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-   -   Dev Blog: 2017 && 2018 (https://www.eqemulator.org/forums/showthread.php?t=41675)

Akkadius 01-04-2018 11:13 PM

Dev Blog: 2017 && 2018
 
Greetings Norrathians!

This blog update is to make everyone aware of the major changes that have happened over the past year.

We've made massive progress on so many fronts this last year, many milestones that would otherwise be hard to know about unless you've been paying very close attention to commits and changelog messages, so here we go!

https://i.imgur.com/0DlHdH4.png

Netcode Rewrite (KLS)

Implementations
  • [mackal] Auras have been implemented
  • [mackal] Food and Water consumption algorithms have been fixed to match close to live
  • [mackal] Emulator Combat engine has been massively overhauled to match Live like formulas to be 98% accurate with Live changelog
  • [mackal] Extended target functionality

Server Installers
  • [Akkadius/N0ctrnl] Linux and Windows installers were introduced in late 2016 to streamline the EQEmu Server installation processes
    • Linux Installs to date: 959
    • Windows Installs to date: 3,489

Mob Z Axis Breakthrough
  • [Akkadius/Noudess/KLS] - Mob Z axis correction has had a major breakthrough in 2017 - we cracked race/size offsets for models - this helps bigly with
    • Corpses going underground
    • NPC's hopping during a pull
    • Pet's hopping during combat
    • NPC's hopping while pathing
    • NPC's going half into the ground while pathing
    • NPC's falling through the ground in general
    • While these problems can still happen depending on the zone and situation, the chances of them occurring have been vastly decreased

Server Side Performance Enhancements (Akkadius)

I've personally taken this issue down to the core, because we're at a mature point in our project where we can focus on shaving the fat off of some of our quickly implemented code that has created many performance issues.

We've been able to continually measure PEQ and EZ zone processes running hot with players in them, profile the code stack and find problematic code paths and measure over time. We've come a long way.

It allows servers to run better, faster, with less cpu cycle consumption to create the best gaming experience possible!

PEQ with 840 players online (chart by netdata) at a steady low cpu util

<img src="https://i.imgur.com/l9Iv6eB.png" style="height:300px;width:auto">

So many other changes

Please let me know if I missed something worth mentioning here, the idea is to highlight what we have been doing as a whole - cause not everyone is up to speed all the time....

To keep from making this post too long - there's tons in the Github commits and EQEmu changelog that may not be seen here, and many people are contributing to bug fixes and slight feature changes to the project everyday!

Thanks to everyone who brings this project together

https://i.imgur.com/VFFJn7r.png

Documentation
  • We have a lot of work to do in this department and is one of my highest priorities, details posted here

Navmesh
  • KLS has spent a lot of time working on a Navmesh system for our code and it has come a long way, from everything to a navmesh tile generator to in game logic to follow those tiles
  • Navmesh is basically waypoint pathfinding, using a shortest path algorithm to determine what tiles/path to use between it and its target
  • The Navmesh tool KLS built generates 95% of the tiles automatically, you may need to create manual connections in zones where necessary
  • You can see an example of this below



EQEmu Server Config Format
  • Thanks to Shin Noir - the server standard config will soon be .json as soon as I can merge it into master and have time to resolve any issues
  • Future Loginserver release will also use .json
  • Another thought is to also define paths to resources so the main server folder can become decluttered of resources/files

Expedition System and Shared Tasks
  • The groundwork for this system has been started again - but progress has been halted for now, but this is an immediate future priority

http://peqtgc.com/forums/styles/ProjectEQ.png

Our brother project PEQ has made some considerable strides as well
  • New website and forums: http://peqtgc.com/forums/index.php?articles/
  • Released Omens of War expansion
  • Dragons of Norrath pre-work
  • Continual work on old content continuity
  • Ever growing population
  • Streamlined 'Getting Started Process'
  • The team has been making solid progress and if you're interested in helping out - check out Discord on the left and the #public channel and jump in!
  • Project tracker: https://trello.com/b/fDpukzMU/projecteq
  • Systems Pending Development: Expeditions DZ system - Shared Tasks

The_Beast 01-05-2018 01:50 AM

My favourite parts :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Akkadius (Post 256868)
  • Released Omens of War expansion
  • Working on Dragons of Norrath pre-work


Akkadius 01-05-2018 01:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The_Beast (Post 256869)
My favourite parts :)

LOL that's what happens when you're distracted writing

Proxeeus 01-05-2018 03:36 AM

Many thanks for all the work you guys are putting into this project ! =)

The navmesh system does looks really impressive. Pardon the noobish question but would this system make the current node-based (and its related .path files) system redudant ? Or are both system designed to exist side-by-side ?

(oh, and that visual editor looks nice too...maybe it could one day evolve into a world editor? :p)

ChaosSlayerZ 01-06-2018 04:50 PM

A+++ ;)
awesome work!

Akkadius 01-06-2018 05:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Proxeeus (Post 256871)
Many thanks for all the work you guys are putting into this project ! =)

The navmesh system does looks really impressive. Pardon the noobish question but would this system make the current node-based (and its related .path files) system redudant ? Or are both system designed to exist side-by-side ?

(oh, and that visual editor looks nice too...maybe it could one day evolve into a world editor? :p)

Navmesh is its own waypoint finding engine - legacy path nodes can still be used but there will really be no reason to continue using it


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