You just got to love the chunk system used on vehicles.

[GRHayes]

The image below shows 4 massive docked power supplies I just added the top 2. The bottom two I added earlier and then saved before taking any pictures. I hadn't realized till now that it had cut them off even while taking pictures obviously not going to count every single docked entity out of 128 each time. You just expect the system to reliably save what you made. So much for that being true.

This wouldn't happen if they used a group system vs a chunk system. I also wouldn't find issues with stuff ungrouping in large weapon modules and systems.

I know this game is in Alpha but this type of non-sense should have been something long ago ironed out.

Also had a group system been used loading this ship and displaying the entire ship would take far less memory.
It is one thing to put up with constant changes that effect game play it is another to loose work because well it simply doesn't save properly or it looses data.

Then the simple in ability to fully display objects like this is sad.

But don't get me wrong I appreciate the effort of these developers. I don't have to deal with a community and people like myself who gripe on my own stuff. Just gets on my nerves when I see issues that are caused by stuff I consider basic understanding when it comes to programming. Maybe it is the fact I had such issues drilled into me because of a lot of stuff I programmed lives got lost if it wasn't done right.

 

[Malacodor]

Are you sure the missing parts are missing? To me it looks like chunks were present but not displayed.

 

[Jaaskinal]

So...you can't render the whole ship?
Turn your draw segments up.

In addition, you want a group rendering system? Sure it'd work with that ship, but it'd add complexity, and potentially cause more memory issues with ships that aren't just system bricks.

 

[NeonSturm]

As for rendering, 95% of the blocks are probably hidden on the rear or inside the chunk-middle.
If instead you would count faces that need to be rendered and use a basic run-length compression system, it would be much less data.

It would add a bit of complexity, but the potential is nothing you should throw away easily.
(or maybe not complexity but re-thinking)

 

[Gasboy]

GRHayes has told me some really complex things himself, he is not a random noob (no insult intended, but please don't treat him like that).

People can still be incorrect, or have missed something obvious, and not be a noob. And don't mistake blunt directness to be insult.

It looks like a display hiccup rather than the bits being missing. Happens frequently in both Minecraft and StarMade.

 

[StormWing0]

One thing that has always bugged me was it doesn't seem to render from closest to furthest.

 

[NeonSturm]

Or from most-important to least-important

I am mostly unhappy with the uncertainty in my logic builds when chunks aren't loaded.​

 

[Gasboy]

Or from most-important to least-important

I am mostly unhappy with the uncertainty in my logic builds when chunks aren't loaded.​

Well they are working on that. It will soon be possible for stuff to happen in unloaded areas. Not sure to what extent that will work, but we shall see.

 

[GRHayes]

So...you can't render the whole ship?
Turn your draw segments up.

In addition, you want a group rendering system? Sure it'd work with that ship, but it'd add complexity, and potentially cause more memory issues with ships that aren't just system bricks.

It isn't an issue of rendering that draw segments are maxed out.
The actual parts of the lower dock power systems aren't just not visible they are gone entirely.
[doublepost=1474251705,1474251598][/doublepost]

Well they are working on that. It will soon be possible for stuff to happen in unloaded areas. Not sure to what extent that will work, but we shall see.

They could boost performance massively if they would move away from the chunk system when it comes to vehicles. Stuff like this then also wouldn't happen nor would issues of blocks becoming ungrouped on their own.

 

[MrFURB]

Maybe you might be on to something here, but it is hard for me to follow you so I can't really tell. Can you describe what a group system is and it's benefits?

For example, here is my (limited) understanding of the chunk system and how it works.
Each entity is made of 32x32x32 'chunks' of blocks, with the first chunk containing the ship core. Each chunk has coordinates used to identify it. Each block of space within each chunk has it's own coordinates within the chunk.
Each block of space that contains an actual block has a few bytes of data attached to it for the block ID, health, rotation, etc.
To load a chunk, the entity file is read chunk by chunk, and when all the data in one chunk is read, it is displayed as loaded in-game.

How does a group system work?

 

[Gasboy]

It isn't an issue of rendering that draw segments are maxed out.
The actual parts of the lower dock power systems aren't just not visible they are gone entirely.
[doublepost=1474251705,1474251598][/doublepost]
They could boost performance massively if they would move away from the chunk system when it comes to vehicles. Stuff like this then also wouldn't happen nor would issues of blocks becoming ungrouped on their own.

It's a way to allow for things to fail gracefully. What you have in your image is simply lag, stuff is taking its time drawing in. If the chunking were taken away, it'd look a lot worse.

