Dancer Archive

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Panthu wrote:

Here's what I don't understand, the fatalistic attitude.

Yes, this introduces new issues. Yes, these should be brought up to the Devs as soon as they will talk about it. To just throw up our hands and say "fast!! Put it back like it was!" seems very self defeating to me.

Other professions do not act like this. Other profession Corrs and Glowies do not act like this when put in similar situations. If their profs get a fix that is not all that they had hoped, they don't say "just put it back and leave it alone till you can do better!" If they did, then nothing would ever get fixed.

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Maybe that's because we're not used to any issue of real importance AND complexity being fixed for us?

Maybe it's because the Devs never even bothered before to address an entertainer issue as complicated as that before, which all by itself speaks volumes?

Maybe it's because since the start of this game, unlike some other professions we have been disappointed, insulted, nerfed, ignored, left by the wayside whenever something more important(i.e. anything) came up,and straight out lied to by the Developers?

Maybe it's because for almost 2 years now, both Developers and some of our fellow players have given us the feeling that we are the scum of the galaxy, worth about as much respect and consideration as your average NPC?

Maybe it's because we ARE NPCs as far as most other people in SWG (Devs and players) are concerned?

Maybe it's because we have every reason to expect that if they now break anything even worse than it's been broken before, it might take them another 2 years before they get around to even trying to fix it?

No offense Panthu, but I'm quite surprised at your surprise...


As for me, I'm not feeling very willing to cut the Devs any kind of slack at all. So they get around to trying to fix one of our issues. Great, it really is - but is it too much to expect that they also do a good job of it??

Yeah, guess for us it is.

Message Edited by Landlubber on 03-17-2005 08:08 AM

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ChaoKuang wrote:

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Panthu wrote:

If you really look into the mechanics of this though, you will see that theremost likely is not a way to just fix this and leave all of the Flourishes and Base Dances as they are right now. There is no other game that has tried to allow constant non-interrupted long clip high travel animations like this. It's a weird thing that's trying to be done here. Something has to give and change, because the current setup doesn't work and soon half of our dances will be these "high drift" dances if they go in unchanged. Then won't we be hurting?

The thing that makes the most sense to me that seems like it would require the least amount of code change and zero animation clip changes is to:

• Yes, go back to thedead reckoning we have on live for base dances and leave the flos out of it (just like Live)


• Reduce Base Dancesto only seven which are currently called: Basic1 and 2, Popular2, Footloose1 and 2, Exotic2 and 4 (These would need to be renamed to make sense)


• Make all other current Base Dance animations work as Flourishes instead (meaning, no position check so no stuttering)


• Change the way all Flourishes are named and called so that they will work from any of the seven Base Dances a player has earned


• Redo the Skill Lines so that Dancers learn Base Dances in some boxes (probably best to keep these in lower boxes, but where ever is fine as long as you get a few choices early on) and all now renamed Flourishes through out the skill tree

This way we get to keep all of our animations we currently have access to, but we also get to use them all in ways they can be used best. Formal2 works fine as a one time run with out position check. Tiaga showed me that a long time ago with the /dance comparison. That's why that anim needs to work like a flo.

I won't cheer at you if you don't want to be cheered up, but please don't rant at me if you are not willing to look at the above suggestion and try to help offer suggestions to make it better or offer another solution of your own. The only thing that is going to be helpful here is giving Deila good feedback to take to the Devs.

We simply can not go on like we have it on Live right now. We've seen our only dances that are coming down the pipes for a very long time, the videos have been floating around forever. They are all going to be "broken" ifwe don't allow some change here.

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Not sure I like the last two suggestions, heehee. Would be interesting, indeed, to mix them up like that, but probably would take an entire revamp of the profession.

What I think would be good, however, would be like your second suggestion, but a little more expanded. Keep the different base dances, from basic to exotiuc, including the Tumble and Breakdance bases. What needs to be done, however, is this I believe: they need to be short repeats of a base, instead of longer, movement-oriented bases like the drifters. Or, better yet, give us a STATIONARY BASE. Think like a starting position of Ballet. Make each dance have it's own unique stationary starting position, and let flourishes be executed from that. Granted, it might mean revamping the flourishes to flow into the stationary base position, but that could work as well.

I hope some of that made sense...

Edit: Thinking on it, actually, I think I may prefer the ability to just have a list of different, renamed flourishes which could be mixed and matched. It would allow dancers to, essentially, create their OWN dances by simply choosing a base and combining various flourishes without having to /changedance every couple flourishes. Hm...

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I like both of these suggestions. I think the X number of "base" dances and the ability to call all flos would be really cool though.

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Panthu wrote:

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Landlubber wrote:

No offense Panthu, but I'm quite surprised at your surprise...


