Two Ideas One Post

[RSBDavid]

Hello and welcome to my dual-suggestion thread. The two ideas I will be explaining are a larger loaded region option and on-screen notifications for alerts such as GE transactions.

 

 

Larger Loaded Regions

 

Regions in Runescape are just areas of the game you are in. When translating between regions, you get the "Loading... Please wait"' message. Ever since back when they released Dungeoneering, it seems as if they reduced the regions from 10x10 tile sections to like 7x7. A Tile is basically the location of your character, objects, etc. Anyways, they do this to reduce memory usage within game. Ok this is great for lower end spec computers with 256MB of memory, but annoys the piss out of those who have 6GB+ of memory. Every 7 or 8 tiles I have to reload the new region and if the JVM is being fussy, it could lag spike me and possible kill me. My suggestion is a "Region size" option in graphic settings. The options would be minimal, small, normal, large, maximum. Minimal would be a simple 5x5 tile zone for mobile devices and crap computers and maximum would be like 50x50 tiles. The loading screen would be longer, but we wouldn't have to see it as often making it still better.

 

 

On-screen Notifications

Ever sold or bought an item on the Grand Exchange? Hate that extremely bright text they use in the chat-box which you probably miss anyways? Well on screen notifications is the solution.What an on-screen notification does is produce flashing icon(s) on your screen when something happens. When you hover over it, it tells you your notification. This could apply to selling an item, buying items, getting a rare drop, resistance to dragonfire running out, etc. It could be used to alert you of anything that you would see in the chatbox, only more visual. Icons could include a currency symbol when an item sells, exclamation make when something important is happening, and the potential is beyond. This feature would be optional.

Here is a crappy made paint example:

 

 

*those descriptions would only show when you hover over them or clicked on them.

 

When i get access to a computer that doesn't freeze up on me, I will recreate the demo of my idea.

 

What is your opinion of my ideas?

[Sy_Accursed]

First 1:

No just no.

First a foremost is not technically that possible, in order to alter region sizes the game server would have to generate all region sizes for all the map thus greatly increasing the size and lag.

Plus you don't see that loading screen on a good system, at worst you get a slight fractional of a second flicker of the screen and jitter in the animations, it doesn't even cut to that screen unless ur loading too slowly.

Besides in the engine QA they said it's on their todo list to convert to transitional loading where by stuff appears low res in distance and gains detail as it approaches which would remove the need for regions.

 

Second one:

Seems annoying in my book, especially for those on fixed mode or playing mini-games as it'd get in the way. Besides if you think you missed a game message cause u saw coloured txt and missed it u can jsut hit "game" at the bottom to swap chatbox to game messages only.

[RSBDavid]

First 1:

No just no.

First a foremost is not technically that possible, in order to alter region sizes the game server would have to generate all region sizes for all the map thus greatly increasing the size and lag.

Plus you don't see that loading screen on a good system, at worst you get a slight fractional of a second flicker of the screen and jitter in the animations, it doesn't even cut to that screen unless ur loading too slowly.

Besides in the engine QA they said it's on their todo list to convert to transitional loading where by stuff appears low res in distance and gains detail as it approaches which would remove the need for regions.

 

Second one:

Seems annoying in my book, especially for those on fixed mode or playing mini-games as it'd get in the way. Besides if you think you missed a game message cause u saw coloured txt and missed it u can jsut hit "game" at the bottom to swap chatbox to game messages only.

 

 

1. The server would have to send the chunks less often reducing load in most circumstances (The GE would be an exception). It takes 5-15 seconds to load a region on a machine with an i7 970, 6GB of memory, dual EVGA 580 fermi's, with the latest system updates, java version, graphic drivers, etc. What do you define as a "good system". They really need to work on the engine a little faster if it is on their todo list.

 

2. Again this would be an optional feature as well.

[Sy_Accursed]

Well my system doesn't take 15 seconds to load map areas and java isn't even enabled to eat more RAM than the default 2mb or w/e they give it.

 

Also it would potentially cause lag because the regions are not created on the fly, they are manually dictated by jagex to ensure nothing gets spliced (eg trees) and area effects, which would cause glitches. This is why load lines are always in the same areas roughly, especially when you account for region overlap (eg west half of section B, is the east 1/2 of section A)

If you wnat variable regions jagex has got to define allllll these regions thus making the game much bigger to host and clogging up more server ram in order to serve you the right map.

[RSBDavid]

Well my system doesn't take 15 seconds to load map areas and java isn't even enabled to eat more RAM than the default 2mb or w/e they give it.

 

Also it would potentially cause lag because the regions are not created on the fly, they are manually dictated by jagex to ensure nothing gets spliced (eg trees) and area effects, which would cause glitches. This is why load lines are always in the same areas roughly, especially when you account for region overlap (eg west half of section B, is the east 1/2 of section A)

If you wnat variable regions jagex has got to define allllll these regions thus making the game much bigger to host and clogging up more server ram in order to serve you the right map.

 

 

The game is grid-based, they could simply use a pathfinding algorithm to locate areas which would be safe to load dynamically.

[D. V. Devnull]

Before I go any further, I should note that I support both ideas... :thumbsup:

 

Now, on to the more involved technical stuff, section-marked by a list number...

 

1. Instead of creating multiple chunk sizes, Jagex could instead just load more of the same size chunks at the same time into the Applet running in RAM. Heck, they could even background stream them and rig rendering connections so that you don't end up waiting for another loading screen ever. There's no need for even starting at low resolution and fading/detailing them into view. They could just stay behind the fog while they're still being set up and/or out-of-range, and already be at full quality once they're in-range. :D
    
   
2. If we're going to have something like this, then I would suggest having some transparency controls to go with the on/off option, as well as some controls to change notification colors with. Further, Jagex needs to increase the chat/game message buffers and allow chat messages to transition between in-game and in-lobby, so that people aren't having their conversations punctuated with the disruptions caused by losing the chat history. Seriously, there's only 80 messages in the recent buffer, and you lose it all if you drop to the lobby? It's like "WTF?", seeing as things like split buffers are long-overdue! :angry:

Good luck to both of these ideas happening. They're a seriously long time in the coming. :)

 

~Mr. D. V. "So much to add to all of this... but I SUPPORT anyway!" Devnull