Glamour and why it's poorly designed

[Mhaeric]

Well no... an 8-bit number can store exactly 8 zeroes and ones.

I didn't say how many 0s and 1s an 8-bit number can hold. I said how large a list of 1s and 0s (i.e. booleans) that an 8-bit binary number could store. You seem to understand just fine that I was referring to a bit array given your bitvector comment, so I'm not sure why you even mentioned this.

[Callinon]

I didn't say how many 0s and 1s an 8-bit number can hold. I said how large a list of 1s and 0s (i.e. booleans) that an 8-bit binary number could store. You seem to understand just fine that I was referring to a bit array given your bitvector comment, so I'm not sure why you even mentioned this.

Maybe I'm not understanding you. An 8-bit number looks like this:
00000000 (0)
all the way up to
11111111 (255)

That's 8 bits you have to work with in there, therefore 8 points of data that can be either on or off. Which bits toggled on changes the decimal value of the number, but it's still just 8 points of data:
10011001 (153)

In this way we can represent 8 boolean values in a single space instead of 8 different spaces.

I think we're talking about the same thing with different words.

[Iscah]

An 8-bit number can alternately store ONE value between 0 and 255.

[Maeka]

It would be slightly more memory, but not hugely so!

The current system, I would imagine, uses at the very minimum, 800 bytes of data:

400 slots, 2 bytes each (1 byte would only give you 255 possible things, which is nowhere near enough) allows for 65,535 different possible things that could be in each slot. This is assuming that each item number has a 2-byte ref# ranging from 0000 to FFFF. Now, it is possible (and quite likely) that they might use an EOF-type function (you don't actually store null values in the empty slots, you just read until you come to the end of the list), but yet when you're programming a list like this, if you tell the user that they CAN have 400 slots, then you need to allocate enough memory in case the user (or all the users in the case of an MMO) really does use all 400 slots.

So this means that you would need at least 800 bytes of data to store the contents of the glamour dresser in its current form, which is a pittance by today's computing standards.

My suggestion would take a bit more memory, but still not that much.

Looking up on xivdb, there are roughly 4,000 weapons and 14,000 armors with about 300 glamour items. However, a lot of these have duplicate models (such as the Aetherial _____) and we don't really need to duplicate the models to be honest.

If we went with my idea, you would need (currently) about 19,000 bits (or 2,400 bytes) which sounds like a lot (3 times as much as we currently use), but still a pittance by today's computing standards. This is with the duplicate models, mind you. I'm willing to bet we could shave off a good 2,000 or so of those entries if we got rid of the duplicate models.

Just as a reference, this post is ~2,300 bytes in pure-text form.

This is assuming you do not compress the data. Given that this is a system that is not accessed often, this data could be compressed on the server, sent to the client, and uncompressed at the client to populate the list (which places most of the burden on the user's machine rather than the server or the bandwidth). Since this is only going to be done while in town, and such decompression can be done in an instant by any computer strong enough to run XIV, I don't really think this would be a problem to be honest.

[Callinon]

It would be slightly more memory, but not hugely so!

The current system, I would imagine, uses at the very minimum, 800 bytes of data:

400 slots, 2 bytes each (1 byte would only give you 255 possible things, which is nowhere near enough) allows for 65,535 different possible things that could be in each slot. This is assuming that each item number has a 2-byte ref# ranging from 0000 to FFFF. Now, it is possible (and quite likely) that they might use an EOF-type function (you don't actually store null values in the empty slots, you just read until you come to the end of the list), but yet when you're programming a list like this, if you tell the user that they CAN have 400 slots, then you need to allocate enough memory in case the user (or all the users in the case of an MMO) really does use all 400 slots.

So this means that you would need at least 800 bytes of data to store the contents of the glamour dresser in its current form, which is a pittance by today's computing standards.

My suggestion would take a bit more memory, but still not that much.

Looking up on xivdb, there are roughly 4,000 weapons and 14,000 armors with about 300 glamour items. However, a lot of these have duplicate models (such as the Aetherial _____) and we don't really need to duplicate the models to be honest.

If we went with my idea, you would need (currently) about 19,000 bits (or 2,400 bytes) which sounds like a lot (3 times as much as we currently use), but still a pittance by today's computing standards. This is with the duplicate models, mind you. I'm willing to bet we could shave off a good 2,000 or so of those entries if we got rid of the duplicate models.

