StarMade v0.199.459 - Major Performance Upgrade

Greetings, citizens ~ In this release we’re making good on our earlier promises of performance improvements and updating some of the existing systems, focusing on combat. Huge swarms of missiles no longer cripple servers, nor cause disconnects or “rubber banding.” This should also help with balancing, as users can no longer disconnect their opponents with ridiculous numbers of missiles. Cannon projectile hits now require considerably less processing than before. As an example of just how large of an improvement this is: a shot penetrating through hundreds of blocks previously caused a half-second freeze, give or take. The processing from this same shot now takes 5 milliseconds -- barely even noticeable. We hope these two major optimizations make combat much more enjoyable.

Missile Performance Update

We developed an algorithm that is capable of handling any amount of missiles without adding extra network load. It is based on a lock step algorithm plus adaptive updating. This enables missile paths to become deterministic, even when chasing a moving target, and when that target is not in the same position for server and client, e.g. due to network delay. With the previous system, 500-1000 missiles would generate a half-megabyte per second load (or more). With the new system, not only is the initial burst of data when firing much smaller, even a cluster of a thousand or more missiles only require a few bytes per second while flying. Even the smaller servers should be able to easily handle 2000+ missiles flying at once without causing slowdown. We will look into faster rendering and explosion calculations in the future.

Projectile Performance Update

We’ve also made some major optimizations for projectiles (cannon fire). Projectiles’ penetration always caused major lag on both client and server, which restricted our ability to balance the weapon system. The new system uses a much leaner and more straightforward method to handle projectile penetration. We’ve offloaded some of the effort into threads, such as bounding box recalculations (which, since the box only gets smaller in this case, isn’t needed right away). Not only does cannon fire process literally hundreds of times faster now, it is also more accurate in terms of damage done. In addition, not having restrictions due to performance will help us balance weapons a lot better in the future. The simultaneous destruction of large numbers of blocks still creates network load, but we have plans to reduce this.

Power Overhaul Thread

We would like to thank everyone that has provided constructive criticism. Thanks to you, we’ve already made some major (positive!) changes to our proposed design, and eliminated some of its shortcomings. We will still need a few days to present our plans in as clear a manner as possible so there’s no misunderstanding. We’ll write a more informative post about this soon. As for implementation: Granted we can remedy the flaws the community points out, we will make the new power system available via an opt-in config option during its development. When (and if) it is ready for release, we’ll aim for a transition phase similar to the release of rails, wherein both versions are available simultaneously (though this may not be possible). (If there are irreparable issues with the power system, we obviously will not implement it.)

Fixes

A few minor bug fixes:

T235: Overridden blueprints show wrong mass
T2234: Galaxy map stops reading scroll wheel inputs
T2180: Placing wrong block when swapped on the hotbar with another

We’ve added a keyboard shortcut to open the shapes men. (It’s bound to ‘T’, moving sitting to ‘O’.) It only works when the currently selected block has multiple shapes. ---------------------------------------------------- As always, thank you for playing StarMade. ~ The Schine Team

[ 2017-02-25 10:10:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

StarMade
Schine, GmbH

Developer

Schine, GmbH

Publisher

2014-12-04

Release

Action Indie Strategy RPG Adventure Simulation Singleplayer Multiplayer Coop EA

Key Features:

Procedurally generated infinite universe, with quadrillions of galaxies - The universe is massive. It'd take approximately 10,000 years to cross from one end to the other! Singleplayer and Multiplayer worlds can be heavily customised with our extensive config options.
Developed for scalability- We have a broad range of graphical and performance options that cater to our low-end users as well as those with heavy rigs and servers.
Advanced Build Tools - Powerful and easy to use building tools, quickly design awesome ships, stations and bases. Including functions: Copy & paste, undo, redo, replace, symmetry modes, shape assistance systems (spheres, cycles, torus and more) and rotation of templates.
Modular Weapon Systems - Combine weapon systems for countless configurations of weapons. From sniper beams to swarm missiles.
Comprehensive Rail & Logic Systems - Use the rail system to build moving parts. You can do anything from simple elevators, sliding or rotating doors, to complex cranes.

Tinker with our logic systems to control any system in the game, be it weapons, lights, rails, or explosives. Logic covers all basic gate types for convenient use (AND, OR, NOT, DELAY, Flip-Flop), allows in flight control and wireless connections between entities. You can use it for simple things like timers, switches, buttons. Or, build complex systems like working clocks and even a real CPU.
Community multiplayer (dedicated servers) - Play with others in our community hosted servers. Our configs allow administrators to customise core game mechanics for a tailored experience. Most settings can be tweaked to squeeze the best performance out of hardware.
Platform independent (Windows, Linux, Mac) - StarMade is completely platform independent. We support the three most widely used operating systems.
Free to play in alpha - We offer the full game free to play while in alpha development. Play our game through this period for free while in return we receive invaluable feedback and bug reports.

MINIMAL SETUPOS: Ubuntu 14.04 - 64 bit
Processor: Intel Core i3 (2nd Generation and above) | AMD FX 6xxx or equivalentMemory: 4 GB RAM
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 260. 275. 280. 460 SE. 550 Ti | AMD Radeon HD 4870. 5770. 4890. 5830. 6770. 6790 or equivalent with OpenGL 2.1Network: Broadband Internet connection
Storage: 3 GB available spaceAdditional Notes: 2GB of memory must be available for StarMade. Lower specs may work by modifying graphics and other performance options. Try out our demo to get an indication for your system. System components such as Integrated Graphics cards may not be supported. Requirements may change in further updates.
RECOMMENDED SETUPOS: Ubuntu 15.04 - 64 bit
Processor: Intel Core i7-2600 @ 3.4 GHz | AMD FX-8320 Eight-Core @ 3.5 GHz or equivalentMemory: 8 GB RAM
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 560. 650 Ti. 750 | AMD Radeon HD 5850. 6870. 7790 (or equivalent)Network: Broadband Internet connection
Storage: 3 GB available space

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