Carl Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 --Game-engine Improvements by Andrew 11-Jun-2009-- This was posted by Andrew, and can be found here: http://devblog.runescape.com/c=fde5QHqk ... post_id=14 You may have noticed this weeks updates have caused some unusual behaviour changes in the game, and a few bugs. These are fixed now, but this post is to explain what's been going on. I expect some of you are wondering "The game was working fine before, why do you keep fiddling with it? How is it that things that were working fine for years can suddenly temporarily break?" To answer this question I need to explain a bit about what we have been doing to the game-engine and why. The current version of the RuneScape engine which sits behind the scenes and runs the game, has been in continual development for about 6 years now. Over the last 6 years we have been continually bolting bits onto our existing engine to add new features and support new content we want to add to the game. You can think of it as similar to building a tower. Luckily the tower was built with very solid foundations in the first place, but after 6 years of adding new floors to the tower we really need to go back and reinforce the foundations a bit more to support the next 6 years of additions. What this means in programming terms as that we have been replacing some of our earliest engine code, and integrating some of the later improvements more neatly. The code had become a bit of a mess of many different systems which were all written at different times by different people, all working in slightly different ways with slightly different rules. We have therefore been working hard on unifying everything internally, to be simpler and more consistent so it doesn't become terminally confusing to work on. This is a process called "Refactoring". It's something which is only worth doing because we take a very long term view with RuneScape and fully expect to be improving the RuneScape engine for many years to come. We therefore really need to make sure we have a good foundation to work with. It's a question of short term pain and a bit of instability to ensure the long term stability of the engine. With this weeks engine update we launched completely overhauled route finding and action systems, which are very core systems to the game. Ideally this wouldn't have changed anything at all, but the system had grown very complicated over the years as more and more rules were added on, resulting in a complex system, with lots of obscure behaviour which nobody fully understood. Developing a much a simpler replacement which still supports all of the features of the old one, and still broadly behaves the same way as the old complex one has been a big challenge! After a lot of testing we finally declared the new version to be a good replacement for the old one. The new version was a lot simpler and easier to understand and work on, and in all the cases we tested, it still gave the same result as the old complicated one. However there are thousands and thousands of things you can do in RuneScape and short of spending years testing (not practical obviously!) there is no way we could possibly test EVERY permutation. So we launched our new version, and after a couple of hours of launching the new version with over 100,000 simultaneous players, the amount of play from that many players at once equates to about 20 years of testing in just 2 hours! As you can imagine 20 years of testing DID try a lot more permutations and a few things which didn't quite work the same after all were discovered. We quickly jumped to tweak the behaviour of our new system to fix those unintentional changes. However it turned out that in doing so we introduced OTHER changes which broke other things instead, which in turn needed fixing themselves. One very obviously example of the above, was that we inadvertently made it so that you couldn't eat food and walk at the same time anymore. The engine generally doesn't let you do 2 things at once, and whilst we were simplifying and unifying things we missed one of the rare cases where the old system was inconsistent and DID let you do 2 things at once. Everyone still wanted that behaviour so we reintroduced that slightly asymmetrical behaviour in our new version, and made it so you could eat and walk at the same time (not recommended in real life unless you want indigestion!). However we did that very quickly with less testing than normal as we were rushing to fix a live bug. When we made the change it turns out we went to far in the opposite direction and made it so there were many other places in the game were you could also do 2 things at once. At first we thought 'Well this is probably actually an improvement, it was always annoying that you couldn't do those things'. However more and more reports have been coming in, of players doing 2 things at once that weren't previously possible. We've realised that the change was more far reaching than we initially thought. A lot of the careful balancing of the game was being thrown off. Therefore we've updated yet again to still allow eating+walking, but NOT allow the other '2 things at once' actions. Some of them may be reintroduced again in the future, but in a more controlled way and only after testing and considering the implications of each one. The upshot of this is the behaviour really should be back to what it was before we started now, but we've got a much better engine running the game to build on for further improvements. Certainly it's been a stressful few days and I expect a few more tweaks will still be needed. However no real harm was done, nobody was banned, and it's definitely worth it to ensure we have the best possible platform to be building on for years to come. Project: Game Engine Tags: game engine, QA RIP Michaelangelopolous Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Water Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 Carl -new channel- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
n_odie Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 Thought that was an interesting diary. I don't think it should have been soldered off as no harm done however.... it sounded to me like people lost some valuable items... :? RIP MichaelangelopolousThanks to cowboy14 for the pimp sig! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carl Posted June 11, 2009 Author Share Posted June 11, 2009 Yeah, tis' possible true Odie but I was hearing very mixed up stories with that, you can't really be sure if any of them were actually true. Considering Jagex were actually asking that question themselves. RIP Michaelangelopolous Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
strilmus Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 So wait, all this other two-thingsism wasn't intentional.....but apparently they think it may as well stick around? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carl Posted June 11, 2009 Author Share Posted June 11, 2009 So wait, all this other two-thingsism wasn't intentional.....but apparently they think it may as well stick around? Yeah, that's exactly it. Hopefully, we'll see it reintroduced sometime in the near future, as it was very very handy! RIP Michaelangelopolous Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
strilmus Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 Well, I did rather enjoy being able to fletch and wc at the same time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carl Posted June 11, 2009 Author Share Posted June 11, 2009 Well, I did rather enjoy being able to fletch and wc at the same time. Well, I don't believe that was actually intentional. Things like fishing, while being able to drop your fish I'm sure they thought were the useful things. But fletching while woodcutting, and then also being able to drop the bows you make while still cutting? I don't think that's right. :roll: RIP Michaelangelopolous Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mil Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 Interesting; at least they have come clean with us. But he says nobody has been banned, is this true? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
