Dev meeting minutes 2010-06-27 - Page 2

Dev meeting minutes 2010-06-27

Minutes of the meetings between Spring developers are archived here.
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Forboding Angel
Evolution RTS Developer
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Re: Dev meeting minutes 2010-06-27

Post by Forboding Angel »

hoijui wrote: Edit:
Forb, now think about it...
if you were me right now, what (useful) info would you get out of your last post?
"Sorry grand master, for not asking you this morning what are you wishes! a hundred thousand deaths may i die for not reading your mind, and for not taking well care of your suit fruits, ..."
Perhaps that some of the content devs are getting a little squeamish? Perhaps you'd like to know now instead of later when you have people raeging and jumping down your throat for what could just be a simple misunderstanding.

You know what I gleaned from your comment? "Stfu and keep quiet. I don't give a shit." That's what I gleaned.
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zwzsg
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Re: Dev meeting minutes 2010-06-27

Post by zwzsg »

hoijui wrote:z: see last two commits:
http://github.com/spring/TASServer/comm ... ptPassword
(they are already in master)
Thanks. But that's the changes on the server side. Any change in the engine side?

I saw some Optional="yes", does it mean it's optional and not compulsory like zerver said?
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hoijui
Former Engine Dev
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Re: Dev meeting minutes 2010-06-27

Post by hoijui »

yeah, that is what i would get out of your post: some (non BA *A) content devs are unhappy.
.. that is of no use.

thinking is a hard thing, but this time, it needs doing.
i did not tell you to shut up, but to think...
do you expect us engine devs to come running to you and ask: "are you unhappy? and if so, why? and how can we change that?"

that is the only way of thinking that i see makes sense with what you said. and of course.. that would be foolish. now if that is not what you want, then you did it wrong (or say, a bad post).
i wanted you to rethink your post, and make a better one, a useful one, and cause i was pissed, i did that in a slightly innice way, but i at least gave all the info that was needed:
if you were me right now, what (useful) info would you get out of your last post?
edit:
z: doc/StartScriptFormat.txt
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Forboding Angel
Evolution RTS Developer
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Re: Dev meeting minutes 2010-06-27

Post by Forboding Angel »

Forboding Angel wrote:It's a little concerning to me that it seems that about the only considerations given in these meetings seem to be towards *A and BA in particular. It's rather worrisome.

Edit: And I'm not the only content dev who has gotten this vibe.
^^ This post pissed you off? Self control much?

I never said unhappy, I said concerned and squeamish. Since you apparently are having trouble reading what I've written, I'll put it bluntly.

Some of us are worried that we, and by extension our projects, might get thrown under the bus, because, For the most part only thing that we see is consideration for how something might affect BA. Can you blame us for being a little worried?

Jesus, congratulations for making a mountain out of a molehill.

Also, in my original post, I bolded and italicised the word "Seems" (see what I did there?) for a reason. Perhaps next time you could do a little thinking yourself before flying off the handle at me for no reason.

Edit: Now you've managed to piss me off. Thanks. I was having a good night.
zerver: ok well just a quick thought about ways to make MT more noob friendly
zerver: it has issues with LUA draw call-ins slowing down the whole game
zerver: so my thought was whether to by default disable all such call-ins for MT
zerver: and the user has to enable it via confighandler
jk: o_O
zerver: the question is if this gives more or less bug reports
Tobi: doesn't that imply mt will only be useful with BA?
Try starting a project on the spring engine, spend years developing it, and seeing the above conversation. Am I being clear enough now?

The fact that something like this was even suggested is enough to cause a lot of worry.
Tobi
Spring Developer
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Re: Dev meeting minutes 2010-06-27

Post by Tobi »

You (and all those other content devs that are worried because of that out of context quote) didn't understand the conversation properly.
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zwzsg
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Re: Dev meeting minutes 2010-06-27

Post by zwzsg »

Ok: http://github.com/spring/spring/blob/ma ... Format.txt

MyPasswd
You saved only two letters, but abbreviated in a totally non standard way, making it a pain to remember.

I supposed passwords are abitrary strings, anything that doesn't contain ; // /* */ ? And there is no check that password conform to a certain format, for instance, I could use a password of 0 for everybody and it would not mind?

