Thread: 6.2 Hrothgar Update

Originally Posted by Denji

i'm sorry to be blunt ... someone ...THE SERVER CAN'T HANDLE IT ... are just talking out their ass.

This is not true. While the server is not involved in the raster operations, the server's certainly involved in character display. Here's why:

Imagine:

1) I had a Hrothgar with highlights in my tail, and custom fur patterns and all sorts of eyebrow selections. All of that data has to live somewhere. If it didn't, then I'd be able to do things like look differently to other people by playing on a different machine. Some data like gearsets does live client-side, but if I could do things like display arbitrarily complex faces, there wouldn't be that limitation. So that's a storage issue that lives on a server. Can't tell you if that's the limit that's important, can tell you that logically, that lives at Square.

2) When you see me in game, your client doesn't take my word for it. You're making a call to a server, which is sending a packet of information containing my entire identity to you. The only other way of doing that would be for me to send it to you peer-to-peer, which would mean that people who have bad internet would show up more slowly than people who don't, and create a holy host of security issues. Since all of the bones I have are alterable by things my height, etc, it stands to reason there's a limitation somewhere that if I sent you a jumbo packet that operation performed every time I see someone new in Limsa would be a lot of data - not for you, but for the server. So the low data usage you're talking about actually points to the server being the limitation. Your client doesn't care because it's chump change to it.

3) If the server were not involved, you wouldn't see re-use between models. As I've said, Hrothgar tail length is re-used from the Roe musculature. If the footprint - network or storage - were unimportant, that data would be a new variable, and we might get a tail length AND a muscle slider. We wouldn't lose bones from our ears when things got added to our jaws, tails and whiskers. This indicates that there is a limitation on model complexity, and since modders can change that, that limitation isn't client-side.

So, unfortunately, the server is involved, either from a network or storage standpoint. There's simply no other explanation for it. And while you are correct, interpretation of that data is client-side, otherwise you couldn't change things like screen resolution, the actual communication of my character has to be sent from an authoritative source - and there's only one of those.

So, who's that guy jumpin' in saying the server's involved?



Dis guy. And I have looked into it. A bunch. I've spent the last three months trying to figure out why it's so hard, because YoshiP ain't so forthcoming with the "whys" of things.

Originally Posted by Ayuhra

They can't just do what modders do because they are limited by the engine on everything server-side.

There's nothing server-side. Whether your ears are showing, or your hat is being hidden, your character data is the exact same. Which is the reason why mods are able to display incompatible Hrothgar/Viera hats even on other players.
Mods don't exist in a different reality than the game. They say they can't implement those not because of a technical impossibility in a vacuum but because they don't want to for various reasons.

Originally Posted by Kazhar

There's nothing server-side. Whether your ears are showing, or your hat is being hidden, your character data is the exact same. Which is the reason why mods are able to display incompatible Hrothgar/Viera hats even on other players.
Mods don't exist in a different reality than the game. They say they can't implement those not because of a technical impossibility in a vacuum but because they don't want to for various reasons.

What Kazhar said. Everything about your character on the server is just text saying "ON\OFF" and "option 1, 2". It's not rendered in the server at all, your PC does all the work. It's what we call "client-side", and it's why mods only work on the computer of the person using them and not on the people affected.

Originally Posted by Kazhar

There's nothing server-side.

While you are correct that the sentence "They can't do what modders do because they are limited by the engine on everything server-side" is non-sensical, there's plenty server side going on. Why on earth would you design one race with ears attached, and static, when every other race in the game doesn't have that? A friend of mine sent me these pictures - don't ask me where they came from, I don't mod, to a large extent because I want Square to FIX. IT., I don't advocate third-party tools, and I'm not smart enough to do this - in fact, I'm barely housebroken. Also, would love it if my account didn't get banned.

But here's a Viera noggin:



And here's a Hrothgar:



Why, if we weren't missing ear bones would they have ears attached unlike every other race in the game? Why, if there weren't a server-side limitation, either network, or storage, would that be the case?

Don't get me wrong, it's not "technically impossible" - but it is hard, and will require re-factoring the models, or doing performance testing, or augmenting storage or something. So there are certainly server-side issues as well as the client-side issues such as clipping.

When I say "the problem is hard" that's because Hrothgar have a lot of moving parts to them.

So, the problem is hard, because you have client, network, race-design, data storage, and character customization issues all in one tidy little package. In other words, a mess.

And again, so that we are all really, really clear about WHOSE SIDE KELLY IS ON, this is not acceptable, and it's indicative of them not fixing Hrothgar correctly in three years. Adding hair and hats and physics to Viera is relatively trivial by comparison by two design decisions - all Hrothgar skull geometries are different, and there aren't enough bones.