 

[GRHayes]

It's a way to allow for things to fail gracefully. What you have in your image is simply lag, stuff is taking its time drawing in. If the chunking were taken away, it'd look a lot worse.

WRONG. No it isn't lag and it isn't an issue with just a chunk not showing. It didn't save!
Stop acting like you know what the hell is going on and other people are stupid.

First, there are chunk sections missing but they are on the top two power modules. You can see those off in the distance. They will never load.
As for the section I am talking about run the full length of the ship and increasing to 50,000 or 200,000 chunks doesn't fix it.

It isn't as if it is something hard to verify. You can reload and view it from other angles.
You can simply look at the blue print since it saves each attached module in a chain like that as an attachment. It only goes to 95 or so rather than the full 128 deep like the original power supply that was loaded in and attached to the ship.
NONE of the data for those missing sections are in the file in other words! Is that clear enough for you?

You could also go as far as to export it to blender that was if the game didn't crash trying to export this size of object.

 

[TBterra]

the chunk system was created for fast spatial access of large ships, it also allows the realtime modification of large ships by only having to save the chunk that has changed and not the whole ship. both of these things are not realistically possible with a simple data structure (most complex data structures that can do it end up being as complex or more than the chunk system)

it still sometimes happens that a save fails for various reasons with the chunk system usually that means a section of the ship disappears, but that is arguably better than the whole file corrupting.

certainly the occasional issue with saving large ships needs fixing but i doubt what data structure we use will greatly influence that (some data structures might be able to better contain the corruption but that is all)

for the sake of working out scale, how many entities and of what size where you saving when it got corrupted?

 

[GRHayes]

the chunk system was created for fast spatial access of large ships, it also allows the realtime modification of large ships by only having to save the chunk that has changed and not the whole ship. both of these things are not realistically possible with a simple data structure (most complex data structures that can do it end up being as complex or more than the chunk system)

it still sometimes happens that a save fails for various reasons with the chunk system usually that means a section of the ship disappears, but that is arguably better than the whole file corrupting.

certainly the occasional issue with saving large ships needs fixing but i doubt what data structure we use will greatly influence that (some data structures might be able to better contain the corruption but that is all)

for the sake of working out scale, how many entities and of what size where you saving when it got corrupted?

Funny, because I have actually done it myself and it works fine.
The fact is you don't need to save an entire ship if a change happens just the groups that have the change happen to them.

As for the size of ship I was saving 1.1 Km long the particular item that got corrupted is 952 blocks long consisting of 128 chained reactor sections. I believe it is on the 250,000 block scale for just one of the docked reactors.
However it also happens with much smaller systems 76000 block missile system.

 

[Dire Venom]

I... don't quite understand whats going on here...

 

[Tunk]

TL: DR;

Heys has docked a good 450+ entities together.
Each entity consisting of minimum 4 chunks.

At some point in time hes had either a flush or loading issue or crash (probably during a save funny enough), which has resulted in multiple chunks not being saved.
When large amounts of entities are involved chunk initialization can also become a issue, but really at that point you are trying to break the game.
Downside of working with ballstarded amount of docked entities (or entities in general).

 

[Gasboy]

TL: DR; Downside of working with ballstarded amount of docked entities (or entities in general).

Especially since you don't have to use docked reactors any more.

 

[Keptick]

Chunks not saving happens extremely rarely, as unfortunate as it is. I suggest that you make blueprint backups to avoid issues (always make backups). At least it's just raw systems (and in a straight line at that), it's not like you had hull or anything around it, so it shouldn't take too long to fix (unless you want to redo the docked reactors, which is useless...)

You can also use the /save "bp name" command, I find that it's much more reliable than the catalog button, especially with large ships with lots of docked entities. Personally, I always make sure that the entity I'm saving is fully loaded, idk if it makes a difference but it always seemed safer to me.

 

[GRHayes]

Chunks not saving happens extremely rarely, as unfortunate as it is. I suggest that you make blueprint backups to avoid issues (always make backups). At least it's just raw systems (and in a straight line at that), it's not like you had hull or anything around it, so it shouldn't take too long to fix (unless you want to redo the docked reactors, which is useless...)

You can also use the /save "bp name" command, I find that it's much more reliable than the catalog button, especially with large ships with lots of docked entities. Personally, I always make sure that the entity I'm saving is fully loaded, idk if it makes a difference but it always seemed safer to me.

Tried that I have blue prints of the reactor. The game actually fails trying to create full blue prints of the ship. The files don't contain all the data either.

 

[Lecic]

It's Schema telling you to stop making your expoitmobile.