antennas, that might be a dealbreaker for large grid ships, as their antenna is 2x6 (small grid antennas are 1x2).

 

[GasBandit]

Apparently there's a bug now that if your grid has a rotor-connected grid on it, and you safety lock the rotor, it becomes completely impervious to collision damage.

 

[GasBandit]

I've been streaming a single player all-realistic-mode game for the past couple weeks. Tonight my stream peaked at 8 viewers. I have a hard time believing that that many people want to watch me play space engineers.

 

[AshburnerX]

I've been streaming a single player all-realistic-mode game for the past couple weeks. Tonight my stream peaked at 8 viewers. I have a hard time believing that that many people want to watch me play space engineers.

Well they won't leave you the fuck alone about it ether. You keep getting messages from randos about it on steam, don't you?

 

[Eriol]

I've been streaming a single player all-realistic-mode game for the past couple weeks. Tonight my stream peaked at 8 viewers. I have a hard time believing that that many people want to watch me play space engineers.

This brings to mind trolling opportunities.


Your old advice of "drill ships, grind people" still stands right?

 

[GasBandit]

Well they won't leave you the fuck alone about it ether. You keep getting messages from randos about it on steam, don't you?

Yeah but this is a completely different set of people, most of whom had no idea about my YouTube channel or space engineers tutorials. They apparently just looked up space engineers on Twitch and decided I was the one who they wanted to watch.

 

[GasBandit]

My "lone survival, all settings on realistic" SP playthrough is nearing its completion, I think. Starting with nothing but the barest base, I have improved that base immensely, cut it free from its asteroid, and turned it into a ship. I hurtle through the cosmos looking for whatever I can find. Last night I found my first derelict, though it was just a tiny remote control welding drone floating in the middle of nowhere.

Also, this game still starts to act really funny when you get more than 100km from 0,0,0 on the map. I can only describe it as.... space friction and "round to nearest integer" ship location.

As in, I get in Bob, I thrust left. It takes more thrust to get Bob going than normal, and the speed doesn't seem to ramp up linearly, it's like yanking free of mud that your leg is stuck in. Then, even with inertia dampeners off, bob will then drift a certain distance and then suddenly stop (again, no smooth delta v curve) It's like he bumped into a cushy surface and stuck to it. Very odd and a little annoying, breaks immersion. I can only imagine it gets worse the farther you go out as I am assuming it's basically the game trying to interpolate to solve the floating point math errors that used to cause dramatic shaking when you got too far away from the center of the map.

And one final annoyance - for some reason, MMaster's Automatic LCD script v2 seems to have a mental breakdown trying to update grouped LCDs if the ship is in motion.

 

[Eriol]

Also, this game still starts to act really funny when you get more than 100km from 0,0,0 on the map. I can only describe it as.... space friction and "round to nearest integer" ship location.

If you want more "fun" have 10k or more of some type of component. Right-click-and-drag move it to another container connected via conveyor (be it to a connected ship, or just another container, doesn't matter). Move 8k of them (make sure it's not all, but a split at 8k). Notice how it doesn't move an integer number of them? But they're not ore or something that can be moved in fractions, yet there's a little "~" symbol there. The only way to resolve it is to move the "other part of the stack" back on to it, and then it goes back to pure integer. I haven't played in about 2 weeks, but the bug was present before the latest stable update.

I'm guessing they're using floats internally for everything in containers, and they're running into precision problems when certain numbers get in certain ranges with regards to precision (8000.00 = near the limit, and if it's 8000.0000 they're exceeding it). Might be common-cause to your 100k+ problem.

For the super-nerdy:
Float - 7 digits of precision: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/b1e65aza.aspx
Double - 15-16 digits of precision: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/678hzkk9.aspx
Decimal - 28-29 digits of precision: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/364x0z75.aspx
And the final choice: BigInteger - Unlimited precision, unlimited size, but you have to be REALLY clever, and it's a bear on performance: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.numerics.biginteger(v=vs.110).aspx

I haven't even looked at the SE code and based upon the 8k thing I'll bet they're using floats.

 

[GasBandit]

Oh yeah, that "decimal" of a component issue has been there for years. Though, since I started using TIM, I don't move my own inventory anymore. I just put what I want in a container in the container's name, and TIM puts it there. So, for example, if I'm about to do a whole lot of armor welding, I name Bob's large cargo container "Bob's Large Cargo Container [TIM Steelplate1]" and Tim understands that means "fill this up with steel plates." Then I dock to a connector for a second or two, then undock and go back to welding with a freshly refilled cargo hold.

Anyway, that's all beside the point, but yeah... there's a lot of floats in this game, and a lot of errors because of that. In the old days, I used to make sure my base was around 70km away from the center of the map so that other players couldn't find it, and that caused an error where, sitting in your cockpit, you'd see everything jumping around rapidly like it was shaking, when really, the game was just "oscillating" the ship between valid locations.

