Cities And Housing Archive
Thread: Vision to resolve the item limit problem for houses and multipassenger ships(updated 01/22/05)
Glzmo wrote:
Seems like something is being done to storage in houses and lot changes in an upcoming publish.
It doesn't seem that total storage per characterper lotwill beincreased for now, although inventory space is being raised by 20 items, it seems.
Ships also do not require lots anymore, although I hope their item limits will be raised as well.
I still like my ideas better, although this looks to be better than the current situation.
What do you people thinkhow the developershave tackled this matter?
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=in_testing&message.id=37821
- All Housing item limits have been changed. This will mean that small houses can now store 100 items for a Naboo small house, and 200 for the the other small and medium houses. Large houses and Guild Halls can now store 400 items each instead of being limited to 250 items each
- Large houses should now take up 5 lots instead of 6.
- Guild halls should now take up 5 lots instead of 7.
unless you are referring to exceeding 1000 items per person by use of lots... then no no changes.. they just made the need of fewer store houses
Message Edited by TurboSith on 01-29-2005 10:07 AM
We just received a patch that raises storage capacity, which is more than welcomed as it is!
But, and I do not know if this has been suggested before, another approach to storage could be that Containers, like a Travel Bag for instance, count as 1 item in your House independently of what they contain.
What I mean by that is while keeping the same storage limits as it is now per House, lets say 100 for a Smallest Naboo House. One could have 10 Bags with 50 Items inside them and that counts for 10 Items in the House, and still have 90 Items worth of decorating that house.
Nesting bags is not permited so that should not change, and if anyone would kinda go crasy and actually have 100 Bags with 50 items each in there, this would still ring as 100 items to render when someone enters that house which is the present Item limit so should not hinder performance, it could however make for Vast Databases per Character, and take up lots of Server Side Storage space, which is also a factor I am thinking in this equation.
Yet if this is something that can be handled server side, it is a simpler and easyer to implement, and will at the same time provide a solution to the expressed needs in this Vision I think.
There are two types of containers, structure and item containers. Structure containers are not quite as they sound as they do not include all structures. They include merchant tents, all houses and PA Halls and any other structure a PC can "enter," which includes certain multiplayer ships. Item containers are the safety deposit boxes, factory input hopper, backpacks, crafting stations, new container furniture, etc. The following rules should apply (some already do):
- A structure container cannot be placed inside any other container (structure or item).
- An item container placed inside a structure container occupies ONE, count that, ONE slot in the structure container regardless of the contents of the item container.
- A structure container has X number of slots for items. From those X slots, Y slots can be used for item containers. Any other item container put in beyond that point is for decoration only. Hence you CANNOT put 100 bookcases and fill them all with items in your small Naboo house.
- An item container placed inside another item container will have it's contents accounted for in the second container. This prevents the user from having an infinite amount of nested levels of containers.
Notice that the first and third bullets already exist in the game. The second kinda makes things resemble RL in that when I drop my backpack onto the floor in my house IRL my house doesn't fill up all of a sudden. When I open up my backpack and dump the contents onto the floor my house starts to fill up. See objects went from one container into another; taking up space in one or the other. Clothes on floor means they are not in backpack. Clothes in backpack means they are not on floor. DEVs you listening!?
A note about merchants: I didn't mention it because I don't really view them as a container. If you do then look at them as another type in addition to the two I propose. I have no beef with vendors.
Other things that would be nice:
- When I pick up my backpack, if I am not wearing one already it is auto-equipped. Kinda blows when you put your pack down and then have to shuffle contents to and from another container just so you can pick it up to wear it again.
- I do like Gizmo's idea of placing an item back into the crate where it came from. Sometimes I get click happy when picking up crates from my factory and somehow manage to quadruple click something so I pick it up and grab an item from the crate at the same time. Something I don't find out about until I open my inventory. This should be real easy to implement as only a serial number comparison appears to be needed.
- When "Finding Lost Items" in your house, a window pops up with all the items listed inside. This would behave like the factory output hopper window where you could grab items from the house but could not place items into it.