As for me, I'm not feeling very willing to cut the Devs any kind of slack at all. So they get around to trying to fix one of our issues. Great, it really is - but is it too much to expect that they also do a good job of it??

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I didn't say I was surprised, I said I didn't understand - translation: I don't understand what you think it will gain us by basically ranting and freaking out. I don't like non-productive actions, sorry. I like to effect change, that's why I spent a significant amount of time researching this issue and talking to Devs about it.

Yes, sometimes I was blown off. Yes, I was once even told I wasn't allowed to post in this forum about the issue with out getting the post approved first. So, please don't talk to me about not understanding what we are really dealing with as a player community. I get that.

If you really look into the mechanics of this though, you will see that theremost likely is not a way to just fix this and leave all of the Flourishes and Base Dances as they are right now. There is no other game that has tried to allow constant non-interrupted long clip high travel animations like this. It's a weird thing that's trying to be done here. Something has to give and change, because the current setup doesn't work and soon half of our dances will be these "high drift" dances if they go in unchanged. Then won't we be hurting?

The thing that makes the most sense to me that seems like it would require the least amount of code change and zero animation clip changes is to:

• Yes, go back to thedead reckoning we have on live for base dances and leave the flos out of it (just like Live)


• Reduce Base Dancesto only seven which are currently called: Basic1 and 2, Popular2, Footloose1 and 2, Exotic2 and 4 (These would need to be renamed to make sense)


• Make all other current Base Dance animations work as Flourishes instead (meaning, no position check so no stuttering)


• Change the way all Flourishes are named and called so that they will work from any of the seven Base Dances a player has earned


• Redo the Skill Lines so that Dancers learn Base Dances in some boxes (probably best to keep these in lower boxes, but where ever is fine as long as you get a few choices early on) and all now renamed Flourishes through out the skill tree

This way we get to keep all of our animations we currently have access to, but we also get to use them all in ways they can be used best. Formal2 works fine as a one time run with out position check. Tiaga showed me that a long time ago with the /dance comparison. That's why that anim needs to work like a flo.

I won't cheer at you if you don't want to be cheered up, but please don't rant at me if you are not willing to look at the above suggestion and try to help offer suggestions to make it better or offer another solution of your own. The only thing that is going to be helpful here is giving Deila good feedback to take to the Devs.

We simply can not go on like we have it on Live right now. We've seen our only dances that are coming down the pipes for a very long time, the videos have been floating around forever. They are all going to be "broken" ifwe don't allow some change here.

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*sigh*

Well, you're right of course - no matter how we as players perceive the relation between the Developers and our profession to be, staying calm and constructive will alwaysget you better results than ranting and raving. And I know too that I'm somewhat prone to ranting and raving, but then I never could handle (perceived) indifference and insincerity very well.

Sometimes it would really be better to just sit back, relax, take a deep breath, and remember that this is just a game, and the purpose is to have fun


That being said, what bugs me is the impression (and yes, it is only that, and may just as well be wrong) that we're not really getting anywhere. Given our track record with the Devs, it's tempting to jump to the conclusion that any new problems they'll introduce are here to stay for now.
Still better to leave emotions out of this though

And for the record, I never wanted to imply that I think that you or the other glowies and Corrs are somehow out of touch with the rest of us, and that you're not trying to help both the Devs and us with any bugfixes we may get. You're all doing a great job which is certainly very much appreciated. And Iknow you're also in a much better position to judge if the Developers are really willing to do something for us or if it's just a "shut them up for a while" kind of deal for them (as I said, appearances...*shrugs*). Yes, I'm still sceptical in that regard, but let's see how it turns out...

Panthu, in our opinion, is there any chance that the devs would consider implementing the changes you propose (which sound good and very reasonable) anytime soon, i.e. before the mythical profession revamps? Because if not, what I stated above still holds true: we might very well be stuck with what amounts to an even worse situation for months (I'm seeing this as a performer)

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Tiaga wrote:
I did a short video to demonstrate the issue. To create this, had two chars there. One dancing and one watching. I touched nothing on either computer while this was running, save bringing up the map once the dancer was completely offscreen from the viewer. For the dance, I did tumble2 with no flourishes. In this short video the dancer's perspective is in the upper left corner, the viewer's perspective is the main view.

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Yikes, that's prettyhorrible and broken. I understand now why I hear dancers say that they prefer the current "live" way that those dances are broken.

Oh well, I was looking forward to seeing dancers dance formal while I play ceremonial.

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Tiaga wrote:>
Other things, the position is never corrected, so the longer you dance, the worse out of sync it gets. Something that travels a lot gets out of sync almost immediately. Something like popular2 isn't nearly as bad, but still not great. Related, it is no longer possible to steer yourself to travel around the dance floor, since any change in location isn't reflected on the viewer's screen (Save turning you to face where you moved to during the base dance.)

