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New dev blog: Time Dilation – How’s That Going?

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Indeterminacy
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#21 - 2012-02-09 19:04:29 UTC
Confirming that TiDi has made large fights playable again. Not only affecting lag but black screens and node death as well.
Chribba
Otherworld Enterprises
Otherworld Empire
#22 - 2012-02-09 19:24:45 UTC
It's going slow by going fast. Confusing!

/c

★★★ Secure 3rd party service ★★★

Visit my in-game channel 'Holy Veldspar'

Twitter @ChribbaVeldspar
Cid Tazer
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#23 - 2012-02-09 19:27:11 UTC
One thing that took me a minute to realize is that TiDi at 100% is normal action and 0% is basically node death on those graphs. Overall very sexy. Great work Veritas!
Mashie Saldana
V0LTA
New Eden Alliance 99013733
#24 - 2012-02-09 19:29:14 UTC
Vincent Athena wrote:
Now about collateral TiDi (that is TiDi in systems which have few people in them, due to a big event elsewhere). One way to reduce this is to just have more nodes. Any options for just getting more hardware? After all if you had 8000 supernodes the issue goes away. Or how about having multiple "virtual" nodes on one real node?

Yeah 8000 nodes wouldn't totally break CCP from a cost point of view not to mention the enormous space needed in the data centre...

Please, read up on how the TQ cluster is built and designed before making silly suggestions.

How to win EVE
Jowen Datloran
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#25 - 2012-02-09 19:31:35 UTC
Vincent Athena wrote:
Or how about having multiple "virtual" nodes on one real node?
Yes... that is how it works now.

Mr. Science & Trade Institute, EVE Online Lorebook 

John McCreedy
Eve Defence Force
#26 - 2012-02-09 19:48:43 UTC
The only criticism of TiDi I have is (as mentioned in the blog) jumping through gates, specifically the fact that you still get traffic control and then on top of that, TiDi kicks in meaning your traffic control takes even longer. Would scrapping Traffic control and relying solely on TiDi when jumping through gates cause more problems than it would be worth or is TC just a redundant system that's not been taken out due to time constraints?

13 years and counting. Eve Defence Force is recruiting.
CCP Phantom
C C P
C C P Alliance
#27 - 2012-02-09 21:08:51 UTC
I want my 45 minutes back!!!

CCP Phantom - Senior Community Developer
Red Teufel
Calamitous-Intent
#28 - 2012-02-09 21:14:18 UTC
A word to CCP........VICTORY!!!!!!!!!!!!AttentionAttentionAttention
Kusanagi Kasuga
Indigo Archive
Ivy League Alt Alliance
#29 - 2012-02-09 21:21:56 UTC
CCP Phantom wrote:
I want my 45 minutes back!!!


You spent it watching cat videos on youtube, you're never getting them back.
Valkyrs
Deep Vein Trading
#30 - 2012-02-09 21:31:29 UTC
CCP Phantom wrote:
I want my 45 minutes back!!!


While this sentiment is a bit ridiculous, reclaiming time on a fictional scale, I wonder if time dilation (TiDi) could work the other way, Time Stagnation (TiSi).

If the only thing involved was cranking the co-efficient the other way, then this would be a simple thing to implement. The net dilation occurring on other servers is stagnated on some of the emptier servers. This way time is never lost, just perceived as faster or slower throughout the universe. Much like how it works in real life!

Or perhaps, keep track of the dilation that has occurred on a particular server and, when the load is low, stagnate until dilation has been counter-balanced.

For some reason the fact that time is being lost gives me the feel that we're losing something, and every minute spent in a dilated system is saddening. Don't get me wrong, this is AMAZING and and very commendable.

But on the flip side, if I enter a stagnated system, I'm gonna get that "Woohoo" feeling despite maybe only getting 5-10% faster game play.

Just a thought!

-Valkyrs
GRIEV3R
Ranger Corp
Vae. Victis.
#31 - 2012-02-09 21:36:52 UTC
TDI is one of the most technically impressive things I've ever seen. Moreover, its implementation has been a triumph of QA and customer service. Excellent work, CCP. I am truly impressed. You guys are pros.

I love how the blog just casually comments that "We pause the universe at shutdown." That's so ******* cool!
Kusanagi Kasuga
Indigo Archive
Ivy League Alt Alliance
#32 - 2012-02-09 21:38:19 UTC
I am curious. What difference does it make that you pause the universe at downtime - why is it done?
Salpun
Global Telstar Federation Offices
Masters of Flying Objects
#33 - 2012-02-09 21:52:04 UTC
Kusanagi Kasuga wrote:
I am curious. What difference does it make that you pause the universe at downtime - why is it done?

