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

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CCP Veritas
C C P
C C P Alliance
#41 - 2012-02-10 09:49:15 UTC
Matuk Grymwal wrote:
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.

I never said it was "nigh on impossible", we have plans and such they're just not easy ;)

The fine folks over in Operations have been running experiments with virtualization in order to get a better idea how the Eve server specifically reacts to it. For instance, Sisi is currently virtualized. If it works out and we can migrate smoothly, that would allow us to take *groups* of solar systems and put them on beefier hardware. It doesn't give us the ability to isolate a specific solar system though, which is what the software-level migration (non-destructive live remapping, we call it) would give us.

As always, a step in the right direction is always good even if it doesn't go *all* the way, so here's hoping the tests go well!

CCP Veritas - Technical Director - EVE Online

smaster
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#42 - 2012-02-10 09:56:19 UTC  |  Edited by: smaster
Time Delation has shown us players esp one thing, that your hardware is indeed undersized and not capable of running the users playing the game.

CCP U NEED MORE SERVERS FOR RUNNING THE GAME


When u fly in vale of the silent, and 4 regions further in branch there is a fight, and u get stuck in 90% time delation and it takes u 20 minutes to travel 3 jumps, YOU NEED MORE SERVERS FOR 0.0
thecunning mrfox
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#43 - 2012-02-10 10:19:50 UTC  |  Edited by: thecunning mrfox
Karsa Egivand wrote:
Quote:
..., which pauses the universe while shutting down.


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



Always makes me think of dark city http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5ZSDCvUwN8
TR4D3R4LT
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#44 - 2012-02-10 11:59:33 UTC
CCP Veritas wrote:
BeanBagKing wrote:
Does this mean you're fixing bracket lag?!?

Work has been done along those lines. I can't say if any individual will call it "fixed" with what's been done, but it's possible.


You decided to remove brackets alltogether right? Shocked I hope not...

Still credit where credit is due, I've enjoyed TiDi in couple fights thus far and they've certainly made my fight more responsive. Overall slower, but responsive.

Also any change for blog that updates how TQ looks atm, how many dedicated supernodes, what they have inside, how many normal nodes, how many systems per average are hosted on them, future plans hardware/software wise etc. You fellas know stuff like that is p0rn to some of us and making blogs about server things is easiest way to let us know that you care. Nobody needs constant updates but once a year general outline "this is what we have now, this is what we plan to get during this year and this is Soon™" would go long way.
Gevlin
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#45 - 2012-02-10 12:02:23 UTC
I know in the old say when a side was about to loose, including their Super Caps they would perposly over load the node to make it crash.
Then there would he a long file of people petitioning to get their shinny toy replaced.

How has the customer services been since this implementations.

have the Customer Services been able to replace few ships resulting from large fights?

Someday I will have the time to play. For now it is mining afk in High sec. In Cheap ships

Pinky Denmark
The Cursed Navy
#46 - 2012-02-10 13:22:39 UTC
Indeed it seems to be very nice and I like it...

Question:
Being caught up in time dilation will your skills train slower and in effect result in you training slower than people outside the time dilation?
What about manufacture time and research time? Are those affected as well?

Pinky
Crucis Cassiopeiae
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#47 - 2012-02-10 15:13:43 UTC  |  Edited by: Crucis Cassiopeiae
One question about TiDi:

Is it possible to put in game some space distortion/anomaly that appear in the space that's under time dilation?
This way players will have a feeling like its game feature, especially in systems that are on same node an system where fight is.
And add message from our ship computer, something like: "Ships sensors discovered time flux anomaly generated by unknown source. Ship computer cant predict time variables in this conditions."


There would be few pluses of this:
1. From annoying thing that ppl don't know why it is happening you make new game feature. In all space related stories there was some sort of time flux anomaly so its all ok from the side of the space story.
2. You add some nice new graphic of space distortion/anomaly in the space.
3. You add one new thing that ppl cant predict in the game (good thing).
4. You give ppl a story behind all of this.


Just a thought.

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John McCreedy
Eve Defence Force
#48 - 2012-02-10 15:27:00 UTC
CCP Phantom wrote:
I want my 45 minutes back!!!



Well you can joke about it but it's incredibly frustrating when you're chasing a target and get traffic a 90 second control and then you're hit with 50% TiDi on top of that. 3 Minutes is the difference between a fight and blueballs.

13 years and counting. Eve Defence Force is recruiting.

