StarMade 0.09376: Economy, Performance & UDP

    schema

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    • Schine
    Hello and welcome to StarMade,

    this update has taken a little bit longer, because it needed some testing due to changes in the cores of both the network as well as the graphics rendering system. Please excuse eventual errors that might still occur. In case of a new game-breaking bug, please don't panic; I will try to fix it as fast as I can (should one occur). Please keep your auto-backup (created from updating a version and found in the starmade install dir) safe!

    Some servers are reporting problems. For the admins: please switch to TCP in the server.cfg (hotfix has TCP as default)

    Economy

    After some time with fixed ones, variable prices are now back. Shops will now change their prices depending on their stock. If the stock gets low the price will go up, and vice versa. If stock is bought or sold, the shops will gradually update their prices over a longer time to prevent exploiting.

    Furthermore, the trading guild will now restock shops on arrival if at least one ship survives (can be switched off in the server.cfg).



    Graphics Render Core

    I took apart the graphics core, and managed to significantly decrease VRAM usage. That made it possible to get rid of a by segment OpenGL state change when rendering by putting it on the graphics card (which wasn't possible due to size restraints before).

    I also refined the block decoding shader to get rid of all if-else statements.

    Please keep in mind that this will unfortunately not yield the same performance boost for everybody. Some cards have different bottlenecks. Also, as with all graphics boosts, the rule is normally that the slowest cards will get the least boost in fps unfortunately. This is because one fps in lower avg numbers is much harder to obtain then adding 10 to a already high fps average: One of the reasons why FPS are in graphics development itself not really a good way to profile performance.



    UDP

    StarMade has now the possibility to use the User Datagram Protocol: This is basically an alternative to the other system called TCP. The main difference is, that TCP has a lot of pre-implemented control functions, such as packet ordering, retransmission, and flow control, which produce overhead and decrease performance. On the other hand, using UDP by itself is unsafe, since it's stateless and therefore not reliable.

    So in UDP, some of the functions have to be implemented by hand to guarantee reliability. However having the implementation, it will also be much easier to debug lag producing bugs.

    I can't say yet if the performance will be any better. There is also still a way to switch back to TCP in the server.cfg. Clients will try both methods when connecting.

    If you run a private server with a router. Please check if it does forward the right port (there is a difference between UDP and TCP ports).



    Blueprint upgrades

    • The slot system from the server.cfg should now work
    • ship uploading to the site should be fixed
    • implemented server sided check for spawned blueprints (if the price of the blueprint is smaller then what has spawned, all players get a notice (no other auto-actions yet)). So even when someone else uploads a hacked ship with 0 price, don't buy it.



    Physics stuck protection

    Since the old system was very unreliable in detecting if structures overlap each other, I implemented a detector that based on heuristics checks single blocks that return a penetration depth over a certain margin. Since this can happen naturally when bumping into stuff especially with high speed, the block is checked by inverse transforming it to the space of the object it's colliding with. The the number of blocks in exactly that area is checked, and if that value keeps being height for over 5 seconds, the object is warped out of collision. This will hopefully prevent servers breaking down in lag from objects being stuck.



    Other fixes & changes

    • fixed server crash when ship with custom blocks is uploaded or spawned
    • custom blocks will be missing from spawned ships that are uploaded
    • improved performance of ships being loaded or spawned with docked ships
    • fixed docking area not updating when last enhancer gets disconnected
    • fixed bug that would warp ships with structures docked to them to the center of the sector while loading
    • usernames now must be between 3 and 32 long, and must contain at least one letter
    • server-sided username check added
    • improved synchronization by slow checking transformations
    • white block brightened up

    Thanks for playing StarMade,

    - schema
     

    Fum

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    However, when will we be able to craft docking enhancers without modifying the config file manually every update?
     
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    \"fixed server crash when ship with custom blocks is uploaded or spawned\" <---Going to love this fix :) I accidently crash peoples server by uploading a ship with custom blocks server I\'m uploading too doesn\'t have.
     
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    ive downloaded this a few times now, im a mac user and i get a messge saying login failed

    server:your cleint version is not allowed to connect.

    please download the correct version from www.star-made.org

    cleint version 0.09376

    server version 0.09375



    what does this mean ???
     
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    It means that server you\'re trying to connect to, needs to be updated.
     
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    Your client version has a 6 at the end, while the server has a 5. Unless you just posted the wrong number, the server is an older version.
     
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    Anyone else having a problem with turrets not showing up correctly with this update? Turrets do not spawn on pirate/trading guild ships, and the diamond target reticles for the turrets on my ships disappear seconds after logging in to my single player game. The turrets show up correctly after I undock and redock the turrets, but then are screwed up again when I close and restart the game.

    I\'m also having strange position syncing issues that seem to be an unassociated issue.
     

    jb

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    Hi schema,

    Would it be possible to change my forum nickname and uplink credentials. I am unable to login to any starmade server anymore.

    Cheers,

    jb
     
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    Well the performance increase for me seems to make the issue worse.
    i stand still for about a minute and let the giant ships load and over that minute i go from 1-60 fps thats great
    60 fps is smooth but once i move a few blocks the frames drop to 1fps untill i stop moving again.

    you did lighten the load of there being so many on screen but the cpu and gpu loading strain when loading in blocks is far worse.
     
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    well for me at least

    win7 64bit
    2nd gen i3
    4gb ram
    1gb nvidia graphics.
     

    schema

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    • Schine
    what happens when you set \"G_VBO_FLAG = STATIC\" to \"G_VBO_FLAG = DYNAMIC\" in the settings.cfg?
     
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    Not really sure what happened with this update, or if I somehow messed something up. Here is what happened though:



    1.) My server was wiped of all player made ships and all the blueprints other players saved were removed (only mine remain).

    2.) My spacestation was recolored to red hull from white and it took on a name of an old spacestation that was previously in that sector

    3.) Spacestation mentioned above has no blocks but red hull (all factory pieces got deleted)

    4.) All but one asteroid was reverted to pristine condition as if nobody ever mined it



    I have even tried my backups and reverting version, no luck for some odd reason. Not sure what happened, but hey, it is Alpha :D
     

    schema

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    that\'s very strange. I\'ve never seen a bug like this. Did you maybe mod the blockConfig.cfg? because that is overwritten on update.
     
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    So far so good on my server. Previously we had lag issues when too many large ships were close to each other. So far I have not seen it.
     
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    So, with this update I got a worst performance, from having 60fps always(vert sync) to only 40 when standing still and 30 or lower when moving.

    I have a GTX 650 Nvidia graphics card.
     
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    Sorry, something else was causing it, fixed it now, and I\'m really glad the problem I had with planets its gone!!!

    Thank you so much.