Is password compulsory in every case, for instance if there is no client, can I have no passwords, or should the host and only player still set a [GAME]'s MyPasswd identical to [PLAYER0]'s Password?
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Forboding Angel
Evolution RTS Developer
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Re: Dev meeting minutes 2010-06-27

Post by Forboding Angel »

Tobi wrote:You (and all those other content devs that are worried because of that out of context quote) didn't understand the conversation properly.
Well, that's what I thought. But I (and obviously others) were a little concerned and a little peace of mind goes a long ways (in other words, just wanted some affirmation). One person in particular was quite upset about it, including your responses Tobi, but the way I read the conversation was that you were essentially saying "Well if only BA would benefit, then what would be the point?", or something more or less to that effect.

Still though, I did nothing to deserve that kind of response from hoijui. That was completely uncalled for.
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zwzsg
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Re: Dev meeting minutes 2010-06-27

Post by zwzsg »

Do not worry: There will be a line in the changelog that mods other than BA are no longer supported, so all is good.
Tobi: well, I think putting some note about this in readme or on download page or so is good enough
Hope you're at peace now. ImageImageImageImageImageImageImage :twisted:
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Hoi
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Re: Dev meeting minutes 2010-06-27

Post by Hoi »

To me it reads like this:
- You want spring to be an engine, not a game
- You don't want to expand the engine code, a lot of core RTS functions are not in the engine and for years the developers have said that modder must use lua to make it.
- Now you want to drop all that effort just for multithreading, essentially making spring less an engine, and more a game (ba).

It doesn't make any sense at all. Sure ba is popular but also copyrighted. The owner (whoever it is) doesn't care about it, but that doesn't mean it's good for spring's image.

Spring is generally known (and most people don't know it) as a slow engine that will enable you to write a game in lua. That's already quite stupid and dropping the lua for a few more fps is even more stupid.

Sure you guys work in your free time and I know that communities whine about things they want and don't want (I work on something too, and it happens all the time), but this is just a stupid decision and will make spring lose all credibility it has. The engine has potential but if you're doing what I think you're doing then it will lose that potential.
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Argh
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Re: Dev meeting minutes 2010-06-27

Post by Argh »

Wheee.

Calm down, people.
zerver: ok well just a quick thought about ways to make MT more noob friendly
zerver: it has issues with LUA draw call-ins slowing down the whole game
zerver: so my thought was whether to by default disable all such call-ins for MT
zerver: and the user has to enable it via confighandler
jk: o_O
zerver: the question is if this gives more or less bug reports
Tobi: doesn't that imply mt will only be useful with BA?
That basically meant, "I'm having so many problems with MT desyncing or eating massive CPU due to communications overhead that I am considering a major change to it that will probably mean it's no longer all that useful for mods / games using a lot of Lua visuals".

Hence why I said, "gee, maybe it's time for a different strategy here", to which I was told, "well, a lot of things need direct access, and we don't have a good solution yet".

IOW, it's not a conspiracy or anything. It's a technical problem. I get the impression that zerver is pretty frustrated- it all works, technically, but performance is disappointing and the desync problem can only be solved by things that defeat the whole point of going MT in the first place.

Another idea about this, btw: maybe run two entirely seperated instances of Lua, one synced, the other not, and let all calls from synced to unsynced Lua in single-thread get queued?

I keep thinking there's got to be a way to put a firewall of sorts between the two areas, operationally. If that means that there is even an "unsynced Lua" instance that has a reduced feature-set, or operates differently (for example, can do calls to UnitPosition, but only with the data from the last synced update), then that's a choice we need to look at.

Otherwise I'm inclined to say that we need to move towards making the engine and Lua multithread-aware, and discuss how that would effect coding for it, and simply drop the idea of two-processor Spring and move directly to multiprocessor Spring.
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zwzsg
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Re: Dev meeting minutes 2010-06-27

Post by zwzsg »

jk: I would like to tag it 0.82RC
Tobi: yeah I was wondering already why we didn't use 0.81rc etc. in the past
Because with dot-separated numbers, it's easier to see the version order. When you start throwing letters in the mix, it becomes unclear. Please keep using the previous version name system.
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Argh
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Re: Dev meeting minutes 2010-06-27

Post by Argh »

Oh, and one more semi-random thought:

What if we ran two full simulations of Spring in parallel, but one of them omitted all the code loops concerned with setup of the main visuals (i.e., it would calculate Unit Piece rotations, but not the display lists, etc.)?