Just as a reference, this post is ~2,300 bytes in pure-text form.

This is assuming you do not compress the data. Given that this is a system that is not accessed often, this data could be compressed on the server, sent to the client, and uncompressed at the client to populate the list (which places most of the burden on the user's machine rather than the server or the bandwidth). Since this is only going to be done while in town, and such decompression can be done in an instant by any computer strong enough to run XIV, I don't really think this would be a problem to be honest.

You forgot the dyes in the current system but yeah that sounds right. Part of me kind of expects the item id#s to be full 4-byte integers just because that'd give the system a functionally infinite number of items to allocate and it wouldn't ever have to be a consideration. I will say that their item structure absolutely considers duplicate models as separate items. For the purposes of glamour, yeah they should pare that out and get rid of the dupes, but the current system doesn't work that way and SE is all about making excuses based on existing code.

I will point out that even though the individual memory cost for this is vanishingly small, we have to consider the impact of thousands of these co-existing all at the same time. Ultros, for instance, has about 95,000 active players according to the census data. So your estimate of 2300 bytes per loaded player means you're potentially talking about 218MB of data for this one system alone. That's a lot more impactful.

[Lihtleita]

what if we just deleted the jobstone and belt slots? (paladins deserve to keep their offhand glams i aint touching that) would that save memory?

[Ginnomme]

Something a lot less major but what still bothers me a lot: the fact we can't actually manually sort and move the glamour plates. Honestly I'd already be happy if they let us move a plate to a different slot and not make us redo the whole thing.
Though of course I also agree with the overall point that the glamour system really needs a big update to be less frustrating. I'm pretty new in the glamour area but I already feel like there is only so much I can do thanks to the game's restrictions.
So I agree wholeheartedly with all of this.
(also this is my first time on the forum so I hope this is the right way to reply !)

[DPZ2]

I seriously doubt the glamour system is going to completely change anytime soon (6.0 earliest, 7.0 more realistic), for several reasons.

1. There is over 7 years of glamour coding that needs to be rewritten
2. Transmog as of the start of BFA still required you to visit a Transmogrifier to invoke the glamours, however much you liked playing paper doll with the interface.
3. Client vs Server side works differently between WoW and FFXIV
4. PC client and PS4 client changes would be necessary -- WoW has a single interface to be changed
5. People who think that the problem is one of memory, one that can be solved with bitmaps and a little bit of coding, ignore the network issues with additional data, as well as the intricacies of threading through code changes that affect everything you see on screen. Heck, I see enough issues porting into Ul'dah on Balmung, watching players appear in their undergarments for tens of seconds before their gear and glamours arrive.

[Maeka]

I seriously doubt the glamour system is going to completely change anytime soon (6.0 earliest, 7.0 more realistic), for several reasons.

1. There is over 7 years of glamour coding that needs to be rewritten

Same could be said for a lot of other things that were changed or re-done in the game's life.

2. Transmog as of the start of BFA still required you to visit a Transmogrifier to invoke the glamours, however much you liked playing paper doll with the interface.

What exactly does this prove? It doesn't *HAVE* to be that way, that's a choice Blizzard made. And besides, there's at least 1 mount in the game that you can summon anywhere that has a transmogrifier on said mount, which makes WoW's transmog system even more convenient than XIV which still requires you to be inside a town to apply a glamour plate.

3. Client vs Server side works differently between WoW and FFXIV

Not sure why this has anything to do with anything. Obviously, different games work differently.

4. PC client and PS4 client changes would be necessary -- WoW has a single interface to be changed

This hasn't stopped them from updating other out of date systems.

5. People who think that the problem is one of memory, one that can be solved with bitmaps and a little bit of coding, ignore the network issues with additional data, as well as the intricacies of threading through code changes that affect everything you see on screen. Heck, I see enough issues porting into Ul'dah on Balmung, watching players appear in their undergarments for tens of seconds before their gear and glamours arrive.

My idea would not change this. Once you apply a glamour to your equipped items, everything would still function the same as it does now. My idea would only affect the game determining what glamours you have access to.

[DPZ2]

My idea would only affect the game determining what glamours you have access to.

And the comment I made was this wasn't going to happen any time soon, not that it wouldn't happen eventually. If you can wait 2-3 years for it, you'll probably see some of those changes. If you want it now, forget it.