That's why I keep saying "Hrothgar are in beta." We are living, breathing prototypes who were never standardized, which isn't bad, but when you monkey with something after it's out, there are a lot of ramifications to doing so. As a matter of fact, while I've listed a lot of reasons why this is hard, I do not, for one second think I know all of the issues with which they're going to have to deal. Dealing with the impact analysis and problem domain alone is beyond my ability, not to mention actually implementing such a thing.

We were never future-proofed, or even finished for that matter, and that's why we're so damned hard to rev or evolve. Hrothgar and Viera get lumped into the same bucket, but we're not even remotely the same from a technical standpoint.

-Kelly

This is a message to readers of the thread here:

I want to make sure my motivations are very, very clear here. I am not smart. I am not a software developer (I was in DevOps for many years, which is like software development for the self-loathing). I do not work for Square.

We recently lost a Hrothgar on Aether, a super nice guy. We had a memorial for him, and 75 gignormous cats, and a bunch of supporters showed up to tell him goodbye. It was one of the most moving things I've ever seen in a videogame.

I love the Hrothgar. I love the Aether community, we're a pretty tight-knit bunch, and even at 43 the sense of social belonging and camaraderie have helped me and a lot of others through a pandemic, nasty social climates, mental illness, substance abuse, and bone-crushing loneliness.

And while I will jump in to weigh in on what people are saying, and will as patiently as I can (I'm human too, and sick, and I get mad like everyone else) explain why it is that this problem isn't as simple as adopting modder code, or adding bones, or flipping flags, and I will explain passionately (but I hope politely) why it is that I'm this astonishingly angry, which isn't the hairstyles. Or hats. Or Queen Gunnhildr The Cop-Out.

It's that all of you, even the ones I don't know real well, in game or out are worth my time. And you are worth having the problem explained to you correctly. So that while I cannot fix your issue here, and that our "Community Representatives" who rarely, if ever weigh in, certainly never do twice. And even if no one at Square gave enough of a darn about you to even say "Yeah, we heard you?"

I did. And you guys did too.

So, please don't think for a minute me disagreeing with any one of you on a technical level is "Me > you." It's not that you're dumb for asking. Or putting your opinions up here.

And if I'm not communicating this in how thought-out and researched my posts are? Please let me say it explicitly here: You all deserve that respect and my time.

-Kelly

Originally Posted by Denji

oh my god why do you guys always believe server side matters when it comes to graphics.

it's the most infuriating parts of these threads. there is nothing and i mean NOTHING server-side when it comes to displaying ANYTHING. the servers likely don't even have a graphical user interface. it'd be such a waste of resources if they did.

everything you see in-game is what your computer is told to display by the server. that's it. it says "hey, this person is a white and grey furred hrothgar wearing the radiant's fending set" and your PC/the engine on your machine is what actually shows the graphics. it would be an utterly ABSURD waste of resources to send literal graphical information over the internet. in fact in terms of data sent/received, FFXIV is extremely light. i was playing on mobile data and it used approximately 50-60MB of data over the course of 3-4 hours. that's all.

i'm sorry to be blunt but every 3-4 pages of threads like this there's someone who comes flying in saying UM AHCKSHULLY THE SERVER CAN'T HANDLE IT and it's just so entirely clear they've never actually looked into it or checked it for themselves and are just talking out their ass.

I said limited by the engine, not the server (A better way to say that would be anything live on the server has to be engine compatible... but I didn't say that). Something about the way the game allocates data is very weird.

But this seems to be an excuse for everything: Inventory, character customization, glamour systems... It took forever for them to let us queue with our chocobos out for some reason...

The whole thing needs a fix if we're really going to be in this for the long haul. Ten more years of these limitations will be very rough.

Originally Posted by Ayuhra

I said limited by the engine, not the server (A better way to say that would be anything live on the server has to be engine compatible). Something about the way the engine allocates data is very weird.

But this seems to be an excuse for everything: Inventory, character customization, glamour systems... It took forever for them to let us queue with our chocobos out for some reason...

The whole thing needs a fix if we're really going to be in this for the long haul. Ten more years of these limitations will be very rough.

you absolutely did not say that. stop trying to save face.

also, there is no limitation. otherwise modders wouldn't be able to do it. we -know the reason-. the heads simply weren't designed correctly for some of face choices and it would've required more than a day's work to fix it to work properly so that the ears would appear without clipping through some of the hairstyles.

modders can get them in - they got them in before the game even came back up. there are no resource constrains caused by them. in fact, viera ears take so many more resources than hrothgars entire body/model because hrothgars are just roes with a slouch.