[Poll] Raising the Limit on Active Units

[Melekor]

It's not a 30 minute alteration.

[Jon God]

To play Devil's Advocate (since I make such a good one), hypothetically, say all the mapmaking limits were removed. What would be the drawbacks? (And not something like 'well, some maps might not work', actual hard evidence)

I think you make a better devil than an advocate, but anyways.. Even if there were no drawbacks at all, that doesn't necessarily imply it must be done. Any work on one thing means less work on other things. I haven't seen a lot of evidence that raising limits needs to be a big priority right now, compared to other issues. The main thing being worked on atm is the feature to allow anyone to host, even behind a firewall. I'm also doing some research on how to fix the formation matching bug (where units can make really dumb pathfinding choices when asked to go into formation), which people have consistently complained about.

It doesn't HAVE to be done, but if there are no drawbacks I don't see why it SHOULDN'T. Then it literally is the sky's the limit for mapmakers.

Sure it might take a small amount of time to implement, but if it's just a 30 minute alteration, that wouldn't be bad.

Sounds like we have a volunteer, just make sure you're ready to bugfix it for the next decade.

[Pyro]

It's not a 30 minute alteration.

It's a 20 minute alteration.

[iron]

To play Devil's Advocate (since I make such a good one), hypothetically, say all the mapmaking limits were removed. What would be the drawbacks? (And not something like 'well, some maps might not work', actual hard evidence)

...

If there are no drawbacks I don't see why it SHOULDN'T. Then it literally is the sky's the limit for mapmakers.

Sure it might take a small amount of time to implement, but if it's just a 30 minute alteration, that wouldn't be bad.

From my (old & dusty) recollection of the Myth II codebase, that 30 minute estimate is hilarious. Myth uses data structures everywhere, both in memory and in tag files, that are fixed to hardcoded limits. The alteration of each & every limit has to made very carefully and with lots of testing to ensure nothing's broken. I know because I spent a lot of time trying to extend the various limits Bungie had imposed, in many cases successfully.

To get rid of limits entirely, as you blithely describe, is basically to rewrite Myth's gameplay engine. Geez how hard could that be? And with the gazillions of mapmakers just busting the door down to revive Myth with spectacular creations once those limits are gone ... wow what on earth could be holding those lazy developers back? Please forgive my sarcasm, as a software developer I've had too many clueless bosses telling me what to do & I find it hard reacting politely to it on a forum

I'd agree with CP and VR that Myth is stagnant, however much Mel dislikes the term, but I also agree that it was inevitable. The game was doomed as soon as Bungie sold it to Take 2. If it weren't for the sourcecode finding its way to PM when it did the game would be long dead, as no-one would have been able to run it on modern day operating systems, let alone with the resolutions & renderers available now. Even so I'm amazed the game's survived online for as long as it has & still with MWCs running every year.

CP also mentioned the latest patches lacking creativity, and to me that's down to the mapmakers in PM (including me) leaving Myth. Mapmakers by nature are very creative and imaginative souls - developers less so. That's not in any way belittling the changes that have occurred since we left. I'm in awe of features such as detail maps, and of the hi-res units still under development.

Oh and CP, I did feel Mazz had a bad effect on the Myth online community. At a time when there weren't that many players, a game or two of Mazz running & no-one else in the lobby meant that you'd login only to realize there was no chance of playing that night. Mazz itself was a brilliant series of maps, I was happy to contribute to several versions of it & spend a lot of time playing the earlier incarnations, and if servers had been crowded it wouldn't have been a problem at all.

Anyway, to me it would make little difference if Magma removed limits or even distributed the whole game for free - it wouldn't revive Myth at all. What it needs is serious PR and distribution via popular game libraries such as Steam. Unfortunately neither can happen while Take 2 hold the rights & keeps them locked up in a vault somewhere.

[punkUser]

CP also mentioned the latest patches lacking creativity, and to me that's down to the mapmakers in PM (including me) leaving Myth.

Plugins have always been the place to do "creative" stuff. Client patches are to add technical features, fix bugs, etc. Note that the addition of a new game mode in 1.8 is something you could sort of put in the "creative" camp, but otherwise I don't get the criticism. The point here is not to be trying to evolve Myth into something that it isn't - it's to ensure that all of the stuff surrounding playing Myth is great. To that end, I think 1.8 added a lot of useful stuff (especially when combined with GoS).