strilmus Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 Yeah, I was sort of joking. Sort of. Seriously, fletching is boring, and woodcutting is boring, but doing both? My gameplay just went from repetitive clicking to dynamic process and drop action. I felt like Henry Ford just gave me a kick in the pants. How the hell would they ban anybody? I'm sure every single person in Gielinor was doing it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xecer Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 I feel used.. :shame: Chompy Hunting guide (AoW) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
strilmus Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 To heck with used! That was the least amount of anger I felt towards them in months. I'd gladly go through another day of horrific chaos to get that kind of convenience back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carl Posted June 11, 2009 Author Share Posted June 11, 2009 Yeah, I was sort of joking. Sort of. Seriously, fletching is boring, and woodcutting is boring, but doing both? My gameplay just went from repetitive clicking to dynamic process and drop action. I felt like Henry Ford just gave me a kick in the pants. How the hell would they ban anybody? I'm sure every single person in Gielinor was doing it! I think the potential banning may be related to the bug where some monsters weren't attacking you back, and people were taking an advantage of that. Which is simply bug abuse, as it's not intended for the game, and isn't right. So many many folks were worried about their account status. I feel used.. :shame: I don't quite understand, why? :? RIP Michaelangelopolous Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xecer Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 So we launched our new version, and after a couple of hours of launching the new version with over 100,000 simultaneous players, the amount of play from that many players at once equates to about 20 years of testing in just 2 hours! As you can imagine 20 years of testing DID try a lot more permutations and a few things which didn't quite work the same after all were discovered. Normally testers get paid : Chompy Hunting guide (AoW) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
n00bfiterpk6 Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 pitty i didnt hear about this double stuff till just now :P coulda been fun lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carl Posted June 11, 2009 Author Share Posted June 11, 2009 So we launched our new version, and after a couple of hours of launching the new version with over 100,000 simultaneous players, the amount of play from that many players at once equates to about 20 years of testing in just 2 hours! As you can imagine 20 years of testing DID try a lot more permutations and a few things which didn't quite work the same after all were discovered. Normally testers get paid : You know I mentioned that to a staff member before. Jagex could potentially have 1000's of Quality assurance people working for free. Would save them quite a bit. :lol: RIP Michaelangelopolous Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toad Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 they call taking away this new powercutting/ mining etc an improvement? the first update i like in this lousy 6 months and they take it away Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
strilmus Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 Well, the problem with that is each one of them would have to be trained in order to follow proper procedures, plus there's always the problem of people going rogue when you have to manage that many. Well...I guess I'll go back to crafting now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kenneh Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 they call taking away this new powercutting/ mining etc an improvement? the first update i like in this lousy 6 months and they take it away Welcome to runescape. Where the good updates are merely bugs! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zaaps1 Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 they call taking away this new powercutting/ mining etc an improvement? the first update i like in this lousy 6 months and they take it away If you can still perform actions while walking, you can still drop without delay. It's just hard and you need more attention. ~It's Super Effective! (The Zaaps Blog)~My YouTube Channel, where you get to watch me go around and make a fool out of myself and all comp capersGuides:~Yeah I wrote them once~Suggestions:~Yeah I made those once~ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mercifull Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 It will be interesting now to see exactly which things have been removed and which have been kept in. Do familiars forraging stuff interupt you again? Do you stop following a person if you eat/change equipped items etc? Do I continue to attack after changing weapons? While I understand there are many scenarios where you shouldnt be able to perform 2 tasks at the same time this update actually fixed loads of minor quirks and make the game a little more smooth. I hope they go back and re-add many of the things back in. Mercifull <3 Suzi "We don't want players to be able to buy their way to success in RuneScape. If we let players start doing this, it devalues RuneScape for others. We feel your status in real-life shouldn't affect your ability to be successful in RuneScape" Jagex 01/04/01 - 02/03/12 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carl Posted June 11, 2009 Author Share Posted June 11, 2009 they call taking away this new powercutting/ mining etc an improvement? the first update i like in this lousy 6 months and they take it away It wasn't intentional, smellysocks. But they were going to leave it, however, it was providing an advantage which simply shouldn't be there. That is, cutting and fletching, etc. And the ability to cast an alchemy spell and another spell at the same time. Hopefully, when they find out what small thing they could change to bring back said powercutting, to make it easier, they will. RIP Michaelangelopolous Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toad Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 they call taking away this new powercutting/ mining etc an improvement? the first update i like in this lousy 6 months and they take it away If you can still perform actions while walking, you can still drop without delay. It's just hard and you need more attention. More attention what am I some sort of attenton giver?! I could finally watch tv whilst I mined more effectively now my flow has been disrupted it atleast made skills like mining slightly less tedious but now its gone :() Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pirkka Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 I didn't think of fletching the woods I cut, but simply continuing cutting while dropping was enough from me. I got from 81 to 82 in a day! Still, now that this has been "fixed", I'm not going to continue. Also, I would seriously like the character to continue attacking after eating. I have really loved this whole fix and improve-year, but at the moment I feel cheated. Should've just killed some big bosses for cheap money. :| 40,919th person to access Turmoil. 21,559th person to access Overloads. Are there any hidden bonuses here? No bonuses Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Den Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 Interesting read. Hope they bring it back soon with a few tweeks. ........::::: Rainy's YouTube Channel - Rainy's Twitter - Rainy's Facebook - Rainy's DeviantArt - Rainy's Tumblr - Rainy's Tip.It Profile :::::......... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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