Lyron-Baktos
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#49 - 2012-02-10 15:54:26 UTC
TiDi sucks when you are not in the big fight. I lost a scout ship a while back because right when I tackled a ship and my fleet was coming up behind me to support me, they got hit in TiDi and didn't make it to me in time.
Hakaru Ishiwara
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#50 - 2012-02-10 16:00:54 UTC
CCP Veritas wrote:
Mr Bigwinky wrote:
I hear there have been some issues.

One day our wormhole was time dilated, only our wormhole and with only 5 people in it at that time.

Care to shed some light on the possible reason as to why that would happen?

Wormholes, being nice semi-population-capped things, group up very nicely. Your average wormhole-housing node is going to have a few hundred wormhole systems on it.
While that sounds nifty from a technical resource conservation standpoint, that is **** from an immersion and game play perspective.

I remember the days that you could tell that a 100-pilot, Sniper BS gang was moving in or near your region. The game / node would show performance stress and that was fine. You knew that you were in a null-sec and that big fleets were a part of the environment. [Yeah, now it is 500 - 1000 pilot fleets.]

W-space is / was / should be a totally different environment. Despite the settling down (aka farming) of some w-space systems, w-space is big, mysterious and above all else: remote.

Having a game mechanic indicate that you are on a node with hundreds of other like-systems ruins that image IMHO.

Are we not paying enough cash to support the infrastructure? Has CCP made the choice to go the cheapest possible route, provisioning marginal service while pocketing the rest?

What can be done from a business perspective to correct this?

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Scrapyard Bob
EVE University
Ivy League
#51 - 2012-02-10 16:13:13 UTC
Hakaru Ishiwara wrote:

What can be done from a business perspective to correct this?


Convince those 10-20% of subscription losses since last summer to start subscribing again.

(The bleeding stopped in December, once they revealed that Crucible was going to focus on the core EVE experiences with lots of bug fixes. But a lot of folks are still waiting to see whether CCP can continue to do things right, or whether they'll go back to not listening to feedback and just implementing whatever the hell they want, damn the consequences.)
Vincent Athena
Photosynth
#52 - 2012-02-10 19:35:10 UTC
Pinky Denmark wrote:
Indeed it seems to be very nice and I like it...

Question:
Being caught up in time dilation will your skills train slower and in effect result in you training slower than people outside the time dilation?
What about manufacture time and research time? Are those affected as well?

Pinky


As I recall, skills, industry, and the market are not slowed by TiDi.

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Saucy Okanata
Perkone
Caldari State
#53 - 2012-02-10 19:36:16 UTC
Time dilation is amazing. It makes the funnest part of large fleet battles last even longer, watching people blow up. How can you go wrong? Now instead of floating in space for an hour waiting, and then a lagged out fight that happens in the blink of an eye, you actually get to spend a good amount of time in fleets actively fighting. Also, since it makes it easier to reship and get back to the fight in time the large fleet battles have become really interesting, they've become an event rather than just a quick show down.

I'm really looking to forward to Crucible 1.3 with the overview and bracket update. Even with time dilation it's hard to get your client to be responsive in large fleet battles, even with shutting off all the graphics and brackets. Things are certainly looking up for fleet battles.
Ranger 1
Ranger Corp
Vae. Victis.
#54 - 2012-02-10 20:58:18 UTC  |  Edited by: Ranger 1
Hakaru Ishiwara wrote:
CCP Veritas wrote:
Mr Bigwinky wrote:
I hear there have been some issues.

One day our wormhole was time dilated, only our wormhole and with only 5 people in it at that time.

Care to shed some light on the possible reason as to why that would happen?

Wormholes, being nice semi-population-capped things, group up very nicely. Your average wormhole-housing node is going to have a few hundred wormhole systems on it.
While that sounds nifty from a technical resource conservation standpoint, that is **** from an immersion and game play perspective.

I remember the days that you could tell that a 100-pilot, Sniper BS gang was moving in or near your region. The game / node would show performance stress and that was fine. You knew that you were in a null-sec and that big fleets were a part of the environment. [Yeah, now it is 500 - 1000 pilot fleets.]

W-space is / was / should be a totally different environment. Despite the settling down (aka farming) of some w-space systems, w-space is big, mysterious and above all else: remote.

Having a game mechanic indicate that you are on a node with hundreds of other like-systems ruins that image IMHO.

Are we not paying enough cash to support the infrastructure? Has CCP made the choice to go the cheapest possible route, provisioning marginal service while pocketing the rest?

