Ungrouping issue

[GRHayes]

The uploaded file is for testing. Primarily for developers.

I made a massive power supply and a massive missile system.
300x16x16 = 76800

I noticed that when firing 2 missile come out even though it was just one group.
So I looked at it was no longer showing 76800 in weapons menu
and hitting C on the computer showed that many had become ungrouped from the system.

This explains countless issues over the time I played this game.
apparently groups and individual blocks are being evaluated much more often than they should.
They should only be looked at as a group until damage or a change to the group is made.
All characteristics can be handled by the group rather than individual other wise.
If you build a missile system it should be look at as purely a group. A power supply block system should be looked at purely as a group also. Apparently that isn't the case other wise they wouldn't be come ungrouped.

This also can explain why power supplies and other stuff can suddenly perform real poorly and take resetting or reloading to fix it.

 

[NeonSturm]

OO..344.5 |L
OO..3.455 |A
.02.3..55 |Y (2D)
1.223.455 |E
112.344.5 |R
_________
D E P T H
(3rd D) - evaluated left to right (2, not 3)

As soon as 2 numbers would merge, they become a new number. As soon as a number would split (not touching) in one layer, they become 2 different numeric IDs.

Is this what you mean by "looked at purely as a group"?

 

[GRHayes]

hierarchical component groups. The term is also used to describe other stuff related to programming also.
In short everything belongs to a group based on hierarchy or how it is connected.

Think of a ship as being the top of the group tree. The ship is made of components. The components are made of blocks.
A component can also be group in this case a group of blocks.
Ships are made of
.Weapon systems
.Power systems
.Shield systems
.Hull - armor
and more
Each of those can be defined a group and given a mesh. The mesh is the visible surface area of the group.
It is made of faces and faces have textures assigned by what block was there.
The group is connect to the upper groups object by a location.
Each block fills a position in the group.
In short you know where everything is you just don't need to try and render it that way.

There isn't really a need to reevaluate each block all the time. It is a waste of CPU power. It should only be evaluated if something in its group changes or a group that effects it. Changes can be done by editing, damage or repair.

About the only thing that needs constant evaluation is logic and blocks controlled by logic specifically ones that can be moved or can change visibility and such. Logic controlling a weapons system for example only needs to be monitored as a time and trigger sequence. The blocks of the weapons system don't need to be evaluated unless something changed the group could be just given the firing trigger.
A door on the other hand the door would need to move and it would turn or raise or lower as a group.

I find it funny because to a large extent they already have groups by the way they link stuff together to work as groups and so on. But they don't make use of it rendering.

Anyway its simply my opinion and what I found works best for me on my own testing.
They may very well have a reason for using the chunk load system. It could be that was what they first came up with. It was easier on older hardware. I can certainly see that being the case on older opengl versions like 2.1 and below what the game requirement is.

 

[GRHayes]

This shows visually what happens when the ungrouping issue happens.
This was done with 32 x 24 x 100 missile tubes. attached to 1 missile computer.

 

[GRHayes]

So the problem is actually much worse. When I restarted the game a large section of the ship is missing.
This bug seriously needs to get looked at ASAP.

 

[NeonSturm]

I run into that bug many times too. It completely breaks the game.
Sometimes a chunk in the middle of a ship I explore in astronaut-mode is missing.
Sometimes I crash into the lava of a planet and chunks spawn above me 10 seconds later.

Invisible player-characters, invisible block-preview (and block-rotation) until placed down and 14 FPS at 800x600 resolution is already enough to make StarMade unplayable :/

 

[GRHayes]

I run into that bug many times too. It completely breaks the game.
Sometimes a chunk in the middle of a ship I explore in astronaut-mode is missing.
Sometimes I crash into the lava of a planet and chunks spawn above me 10 seconds later.

Invisible player-characters, invisible block-preview (and block-rotation) until placed down and 14 FPS at 800x600 resolution is already enough to make StarMade unplayable :/

In this case the blocks are gone. Not invisible not haven't been rendered yet.... Just gone.
I'll keep saying it over and over again chunk systems on movable objects is just a bad choice.

Not sure what you are running but I am using an AMD r7 370 and get over 100fps most the time. the lowest I seen it drop to lately was about 35.

 

[NeonSturm]

Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on AMD CAICOS (DRM 2.40.0 / 3.18.35-1-MANJARO, LLVM 3.8.0)

But the old versions produce frame rates 50% higher without visibility bugs on NPCs and blocks preview.

The graphics card works fine on Dota and even StarConflict or old versions of StarMade, I think that proofs that I didn't make one of the big mistakes with the setup.

 

[GRHayes]

But the old versions produce frame rates 50% higher without visibility bugs on NPCs and blocks preview.

The graphics card works fine on Dota and even StarConflict or old versions of StarMade, I think that proofs that I didn't make one of the big mistakes with the setup.

Dota 2 and star conflict use Mesh systems that are far better more like what I am saying needs to be put in use here.
There is a lot stuff added to starmade that is making the old system requirements obsolete. They are planning on bumping the OpenGL requirement up even. The older version I used to get lots of visible bugs on.

 

[Calhoun]

It's a corrupted chunk (the missing bit). Your saves gone wacko, basically.

 

[Crusade]

It's actually not necessarily a missing chunk. It appears (from the top, incomplete row of blocks) that you fired the missile before the game had a chance to actually place the blocks being used. Visually they appear to be in place, however it takes time for the computer to catch up. Like on a server if you place and immediately undo a large area of blocks, it'll appear and disappear, then start reappearing row by row, and finally disappear altogether. I believe this is to save bandwidth on servers and limit block push updates.

Back on point, this seems to be an incomplete write of the mass-placed blocks.