Sure, there is an issue with inadequate storage overall, but at what limit would storage BE adequate? If for example they were to grant us unlimited resource stacks, 1000 crate sizes, re-crating, etc. this would no doubt go a long way towards reducing our item counts, but these items would still count as 1 item each and eventually players will fill their house and asking for even more storage. There has to be a limit somewhere. The issue that does it for me is having to spread out my items among storage houses, and having to house hop to find something. I really would like the ability to have access to my items under one roof. I've been working on a similar idea that Gizmo posted.
Adding lots to our existing structure at the management terminal would reduce Architect sales to a degree since you could just buy one 2-lot house, and fill it up with 8 lots worth of storage instead of buying 8 lots worth of houses. Also, increasing the item limit in a house by adding lots doesn't address the issue of those items lagging your house (hence the limits).
Garva had this to say awhile back:As far as crates holding 100 or 25, I did not mention anything about that, because I don't know the why. Other than possibly... longevity of crafting, if you can store 1000 items in one crate, why even bother being a crafter after you have a stock? It keeps the profession in the game and active. Might as well make npc vendors that make and sell everything. Lastly, house item limits are not solely based on database, its also the fact that each time you enter a house it has to load all those items, each of the visual representations for those items. Imagine walking into your 800 item house. Not everyone has a Radeon 9800.
My tweak to Gizmo's idea would be a vendor-like Storage Unit. A Master Merchant could have up to 4000 items on a vendor and I believe this doesn't lag a house because the vendor doesn't actually render these items in the house and the items on the vendor are tied to the vendor and not the house in which it resides. This Storage Unit would act like a vendor in that regard. The Storage Unit would require the use of structure deeds which in turn would limit you by available lots and the Storage Unit's capacity would be dictated by the deed used. The Storage Unit itself and the items within would not count towards your house limit, like a vendor.
Here's how it would work: Right click a structure deed and select "Create Storage Unit" from the radial menu. The deed would change to an item that can be dropped in a house where you are the Owner. Once dropped, it uses the appropriate lots and you would have to pay the appropriate maintenance for that structure just as if you had planted it in the world. Only the Owner can pick up the Storage Unit to re-deed it for the regular re-deed cost and reclaim the used lots. When placed in your house you can only rotate it or re-deed it. Re-deeding the Storage Unit would destroy the contents within, and a system message would remind you if there are items in it. The Storage Unit's capacity would be determined by the deed used, e.g. 200 items for a Small Generic. You can drop as many Storage Units as you have available lots, and paying the maintenance for each unit.
Only administrators of the Storage Unit can view and access the contents, and pay maintenance on the Storage Unit. You could, for instance, convert a 1 lot small Naboo deed to a 100 item Storage Unit and assign certain customers, friends, guildmates, acquaintances, etc. as administrators so they can only access items within it without having to give access to your whole house. Maybe good for pickups/drop offs for whatever arrangements you make.
Since I'm drawing from vendor-like functionality, the UI may require to be vendor-like as well. Meaning the contents would be displayed like a vendor and you couldn't drag n' drop items in/out like a regular container. You may need to use buttons like "Retrieve Item" and "Store Item" instead of "Sell Item" for example.
My "tweak", involves living within our limits as it is now on the whole, but just adds the convenience. I still have to buy the deeds, use my lots, and pay maintenance. I can decorate my house up to the house limit, store things in Storage Units, and have it under one roof. Of course you could still plant storage houses in the world but I think some players would opt for the under one roof idea.
Just my 2 creds, for what it's worth...
QFE:
Glzmo wrote:
Yes, I can see the crafter's needs, but this post isn't about increasing total storage amount, it is about solving the problem of not being able to fully decorate ahouse and/or ship as well as remove many unneeded 'storage structures' from the gaming world while keeping the current limits intact, considering the developers' claims that the current maximum is the most a character can have due to database limitations.
It might be wise to create a seperatethread on how toget rid ofcurrent 'database limitations' to be able to accomodate increased item storage per character.