What can be done from a business perspective to correct this?


With all of the strange effects possible in WH system, a rare time anomally should serve to deepen your immersion. Smile

I would not prefer nodes to be in proximity to each other as you describe above... it would be foolish in the extreme and only magnify the stress the node would be under as ships converge on a contested system.

I'm not sure where you comment about "not paying enough cash to support the infrastructure" is coming from. Right now the infrastructure is larger and healthier than it has been at any time in the past.... and I hardly think you will find many players to support you in saying the CCP is purposefully providing "marginal service while pocketing the rest". They are allowed to actually make a profit and pay their own salaries you know.

A solution to these issues isn't as simple as "buy more hardware"... indeed, that would be a great way to try (futilely) to AVOID dealing with these issues.

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Morgals
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#55 - 2012-02-10 21:37:05 UTC
Could lore this away.
Be cool to have time dilation explained as to many warp drives messing up time and space.
In space animation would be neat as well.

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Ranger 1
Ranger Corp
Vae. Victis.
#56 - 2012-02-10 22:16:21 UTC
I'm sure this has been explored, but to me the more logical way to attempt (as a baby step perhaps) to beef up a node under stress would be to simply shut down and move any systems on the node that are currently empty.

Then as more systems on the node empty out (due to people moving aournd) you repeat the pause/shut down/ move routine to get the stressed node down to the minimum number of systems possible... possibly even down to only having the overloaded system being the only one left on the node.

I realize this is somewhat the opposite of moving the single overloaded system off the node, but the end result would be (reasonably close) to the same.

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Salpun
Global Telstar Federation Offices
Masters of Flying Objects
#57 - 2012-02-10 22:26:42 UTC
Ranger 1 wrote:
I'm sure this has been explored, but to me the more logical way to attempt (as a baby step perhaps) to beef up a node under stress would be to simply shut down and move any systems on the node that are currently empty.

Then as more systems on the node empty out (due to people moving aournd) you repeat the pause/shut down/ move routine to get the stressed node down to the minimum number of systems possible... possibly even down to only having the overloaded system being the only one left on the node.

I realize this is somewhat the opposite of moving the single overloaded system off the node, but the end result would be (reasonably close) to the same.

Its all about the server tools required and how long it takes to write and QA. Right now more easy and faster wins can be found in the client optimizations route.

When they get those fixed hopefully the planing work will already be done so its a straight forword path to writing and QA any code that is needed.

CCP from hard experience knows how many bugs get created from "simple" low level changes. The Client fixes are one example. On sisi the client is still fairly buggy but the results of the changes are major wins. The issue is finding the edge cases and the only way to do that is to let players test it. As was sayed above the next step is already in testing. If it gets cleared to deploy to TQ then we are one step closer.

Your ideas match mine but we just have to give the devs some time.

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See you around the universe.

Boeboe Joe
Royal Assassins Guild
Chained Reactions
#58 - 2012-02-11 03:48:41 UTC
CCP Veritas wrote:
Dev blog win, with some winning graphs. Also Team Gridlock is deploying win in Crucible 1.2.


I think something needs to be added to make this official, Picard. Credit to CCP Soundwave for the pic.

Got 'roids?

Alain Kinsella
#59 - 2012-02-11 07:27:59 UTC  |  Edited by: Alain Kinsella
John McCreedy wrote:
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?


The problem with the 'jump lag' is that's its a handoff between two different sol node processes. Your client must open a new connection to the destination node, destination node tells the source node 'Hi, I've got this one', the source node disconnects, and the destination node tells the client to start loading environment. That 'hand off' has to be done within less than a second, *and* without any delays due to system load.

I know this problem very well, from some early work on reverse engineering the Second Life protocol (their case is very extreme, because you can have a vehicle crossing multiple 'systems' within a second as well!). That was back in 2006 or so, and last I heard the problem is still not solved over there.

From another angle, I think CCP does have the edge on this problem. Apparently windows systems have a facility to move an existing open socket between processes - even across computers. The downside, when/if implemented, is that Eve will no longer work in Wine/Linux as this feature has not been re-created there yet (it broke Uru's client in Wine when something similar was implemented there). Mac should be OK though.

[If Veritas or another Dev could pipe up at some point with confirmation or details, it'd be appreciated. Cool ]

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Mioelnir
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#60 - 2012-02-11 12:36:40 UTC
CCP Veritas wrote:
42 seconds

I see what you did there.