It means that the server has a clean value to save. Lets say you are in a fight when the server shuts down. Between the client and the server the position of your ship is in flux. If you freeze the server you can get a clean save, you can shut down do what you need to do to the DB and start the server up frozen.

This is the same tech they use to remap live nodes but becouse it requires us to relogin, it is it is not used to remap nodes under stress. Once the tech changed so you get kicked back to the character screen during remaps or the screen just freezes and the node gets remaped while you wait. Remaping nodes will be done on the fly which will be better for everyone.

Lastly using it for down time is a good way to test the TIDI frame work. you get a daily test of its fuctinality.

If i dont know something about EVE. I check https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/ISK_The_Guide

See you around the universe.
CCP Veritas
C C P
C C P Alliance
#34 - 2012-02-09 21:58:06 UTC
Kusanagi Kasuga wrote:
I am curious. What difference does it make that you pause the universe at downtime - why is it done?

It takes a fair bit of processing to get a character logged out gracefully, but since we're shutting down anyway none of that matters. By pausing the universe we avoid a large bulk of that useless processing.

If I'm remembering what Atlas told me correctly (he did the work on the shutdown routine), that change alone moved our shutdown time from 2 minutes to 42 seconds.

CCP Veritas - Technical Director - EVE Online
GM Homonoia
Game Master Retirement Home
#35 - 2012-02-09 22:07:13 UTC
CCP Veritas wrote:
Kusanagi Kasuga wrote:
I am curious. What difference does it make that you pause the universe at downtime - why is it done?

It takes a fair bit of processing to get a character logged out gracefully, but since we're shutting down anyway none of that matters. By pausing the universe we avoid a large bulk of that useless processing.

If I'm remembering what Atlas told me correctly (he did the work on the shutdown routine), that change alone moved our shutdown time from 2 minutes to 42 seconds.


It also has the happy side effect that everything stops simultaneously. Before this it was possible to get disconnected due to shut down, only to have NPCs destroy your ship even though the server was officially offline already. Other, similar side effects were possible as well.

Senior GM Homonoia | Info Group | Senior Game Master
HELIC0N ONE
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#36 - 2012-02-09 22:52:58 UTC
GM Homonoia wrote:
[quote=CCP Veritas]It also has the happy side effect that everything stops simultaneously. Before this it was possible to get disconnected due to shut down, only to have NPCs destroy your ship even though the server was officially offline already. Other, similar side effects were possible as well.


I believe there were occasions in the past where fleets got disconnected due to downtime whilst fighting at a hostile POS, and then were blown up by it whilst TQ was offline . Funny,if you weren't the one on the losing side of this, not so much if you were.
Indahmawar Fazmarai
#37 - 2012-02-09 23:01:32 UTC
Mashie Saldana wrote:
(...)
Please, read up on how the TQ cluster is built and designed before making silly suggestions.


That could be an interesting read, is it available somewhere? Question
CCP Phantom
C C P
C C P Alliance
#38 - 2012-02-09 23:28:42 UTC
Indahmawar Fazmarai wrote:
Mashie Saldana wrote:
(...)
Please, read up on how the TQ cluster is built and designed before making silly suggestions.
That could be an interesting read, is it available somewhere? Question
A good start would be the EVElopedia article here, followed by this devblog about upgrades. Also don't miss the Fanfest 2011 presentation about TQ's new toys. It is quite interesting stuff.

And on top of all this we now have the fantastic Time Dilation!

CCP Phantom - Senior Community Developer
Matuk Grymwal
Collapsed Out
Pandemic Legion
#39 - 2012-02-10 01:16:40 UTC  |  Edited by: Matuk Grymwal
Just wondering, how seriously have you looked at using virtualisation and live migration for better load balancing? As you say porting a software load at the application level over to a different server is nigh on impossible unless you design it from the ground up to support that. However shuffling an entire VM over to a different (beefier) server is much easier with the live migration support available in most commercial hypervisors. So on an overloaded node you could up the TIDI factor, possibly even briefly pausing the node like you do at shutdown, live migrate to a reinforced node, dynamically up the RAM/VCPU allocation on the VM and then unlock TIDI to run as normal.

-Mat
Karsa Egivand
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#40 - 2012-02-10 01:24:46 UTC
Quote:
..., which pauses the universe while shutting down.


Completely aside from the technical issues, this simply sounds awesome.