Might that not solve a lot of the issues? Most of the speed would be back, and the non-visual would be able to provide data for Lua operations. The only exception to this would be DrawUnit callouts, which (in my opinion, at least) is an area of the engine that needs a complete re-think anyhow.
zerver
Spring Developer
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Re: Dev meeting minutes 2010-06-27

Post by zerver »

Forb. don't worry. There is no conspiracy against non-BA mods. BA just happens to be less dependent on LUA rendering than some other mods. BA is simply technically less complicated.

I was worried that "omfg MT kicks ass" type noobs would use the MT without knowing the limitations, slow down the whole game for all players because of CPU overhead, and ruin the gaming experience for all players. The exact opposite of the real intentions of MT. This is the origin of my not-so-good suggestion of disabling draw call-ins.

Instead I have now put a notification at game start with noob friendly info, and also made a profiler that displays the LUA rendering CPU % on screen. It begins to flash red when it exceeds 10% so noobs will hopefully react to it.

You should be happy that MT finally makes its way into the installer because this means that my (and hopefully other devs) will have more incentive to make it compatible will ALL mods.
zerver
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Re: Dev meeting minutes 2010-06-27

Post by zerver »

Argh wrote:Oh, and one more semi-random thought:

What if we ran two full simulations of Spring in parallel, but one of them omitted all the code loops concerned with setup of the main visuals (i.e., it would calculate Unit Piece rotations, but not the display lists, etc.)?
Not sure if there is enough that can be stripped from Sim #2 to make any difference.
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hoijui
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Re: Dev meeting minutes 2010-06-27

Post by hoijui »

Hoi wrote:Spring is generally known (and most people don't know it) as ...
nice one! :D
you know... about once a week, we get someone with an intel 945 - or sometimes even weaker/older stuff - reporting a bug because spring runs so slow. and half of them say: but i heard spring does not need good HW...


z: Aus chose that string. he did it quite some months ago. i agree that it makes little sense to abbreviate there (though, it is THE short short form of password, as pwd -> private working directory).
meet me in the lobby for questions.
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FLOZi
MC: Legacy & Spring 1944 Developer
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Re: Dev meeting minutes 2010-06-27

Post by FLOZi »

Have to agree with Argh over Forb on this one, I don't see any dissing of non-BA projects here.

Afterall, Tobi is an S44 fanboy. 8)

I do think that engine dev<->content dev communication is a real sticking point in our community though. It can be improved somewhat by more content devs using mantis rather than the forums to report bugs and ask for features.

But on the other hand, there are modder requests on mantis going back to 2006 that still apply (like different categories of interceptor weapons). It'd probably be useful for both groups of people to work through the backlog and see what is still relevant.

Perhaps a subforum of feature requests for modder use only with guidelines about how to make a full and formal request/report with attached examples etc.
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Argh
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Re: Dev meeting minutes 2010-06-27

Post by Argh »

Not sure if there is enough that can be stripped from Sim #2 to make any difference.
I'm just thinking out loud. This may not be a workable solution, but so much of the cost is setup for things that wouldn't be necessary in a sim that didn't draw anything other than Lua stuff.

What about the pathfinder? Couldn't the Unit positions be gotten by the other sim, and sent over once a gameframe or something, with interpolation based on heading / velocity until then?
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lurker
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Re: Dev meeting minutes 2010-06-27

Post by lurker »

Which brings up having a slave thread for some of the calculations. Pathfinding and LOS are high-CPU and relatively easy to pull out as far as I know. How much of sim is spent on them? Is anything else?
Tobi
Spring Developer
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Re: Dev meeting minutes 2010-06-27

Post by Tobi »

I would try first to make it better use CPU cache. Since AFAIK no one ever profiled this it would suprise me if there isn't a lot to win in that area, and that may be doable without a lot of the complications of MT. (It's something still on my long term to do list..)
SirMaverick
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Re: Dev meeting minutes 2010-06-27

Post by SirMaverick »

Tobi wrote:I would try first to make it better use CPU cache.
How? Spring is run on many different systems.
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