Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: DNA Storage
Spazzers wrote:
Actually the blood sample system, although a good idea, does nothing for database conservation. Bio-engineers have filled up their storage with DNA, meat, and flora, not to mention those fat gnorts sitting around waiting to be resampled. With this blood system bio-engineers are going to fill up their storage capacity with blood, DNA, meat, and flora. Don't forget those happy gnorts either. Regardless, your inventory storage capacity will still be full.
The devs are going to look at the blood system and see coding. They aren't going to be fooled into thinking this will relieve the database problems.
Actually that's where you are wrong. Yes, BE's will probably store as much blood as we can hold on our persons or in our houses. Where the database conservation comes in is that fact that the blood samples are much less data intensive (or at least should be) than each piece of DNA.
People seem to be misunderstanding the problem here just because 1 item takes up 1 slot in your inventory it doesnt mean all items take up the same amount of data storage.
A broken *insert jawa crap* has a name, a serial number(I think) and a 3D model, and a description - thats not a lot of data.
Every stat on a pet is determined by 2 stats on the DNA template so a pet is less data intensive than a piece of its DNA
Well 150 blood samples is not equal to 150 DNA, 150 blood samples would be at least equal to 150 DNA samples up to 1050 (at the max of 7 DNA pet blood sample). Both proposals offer space storage for us BE's and database conservation for the Devs, just to different degrees.
If under blood-extraction a stack of blood can hold 10 samples, 150 stacks of blood translate to 1500 DNA samples. If we make so a stack is 25 samples, then we get a whopping 3750 DNA samples!
Blood-sampling gives a random quality and a random number of samples from 150 to 1050. That is a difference of 4 - 25 times and the we get to choose the quality. No DNA samples have to be tossed or stored because what you extract is what you want.
Every stat on a pet is determined by 2 stats on the DNA template so a pet is less data intensive than a piece of its DNA
I think you are wrong on this point.
Experimentation has only five lines, this is true. However, all 10 of the experimental stats carry over through successive clone generations. If your template has a 450 fortitude, a sample from the clone will have around a 450 fortitude. This would not be possible if the stats were condensed as you claim.
Whether it is a pet or a DNA sample, all of them contain the following data at a minimum:
10 stats (physique, dext, etc.)
8 resistances
8 special protection/effectiveness/vuln flags
2 specials
1 ranged attack
1 quality rating
Further data while it could be reconstructed from the stats above, but is possibly stored:
3 HAM values
1 to-hit
1 speed
1 damage range
1 CL
1 ferocity
Plus possible other stats that are based on creature type.
The blood-extraction sample:
1 pointer to a creature type
1 quantity
1 quality rating
(All of these will have a few text strings and graphics pointers associated with them as well.)
In one sample and assuming all values are integers:
3 variables for blood-extraction, plus extras
30 variables for blood-sampling, 8 more potential, plus extras
That is an order of magnatude in space savings. We get more guaranteed samples. Balance does not have to be readjusted to deal with double-sampling and failures.
Personally I dont think that every creature walking around is carrying specific DNA with it, I think it just has a reference to a template that the numbers are generated from when we extract DNA but I could be wrong.
NancyJ wrote:
Pantsy wrote:
While the blood sample ideas are interesting, why make things more complicated? Let's just use Occam's Razor- the simplest solutions are usually the right ones. Just give us a storage container that doesn't count as much towards house or inventory capacity.
Because the devs have already said they wont do that.
DNA takes more database space than any other item in the game, they simply wont allow us to store any more. Which is why the blood sample idea is so appealing, the samples themselves need contain no more data than 1 piece of DNA but we can obtain multiple samples from them.
So, we have to have something substandard because they already have limitations in their databases? Does this not chime loud bells of alarm at you? I gasped when they said there were too many melons, lol I couldn't believe the game was so new and we had already hit limitations in its capability. Like many, we hoped that this game would be "new leading edge technology" and heck its not even got the power to get out of its own way. It was obsolete before they got half their fan base.
This also tells me if BE's wanted to protest and rebel, all they have to do is band together and take and keep as many samples as they can? Would it be smart to have this sort of power in one single profession?
The blood sample sounds interesting but I see abuse and a hidden agenda in there. It removes the danger of each sample potentially aggroing the creature and you getting killed. Heck, thats half the fun. We should face that danger on every sample we have to put into a template. It would be lame to have a blood sample in the comfort of our labs that we can take samples from, unless perhaps we fill it with 10 real creature samples, and can only withdraw 10 creature samples.
I still say we protest by storing samples till they address our issue. They can say no, and so can we.
Wokka-wokka
Wokka wrote:
The blood sample sounds interesting but I see abuse and a hidden agenda in there. It removes the danger of each sample potentially aggroing the creature and you getting killed. Heck, thats half the fun. We should face that danger on every sample we have to put into a template. It would be lame to have a blood sample in the comfort of our labs that we can take samples from, unless perhaps we fill it with 10 real creature samples, and can only withdraw 10 creature samples.
class=time_text>04:57 PM
Message Edited by GMANHNC on 08-14-2004 03:33 PM
Creatures must have the majority of that information. Just looking at the base ones I listed:
8 resistancesAll of these are certainly creature dependent. Some have ranged, some don't. Specials vary within the species. (Quality rating is a DNA sample/pet deed value.)
8 special protection/effectiveness/vuln flags
2 specials
1 ranged attack
1 quality rating
Also, this information needs to be instantly and always available for combat, so it is directly attached to the creature. (I did just realize that slow load times might be due to assigning this information when the creature materializes though!)
So far 20 variables must be used by all creatures, and their DNA.
10 stats (physique, dext, etc.)This is harder to prove directly.
Wild creatures may not have it directly attached for reasons explained below. Pet deeds on the other hand must have this information.
