Thought for the day:

[Meep]

We have some zones the size of West Karana in classic.

Why are some zones split into 2 small ones?

e.g.

Cities like Felwithe, Kaladim, the Faydarks (not so small but still smaller than WK), East/West Freeport (understand North being separate with different guards), Erudin + Palace....

...a bunch of others too.

Is West Karana too overwhelmingly big perhaps?

[Twochain]

That's a good question...... It's not like half of these cities are HUGE and needed to be broken up, I'm looking at YOU Neriak..

Being 9 years old, running the game with 7 FPS, with 3-5 minute zone times. Let alone the fact that I had no idea where the fuck I was going. That shit was a nightmare. It would take me probably almost an hour back in the day just to reach my class trainer.

[renordw]

Or, why can't we just force all the files into a globally loaded directory so zoning only takes a second?

[paulgiamatti]

Well, it seems counterintuitive because of the difference in scale of zones like West Karana and Felwithe, but it's actually because of hardware limitations in 1999. You'll notice that even though West Karana covers a massive amount of space, everything is really sparse and spread out, so in terms of data that your system has to compute it's actually quite small - 2.5 MB smaller than Felwithe. In cities everything is cramped really close together, so you have dozens of objects and buildings and NPCs which end up being about the same amount of information as outdoor zones several times larger.

I'd imagine West Karana being so massive was partly an accident - as they were designing the zone they probably realized they could make a huge area and still have tons of room to spare as far as what systems in 1999 could handle memory-wise. And being that EQ was more or less the very first fully 3D online RPG, they didn't really have a very good idea as to what would be a reasonable amount of space for an outdoor zone and went crazy with the Karanas.

[paulgiamatti]

Or, why can't we just force all the files into a globally loaded directory so zoning only takes a second?

And yeah, this - I'm pretty sure they didn't introduce data caching until the Titanium client, and even then that was still a pretty new concept for an online game. And that was likely pre-SATA when 100 GB of storage was top of the line, so when they introduced texture caching as an optional thing in the Titanium client it would only cache zones as you encounter them instead of just writing them all into cache when you start up the client.

[DevGrousis]

And yeah, this - I'm pretty sure they didn't introduce data caching until the Titanium client, and even then that was still a pretty new concept for an online game. And that was likely pre-SATA when 100 GB of storage was top of the line, so when they introduced texture caching as an optional thing in the Titanium client it would only cache zones as you encounter them instead of just writing them all into cache when you start up the client.

I think what he was saying is that now that we are in the year 2016, where anything is possible (Donald Trump for instance), why not just make it so that there is no more zone loads.

[renordw]

I think what he was saying is that now that we are in the year 2016, where anything is possible (Donald Trump for instance), why not just make it so that there is no more zone loads.

Yes. The modifications would be minimal, and most computers should be able to handle it! Cache everything!

[fadetree]

I gots me some SSD, and ZONE LIKE A MOFO

[maskedmelon]

It all about assset density, OP. There fewer asssets per unit of space in them bigger zones, so they can be bigger ^^ Don't think they'd have ever broken into zones at all if puters back then could handle the full deal.

[Vandil]

With today's systems, I'm sure you could just create a RAM Disk, assign it a drive letter, copy the client over to the RAM disk, and run it from there. There would be minimal loading because the assets are already in RAM, they simply need to be allocated to their registers.

[Izmael]

Back then we'd have like 50+ players in every zone. Many peeps were on dial up modem lines - look up Wikipedia if you have no idea what this is - but basically it was slow ass and unreliable internet.

Add to this computers that were maybe 1/20 as powerful (guessing) as a today's $200 android phone, and splitting big dense zones into smaller ones starts to make sense.

[paulgiamatti]

I think what he was saying is that now that we are in the year 2016, where anything is possible (Donald Trump for instance), why not just make it so that there is no more zone loads.

With today's systems, I'm sure you could just create a RAM Disk, assign it a drive letter, copy the client over to the RAM disk, and run it from there. There would be minimal loading because the assets are already in RAM, they simply need to be allocated to their registers.

Right - the limitation in 2016 is purely software, e.g. the shitty Titanium client. It would need a complete overhaul in order to rewrite its caching system and then have the client and server actually know what to do when you hit a zone line and all of the data is immediately available. That would be amazing though - just a brief milliseconds-long pause for the server to relay information before you're in the next zone. Screw EQ in the Unity engine, this is what those EQEmu nerds should be working on.

[renordw]

I gots me some SSD, and ZONE LIKE A MOFO

I have dual SSD and it loads fast, but it could always be instantaneous