As I said, they seem to have found a workaround for that, but it causes very odd ship behavior.

It's a little disappointing, because I had hoped to go "explore the cosmos" looking for stuff, but even though the map is "unlimited" it seems you're still actually limited to a spherical playing area that gets less and less playable the farther you go from the center. I've half a mind to see how far out I go before it becomes incredibly ridiculous. It's not hard to hit that mark given that you can easily hop hundreds of KM at a time with jump drives. It really makes me wonder about performance and issues on the 120km diameter planets.

 

[Eriol]

It really makes me wonder about performance and issues on the 120km diameter planets.

This is what I thought of before I got down to this line of yours. I wonder how many of the problems with planets is actually this.

 

[GasBandit]

Kerbal Space Program got around this problem by changing the game so that the engines actually cause the universe to move around the spaceship instead, so the spaceship itself is always at 0,0,0 - and whatever happens hundreds of KM away is generally ignored/frozen in stasis until it comes close to the player again. Unfortunately, that doesn't work for a multiplayer game.

I can see why Empyrion decided to "break" space into "playing fields" of limited size (and extremely compressed distances) that you have to use jump drives to go from one to another. Playing it, it feels compartmentalized, but it solves so many programming limitations.

 

[Eriol]

Playing it, it feels compartmentalized, but it solves so many programming limitations.

Limitations of "Oh just use floats for everything, it'll be FINE" is not a limitation of programming, it's a limitation of planning, and even then, you can reform that later. Types can be changed you know! Space Engineers in particular has NO excuse on this one, as it's .NET based. Yes you'll have to do a LOT of find-and-replace and testing afterward, however you do NOT have to worry about any significant amount of structure packing, alignment, or tricks related to such.

What I think they may be running into as well is problems with their physics engine. A fair number of them are a lot more limited in their precision, because their calculations are f'n horrific on processors, and thus they can do more in parallel if they have smaller precision per part of the calculation. If the number can only get up to 16,000, it's a lot easier to deal with than bigger ones. I'll bet at least some of the "Wierdness" is interactions between that system and the rest of the game. Physics is hard.

 

[PatrThom]

TIL SE suffers from Minecraft's "far lands" problem.

--Patrick

 

[Eriol]

TIL SE suffers from Minecraft's "far lands" problem.

In a way, though I'd say that SE's problems are much more acute, as you don't need "hacks" to have a problem in SE. In MineCraft IIRC, you need server commands to reach the Far Lands. Thousands of years at max speed? Or something like that. In SE 100km isn't much.[DOUBLEPOST=1486655854,1486655504][/DOUBLEPOST]

In a way, though I'd say that SE's problems are much more acute, as you don't need "hacks" to have a problem in SE. In MineCraft IIRC, you need server commands to reach the Far Lands. Thousands of years at max speed? Or something like that. In SE 100km isn't much.

OK, only 12,000km away in MineCraft: http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Far_Lands

But considering you can travel 400m/s in SE easily, whereas nether-enhanced travel TOPS OUT at 320m/s (heavy prep) or 240m/s (Elytra flight) (from http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Transportation), the problem is still way different. And that's not even counting Jump Drives in SE.

 

[GasBandit]

In a way, though I'd say that SE's problems are much more acute, as you don't need "hacks" to have a problem in SE. In MineCraft IIRC, you need server commands to reach the Far Lands. Thousands of years at max speed? Or something like that. In SE 100km isn't much.[DOUBLEPOST=1486655854,1486655504][/DOUBLEPOST]
OK, only 12,000km away in MineCraft: http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Far_Lands

But considering you can travel 400m/s in SE easily, whereas nether-enhanced travel TOPS OUT at 320m/s (heavy prep) or 240m/s (Elytra flight) (from http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Transportation), the problem is still way different. And that's not even counting Jump Drives in SE.

Well, the max speed in real space is 100m/s, and I don't think I've ever traveled more than 200km from center in any given SE game, but the real kicker is Jump Drives, which can allegedly cover up to 5000km instantly (with a 10 second countdown to jump and a recharge period), it's really easy to get out there where physics starts misbehaving.

 

[PatrThom]

In a way, though I'd say that SE's problems are much more acute, as you don't need "hacks" to have a problem in SE. In MineCraft IIRC, you need server commands to reach the Far Lands. Thousands of years at max speed? Or something like that.

I think I calculated that it would take approximately three years of non-stop normal walking to get there, and that was assuming you didn't have to deal with hopping up/jumping down/swimming along the way.

--Patrick

 

[Eriol]

I think I calculated that it would take approximately three years of non-stop normal walking to get there, and that was assuming you didn't have to deal with hopping up/jumping down/swimming along the way.

According to 12 Million meters away (a block is a meter) and walking speed from that site of 4.3m/s, that's:
12,000,000 / 4.3 / 3600 (seconds per hour) / 24 (hours per day) = 32.30 days.

Still outrageous, but not years.