No natural creature has a fortitude between 300 and 500. Even with all the different resists, HAMs, and armor ratings -- none. How can I extract DNA with a 450 fortitude from a clone if that information isn't stored?
Most species have dependebilities that are around 500, 750 or 1000, yet we can get ones that vary greatly on a clone.
All natural creatures have a courage at 500. With enough generation we can bring that down to pathetically low numbers. Dependebility can be high or low for the same clone.
With work we can make one high and the other low or vice versa within our experimental pairs. There is no way possible to reconstruct 10 separate variables from five. It is not mathematically possible.
Personally I dont think that every creature walking around is carrying specific DNA with it, I think it just has a reference to a template that the numbers are generated from when we extract DNA but I could be wrong.
Now you may be both right and wrong here.
Every rancor we pass may only have the stats we see, and not hardiness, fortitude, etc. (This is the smart way to do it, because generally that information is not needed and would clog memory.) That is why sampling takes 10 seconds or so -- the game has to do a query to get that information, then create an object based on the HAM and the template info returned. There is a pointer from the creature to its DNA data, and that is a part of the creature.
Your blood-sampling suggestion is that blood is exactly like a pet deed. A pet deed is a self-contained object. It does not refer back to a creature or a creature template. All that information is right there and that is why you see the data the instant you hit examine. If it wasn't, we would need a query time, it could time out, etc (just like what happens when examining a creature).
Why can't it refer back to a template? Because not a single one of our clones is a creature in the database. There is nothing to refer back to because that data is in the object itself.
When we are sampling deeds, we are sampling the deed itself and not a creature, so the statement in your second paragraph is irrelavent. Creatures are no longer a part of the equation. (You might want to point out that deeds turn into creatures, however we cannot sample pets once tamed. There is nothing to act as their template!)
So why not create a pointer from our blood sample to the original creature since these zero-generation creatures will be like the wild ones? Tada, you get the blood-extraction idea.
Message Edited by Seiryuu on 08-12-2004 02:11 PM
The system knows the difference between a wild pet and a BE pet deed, in fact it knows the difference between a BE pet and a wild tamed pet.
I don't think this was ever explicitly stated. I'm fine with it, and it's a requirement under blood-extraction.
The system knows the difference between a wild pet and a BE pet deed, in fact it knows the difference between a BE pet and a wild tamed pet.
I'm quite aware of that and is why I dislike what you proposed (and reiterate at the top of this page):
This blood sample has no quality or specific stats, in terms of data storage it is like storing a deed of the creature you sampled in your inventory.
Maybe this is what is throwing me off. You claim it is like a deed. A deed has all its data associated with it.
If you are in fact saying it is a pointer to the creature, then we're arguing the same point.
If that is the case, the only modifications I want that I feel is a significant improvement is adding a quality rating and making it one-for-one.
Message Edited by Seiryuu on 08-12-2004 02:26 PM
NancyJ wrote:
Blood doesnt come from clones, it comes from wild creatures, sampling clones would produce DNA exactly the same as it does now.
The system knows the difference between a wild pet and a BE pet deed, in fact it knows the difference between a BE pet and a wild tamed pet.
But I guess what I was getting at was this: How did a limitation in the SWG database become OUR problem? I like the system just the way it is, although the ability to store more DNA would be a bonus, not a game-breaking neccessity.
And you're talking about blood like it already exists in-game, which it doesn't. The mere concept of it is a band-aid and not a solution. So it's not really solving a problem, just delaying it. It would lower the total DNA count in the game but only until more BE's took up the profession.
they really should look at a better way of doing this. Either beef up the database and hardware, or make all DNA samples static so they stack, then leave the randomness and uniquity (is that even a word?) to the experimentation phases when the template is created.
We're paying the price for the short-sightedness of the designers. I would just feel better if they left it all alone and waited for it to break, which would then make them address it as an emergency and not just a whine from BE's.
Wokka-wokka
Wokka wrote:
NancyJ wrote:
Blood doesnt come from clones, it comes from wild creatures, sampling clones would produce DNA exactly the same as it does now.
The system knows the difference between a wild pet and a BE pet deed, in fact it knows the difference between a BE pet and a wild tamed pet.But I guess what I was getting at was this: How did a limitation in the SWG database become OUR problem? I like the system just the way it is, although the ability to store more DNA would be a bonus, not a game-breaking neccessity.
And you're talking about blood like it already exists in-game, which it doesn't. The mere concept of it is a band-aid and not a solution. So it's not really solving a problem, just delaying it. It would lower the total DNA count in the game but only until more BE's took up the profession.
they really should look at a better way of doing this. Either beef up the database and hardware, or make all DNA samples static so they stack, then leave the randomness and uniquity (is that even a word?) to the experimentation phases when the template is created.
We're paying the price for the short-sightedness of the designers. I would just feel better if they left it all alone and waited for it to break, which would then make them address it as an emergency and not just a whine from BE's.
Wokka-wokka
It becomes our problem if we want the ability to effectively stored more DNA than we can now.
They have told us that they cannot give BE's more storage space so we have come up with a proposal that does not require us to have more inventory slots or an extra storage container.
If we take the attitude of 'it not our problem' then we stay as we are and dont get anything done about our storage issues.
I dont think its likely that they would make all DNA from the same mob type 'uniform' and therefore stackable since that would remove all randomness from the profession.
The issue is not that DNA takes up too much database space, the issue is that with the inventory limits the way they are and with each DNA sample taking up 1 inventory slot then we cannot store much DNA.
This has been in our last 2 top 5 issues lists, so if this doesnt apply to you I'm sorry, but it affects the majority else it wouldnt be in the list.
Message Edited by NancyJ on 08-13-2004 07:07 PM