Message Edited by FelniFosk on 03-03-2005 03:13 PM
I don't mean lockers and stuff, I mean actual instanced "cabinets" integrated into the house. the bigger the house, the more cabinets. it's the same principal as with the player bank system, isn't it? Or would that, too, take too much of the server to allow?
(Sorry if someone said this already but those are some looong posts and I'm feeling rather tired...)
Message Edited by OmegaZeuS on 03-05-2005 10:51 PM
OmegaZeuS wrote:
What about allowing a house storage units that are instanced to the player only (like bank safety deposits) where you can store items there that way load time would be reduced for players entering.
I don't mean lockers and stuff, I mean actual instanced "cabinets" integrated into the house. the bigger the house, the more cabinets. it's the same principal as with the player bank system, isn't it? Or would that, too, take too much of the server to allow?
(Sorry if someone said this already but those are some looong posts and I'm feeling rather tired...)
Message Edited by OmegaZeuS on 03-05-2005 10:51 PM
I considered something along those lines as well, but I prefer a way to integrate structure deeds to limit lot usage, apply maintenance, inheriting the deeds item capacity, assign administrators, and not cut into Architect sales. If for example you had a storage unit as an extension of the bank deposit box accessable from the structure's management terminal how would you regulate that for balance?
It is generally understood in gaming that if you adhere to minimum requirements that the game (or actually any application) will not work as well as a system with processing power and memory to spare. Now your game is operating just not well. Have you tried lowering your graphical standards? There are options in ctrl o to reduce the load from loading up various graphical attributes.
DarthOlomew wrote:
I do not know for sure if this issue has been raised, but here goes:
Personally, I think that TOO MANY items can be placed as it is. But this is from someone with no alternative but to connect to the internet via dial-up and who cannot afford to upgrade his computer.
My system chokes hard every time I enter a decorated house. All those items clustered in one place drops my framerate down to 1 fps, and because I am using dialup, it takes forever to load everything in, and then my memory is too low to process it all correctly, so it goes into virtual memory, which bogs EVERYTHING down. Sometimes the system crashes with errors about exceeding virtual memory.
IF what is proposed here goes into effect, I might as well just forget playing the game.
I do not upgrade or replace my system for the sake of one game, and if I have to make a choice between $500 for a new (but still substandard) computer and saving an additional $15 per month by canceling, I will cancel.
Your ideas are good, but they are put forward with the assumption that everyone has systems that can easily run SWG with all the settings jacked to maximum. A lot of people may be that much into blowing money, but some of us have bills to pay and Girlfriends to take out, and have a limited budget to do it all with.
I have found some lightly decorated houses to look a LOT better than some of the heavily decorated ones. And I don't get bogged down as badly.
I look at it this way... with all the people leaving SWG, a lot of database resources are going to be freed up, and the devs can up the amount of stored items that can be placed within containers.
In all fairness, if nobody had to worry about the technical limitations of their systems, then your idea would be great. But I think that the system now can accomodate the average player if he/she simply uses a bit of conservativism when decorating their house/ship.
Just my .002 credits worth...
In Christ,
G. B. Jackson
I do not think it would be wise.. and like me, I am a commando / scout, but working as interior designer within the game,and a good large kitchen takes at least 100 items, if you want it to look good.Message Edited by annasimone on 04-05-2005 03:38 AM
I know you can't put storage furniture in backpacks, but can you put backpacks in storage furniture? If you can, then you can have 500 items stored in furniture which would be a problem. Fill up your small/medium house with 200 storage cabinets and you'd have 100,000 items stored in it.
annasimone wrote:
I absolutly agree we need more space BUT
no no....
In stead, let items in armoures, bookcases and chests not count into the item count limit on the house
Cause the fact is, crafters have a storage nightmare
Message Edited by annasimone on 04-05-2005 03:38 AM
*Why don't we all compile or vote on a set of changes, if the developers allow us to do so, and then work on it from that?
Let's not be self-centered, all right? Because Gizmo is posting what HE thinks is right - what HE thinks is the best. But best for who? Only him and maybe a hundred players. But this is democracy. I hope I didn't offend anyone...