Anyway, to me it would make little difference if Magma removed limits or even distributed the whole game for free - it wouldn't revive Myth at all. What it needs is serious PR and distribution via popular game libraries such as Steam. Unfortunately neither can happen while Take 2 hold the rights & keeps them locked up in a vault somewhere.

Yep, pretty much sums it up. Even if it got on Steam, etc. while I'm sure there would be a nice blip of nostalgic folks coming back I don't even know if it would last a long time. The reality is that despite how much we love the game, it's going to be a niche thing likely forever. There's just no shortage of games out there these days and no real reason to go back to old ones beyond nostalgia. That's not a bad or good thing, just the way it is.

That said, that's not going to stop me from continuing to work on it. It's a hobby that I do for both my enjoyment and that of the small community here; it doesn't really matter to me if it's 5 people or 10000. In some ways 10000 would probably feel more entitled and make the volunteer commitment infeasible for me.

[iron]

Punk, by "creativity" I was referring to older patches bursting at the seams with new & sometimes extraordinary mapmaker features, which hasn't been the case as much with the latest updates. I didn't mean it as a criticism, far from it - the quality of 1.8 is way beyond the fumbling hacks we included in 1.4

[punkUser]

Punk, by "creativity" I was referring to older patches bursting at the seams with new & sometimes extraordinary mapmaker features

Ah, mapmaking in particular. I guess while I agree that supporting mapmaking is one of the main goals of the patches, there's obviously deminishing returns over time. I think most would agree that to the explicit non-goal of making the Myth "engine" into a general purpose game engine capable of doing all sorts of different types of things (there are enough AAA engines available for practically free anyways).

Thus the question is really how many limitations there are in expressing suitably "Myth-like" gameplay today in plugins. Of course the definition of that will vary from person to person, but for my part I'd say that stuff like WW2 and Mazz still fall into the "Myth-like" gameplay department. That said, going too much further abroad than that starts to get into territory where the Myth engine just isn't very appropriate and I don't see a compelling reason to try and generalize it a lot more than it is currently given the other options out there.

That's not to say there aren't mapmaking features on the horizon - there certainly are - but at a certain point it's worth being realistic about the range of things that Myth plugins should target vs. something that really is better served by a more modern engine.

As an aside: extended zoom is sort of a big deal in terms of mapmaking I think. Just needs to be exposed for gameplay as a flag in plugins, as long as we are okay with it making those plugins not usable on certain machines (would be a first I think).

[beta21]

I think in the end, having it an option on the mesh tags would be enough for me.
Sure it's a little out of the way, but it wouldn't break anything existing, and it wouldn't apply to everything.

[fildred13]

I had a thought - assuming the whole "30 minute alteration" thing wasn't a joke.

I am a mapmaker and a player, and I happen to be working on a map series that would be one of the creations benefiting from the lifted limits - if someone with access could patch whatever files it takes for that 30 minute alteration and then send me the relevant compiled bits, I can start a fresh install of 1.8 on my system and start plugging away at trying to push the unit limit to the extreme. Of course projectiles would certainly have to come up with it in order to have everything not come to a grinding halt, but I could remove the limiters on my maps explicitly for the purposes of testing the limits. It might be interesting to see what comes of it.

If everything is just peachy, then maybe more people can test it and see if it works. If, on the other hand, iron is right in suggesting it will all just blow up immediately - then at least we'll know that is the case.

In any case, I'll gladly volunteer my time to test it, is the point, if anyone actually believes it COULD be as simple as 30 minutes and wants to give it a shot.

[Pyro]

Sure it might take a small amount of time to implement, but if it's just a 30 minute alteration, that wouldn't be bad.

It's not a 30 minute alteration.

If it was that easy, someone would have done it long ago.

If you are having issues with any of the current limits, there may be ways around them that you were not aware existed. When you run into a problem you can't solve, making a thread in the mapmaking section to get other mapmakers to give their input may help.

[fildred13]

Your

It's a 20 minute alteration.

threw me. The only major inconvenience is projectile limits, and like I said somewhere before, a bio-degrader just seems so anti-myth. The litter of corpses and arrows and giblets need to stay, whenever they can, imho.

I also would benefit from a unit limit increase, but as far as I know there is no way around 400 at a time, which I can work with with waves and what not, of course. I just know I could do more on the bigger maps in my set if the cap was just a little higher.

Not that this hasn't all been said before. I just thought you were serious when you suggested it could POSSIBLY be even close to 30 minutes.