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I think this is actually why this happens. The fact that position is not corrected anymore.
Someone once found out (might have even be you ) that if you disconnect the viewer from the internet while watching, suddenly he sees the dancer doing the basedance perfectly.
So it seems the client computer was saying "Ok dancer has used the basedance to dance over here" - then a second later the message comes from the server "Correction on Dancer, he's over there now", and the client moves the dancer character to "over there", which looks like walking on the client screen.

I think the fix to this was that while a dancer is dancing the client will not receive "position updates" on that character anymore, therefor will not correct the position and the dancer doesn't walk. But unfortunately, since the position is not corrected, the client sees the dancer somewhere, where he isn't.

I'm not sure if there's an easy fix to this, but honestly this new bug sounds a lot worse than the one before. The one we had always at least only affected drifting dances. But this one seems to affect all dances.

Message Edited by kirah_ashlin on 03-17-2005 07:14 AM

I posted this in another thread, but I'll put it herek as well as it is relevant...

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The whole player position prediction issue is not unique to SWG. I also play PlanetSide (SOE's MMOFPS) and in that game if a player is moving too fast the server will loose track of them. What happens is if two players are coming at each other guns blazing (this, of course, happens constantly) and the attacker advancing on a defender jumps to avoid incoming fire you get a 'warp effect' on the defenders screen. On the defender's screen it looks like the attacker jumps and just keeps going up through the celing (if indoors) and effectively disappears. On the attacker's end, he has jumped up past the defender and usually winds up behind a guy who is pointing his weapon upward tracking a target that is no longer there. Then, of course, the attacker blasts the defender into the next life because the defender had no way of aiming at the right target. By the time the server and client scynch up on the attacker's position, it's too late for the defender.

The PS devs worked for months to fix this, and finally wound up having to compromise by putting a speed limit of sorts on players. Such that they would not (in most cases) move faster than the server could keep track of them. The warping still happens, but not as much, particularly on the Z-Axis. The fix really annoyed some players, because it slowed down the game, and alot of Shooter fans love a fast game.

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Bascially, Panthu is on to something. Current technology for the player position prediction system (dead reckoning as Panthu refers to it) does not work in long uninterrupted sequences. So as a result they simply can't speed up the prediciton code to keep up the travelling dances. That would be the preferred solution, due to it letting us keep the base daces/flourish system as is and we roll on. However, given that this is a coding limitation of the current state of things, we *must* have a compromise between the ideological Perfect Player Position Prediction code (which, like all idealized conceptual models, does not exist at this time) and what we can ge to solve our ills.

We must also consider that this is not a revamp, but a set of fixes, and they're likely trying to fix the issue in the most expidient less code/manpower intensive fashion. So, if the code can't keep up with where we are, they stopped the server from trying to figure it out, and see if that works. In other words, the pendulum has swung the oppostie direction on the test server. Instead of trying to keep up with our movement all the time, it's not going to try at all. I'm guessing that code wise this was a pretty easy thing to shut off.

As we all know from experience with the live version and the test server build, neither pendulum extreme method works for us.

Ergo, the answer to the issue is in the middle, and not an extreme turn the prediciton system on, or off.

I support the idea of geting rid of the travveling base dances as they are the root of the issue, and turning them into flo animations. Rename the existing 'stationary dance' animations in an intelegent way, and roll with it like this. While they're at is, I'd like the fall animation put in as F9 or something, that way we can do that on command for RP/part of a performance.

This will allow us to keep lyrical, formal, etc. but not as we're used to them. We'll have to figure out a new way to groove with those dances, and thats ok. This 'middle of the road' solution is what I want, because I think it's the best compromise we can have. It's also something reasonable the Devs can do beyond breaking down the whole system from the ground up. (i.e. a total revamp, which this is not) Also, bear in mind that we do have somebody that has been tasked to address this issue, let's not miss the opprotunity, and put forth a resonable solution like the above to make it happen.

Message Edited by Ravanne_Esi on 03-17-2005 07:24 AM

I agree that what has happened is the location predicition code has been turned off allowing each client to decide where the dancer is. The problem seems to be that because of this it allows their perceived point of view to drift as well causing the motion to carry them in different directions.

There isn't any way they will synch performers without updates from the server giving them location. I also don't see them reworking our dances quickly enough to implement Panthu's suggestion.

Let's suggest a compromise. Leave the prediction code in, and simply copy the non-traveling idle dances over the traveling idle dances so that there is no renaming of bases, no reworking of flos and base interaction, no change at all except that the little shuffle dance that is the idle dance for basic becomes the idle dance for all the traveling dances. Now dancers can hide the base dance as they always have and the base dance will not have caused them to move so that they don't flail and walk when the timing is slightly off.