[Pyro]

I was joking, hence the winking. Besides I'm no programmer and usually the programmers can be noticed by their name color. They tend to also be admins in these forums.

Having more than 400 units is anti-Myth when you consider Myth is about the small squads and not large armies. A bio-degrader is simply a work around to a problem of wanting more but not being able to without something to take the old away. You could cut the map into parts and form a campaign to not run into a proj limit unless that is being reached due to lots of unit deaths or attacks that don't have their projectiles die like most do.

[fildred13]

I agree about the small-unit tactics stuff. But I, perhaps fueled with a bit of nostalgia, still see myth as somewhat cinematic. I remember the first time I saw the battle across the river with alric, fighting three fronts pushing across all simultaneously - it was awesome. I'm striving to create a feeling akin to that with my plug, but in a more interesting way because the multiple "flanks" demand your attention. Any given flank may only have a few squads, but taken together it forms something awesome, not unlike a great big 2team CTF online - it is very cool to see the fronts form, to watch flanking maneuvers be attempted and won or lost on timing and skill. I watch the mwc films and I love the way it just looks, how the battle is fluid and evolving. The unit cap can get in the way of that in MY plug, sometimes, because the AI isn't as intelligent, and in order for the AI to pose any real threat to the player, they need greater numbers, but they also need greater numbers to counteract the players AI allies, and it all just mushrooms. The battles never feel over crowded on the largest maps (Dream on the borderlands, etc.) but I HAVE run into the unit limit on occassion. if the limit was raised just a little, I would be very happy. i know people in the civil war arm like it for their own reasons too. But I understand and respect the volunteer time put in by the programmers, and if this feature falls by the wayside because it isn't popular enough, then shucks.

The projectile limit though - that I would LOVE. I definitely hit it in my longer matches in this plug because I hate bio-degrading (think those big empty red smears in mazz - wear are all the bodies? the arrows? The bits and pieces?). So yeah just too much gib and corpses and arrows occassionally tie everything up. I would LOVE to see that limit raised so that I can keep my lovely bits n' pieces(TM).

I just love Myth so much...I want more of it than I should, I think. Doesn't stop me from wanting though!

[Pyro]

I understand about pushing the limits and wanting more. Mazz tends to push for more as well in some ways more than others. It isn't like a bio-degrader clears out the map. If you design it right it will clear enough to make room for more and you would still have a lot of bits and pieces without reaching the limit or breaking the map. The only way it clears the map is if you stopped killing things or designed it to biodegrade too quickly.

Are you even sure you reach the proj limit? It is a big number and sometimes the problem is that an attack a mapmaker created is eating up too many slots and never dying even though they are suppose to die out like from an explosion.

[fildred13]

Oh I wasn't trying to say mazz cleared the map at all, of course wherever the fighting currently IS there is litter everywhere, but look away for a moment to the other side of the map - lots of blood, no corpses. I'm talking later into mazz when the battle has been going for hours, ya know? The minor-est of complaints, but it made me sad that the degrader was necessary. Group of Coops had a pretty serious degrader that was much more noticeable and saddening, but I'm sure it was necessary also.

And yes, I hit the projectile limit. Most recently, it was a massive battle with respawning waves on CTF Desert Between your Ears. All of my forces had died, so I was basically hoping and praying my AI allies could finish the job. Well minutes turned into about 30 or an hour, I grabbed lunch and watched them duke it out, just to see how long my scripts would last, and finally I noticed nothing was happening when they swung their swords, no soulless javs flying, nothing. I looked around and - boy, were there ever a lot of bodies and pieces. Hundreds if not a thousand corpses, javs everywhere, heads, arms, legs, everything. I don't remember the key command but I brought up that limits display in-game (what is that command btw, I've forgotten...) and sure enough I was maxed out.

And it's true, that was a unique case. I've hit the proj limit VERY rarely and only when my games go into extended overtimes. I might have to put in a biodegrader longer than the game time, so that the LONGEST of games can be played out to completion. I can't spare a single line of loathing code, though, so I'll have to put expiration timers on things like arrows and javs and such. Just would be nice to never have to biodegrade, that's all I'm saying .

I would say map action limits and map action parameter limits top the charts for my number one most desired limit expansion. After that, units and projectiles are both equal. I would gladly welcome their addition, but I will live without. Actions and Parameters, though...oh what I wouldn't do for a few hundred/thousand more respectively. That and AI teams in multiplayer. But I already brought that up extensively in another thread =P