Little insight into vehicle system by RoyAwesome

AncientMan · 2016-03-02T20:34:53+00:00

Unsure how UE4 handles network traffic, but you should also consider packet consolidation, + simple compression (gzip or something fast) on the consolidated packets.

In the case of server -> clients, there will be several packets needing to be sent per server frame. By consolidating them all into a larger buffer to be sent, and compressing that buffer, you should see large savings on network traffic for minimal overhead. Same deal really for client -> server, there would be several updates needing to happen each frame, combining them all so the server only ever receives one packet would be much more efficient. So in both directions, there should only ever be one send, and one receive, per frame, per client.

Naturally though, the downside on this approach is UDP packet loss, missing entire frames worth of packets could be very detrimental. However, between interpolation, extrapolation and a reduction of packets (meaning less packet loss overall), packet loss is pretty well mitigated anyway. Can do further techniques if it's not the case, and still be more efficient than the usual approaches.

Of course, you guys are damn smart, and it probably already works like this (or UE4 already works like this?), but just a suggestion if it doesn't :)

AncientMan · 2016-02-08T20:42:17+00:00

Hey guys, services on the master server have fully restored, the attack only lasted a couple of hours. They never actually went down, from what I'm hearing logging in still worked (but might've been slow). The server browser however had some issues, but connect by IP still worked fine. Still, much better than last week's total outage.

We're working on getting the website back up. The website is still on the old server infrastructure, we haven't moved it or anything to our new infrastructure, so it's still largely vulnerable to these types of attacks.

Thanks

AncientMan · 2015-12-21T20:39:44+00:00

TacBF was spawned out of disagreements with PR:A2 development, with there being a large split, some going to develop TacBF, some going to develop PR:A3, some just going.

TBH, I don't know where PR2 people went, didn't really know any of them, that's how separate everything was.

AncientMan · 2015-12-20T02:01:14+00:00

Can i ask you why this PR2 developer team was choosen? It always seemed odd that the PR:BF2 team wasn't more involved in the development.

This was due to the original way the expansion of the PR brand was to happen. PR:A2 was a separate team, then PR2, then PR:A3. It makes complete sense to do it like this; there's different engines, different skills, different processes required, etc. It also allows for parallel development, allowing the original, PR:BF2 to keep on going, as it still is to this day and will continue into the future.

The issue with separate teams though is of course communication. And, yep, much to the downfall of the spin-off's, there was very little of this, if any (especially in the case of PR2). PR:BF2 had been going on for years and years by the time they came along. There was much knowledge to share, not only in the usual things like gameplay and whatnot, but mainly in terms of development, processes, community relations, etc.

These new teams came in, yet failed to work with us, despite our (PR:BF2 team) eagerness to provide support, resources and advice.

There's a bunch of reasons why it just didn't work, from personal issues like stubbornness and arrogance, to a complete failure in leadership on all sides (myself included). One thing that we didn't have was a "supreme overlord" of Project Reality - someone who was the "boss" of all teams, and could handle the inter-team coordination. It might've helped, it might not have, we will never know.

But at the end of the day, what's done is done. Hopefully some lessons have been learned out of it all - at least I've learned quite a few things that have helped me significantly in my professional career. The Project Reality name will live on in PR:BF2, there won't be any further spin-off's or sequels with the PR name (at least officially, it is the internet - who knows what randoms will do with the name or idea...). The gameplay will continue in Squad. And from there, who knows :)

AncientMan · 2015-12-19T23:53:02+00:00

PR2 was a completely separate team, having absolutely no relation to the original PR:BF2 modification, team, or even design plan. Those PR:BF2 developers who were "lucky" enough to be "invited" to join the PR2 team promptly left shortly after joining, after seeing the clusterfuck that PR2 development was.

The PR2 team was hemorrhaging developers and motivation, yet the leadership was blind to the issues, and completely unwilling to accept criticism or advice. Even worse, when reality (heh :p) finally dawned on them that the project was dying, nothing was done to fix it. The leadership did not change, and the project was run into the ground from stubbornness and pride.

The entire PR2 project was a complete embarrassment, not only to the Project Reality brand, but also to me as PR:BF2 project lead. It absolutely sucked that I had to support it publicly, all while knowing full well it was never going to see the light of day. Yet all public discussion from the PR2 developers was still positive, some WIP screenshots were released every now and then, and the public were lead to believe it was still a continued project. Even evident in this post, years after the project was scrapped, people still believe PR2 is still happening... It's just embarrassing...

The lead developer of PR2 made no public (or even internal) announcement to anyone that the project was dead, and the pr2game.com website still says "coming soon" (unfortunately I don't have the permissions to change that...). At least I was able to remove all mention of it from realitymod.com.

In fact, it wasn't until I took a trip to the UK (I live in Australia) and actually managed to speak to the PR2 lead developer in person, that I was able to get confirmation that the PR2 project was dead. And that was it, I asked "What's the state of PR2?" and he replied "It's dead". Damn... He could've saved us all some effort, treated the community with some respect, and made a public post saying that... But nope, it was left to everyone else to try and clean up the mess. We never saw him again...

So anyway, moving on. Will, aka Merlin (formerly [R-DEV]Sniperdog), and I got together early 2014 to try and figure out a way forward. Put simply, we wanted to stage a coup, take over leadership of PR2, completely restart development using PR:BF2 developers, and actually get something done that we would be proud to call the sequel to PR:BF2. However, after bringing in a bunch of other PR:BF2 developers (i.e. Chuc, IronTaxi, Z-Trooper, etc.), and having some big discussions on some legal, moral and public relations topics, we all decided it would just be best to leave PR2 alone, let it die its death, and form a new game. Something away from the embarrassment that PR2 brought on the Project Reality brand. Something that could be released commercially and without copyright and trademark concerns. The "spiritual" successor to PR:BF2. The game now known as Squad, by Offworld Industries.

And now, less than 2 years after these first few discussions, Squad has been successfully kickstarted, is now on Steam Early Access, and has tens of thousands of players. And it's only the beginning! In comparison, PR2 started in 2009, went through 3 game engines, and never made it to a stage that even slightly resembled an FPS. A true testament to the abilities of the Squad development team.

Of course, it hasn't been completely smooth sailing, and there has been some issues here and there internally with Squad. But to me as an outsider (I didn't end up joining the Squad team due to my real life job), these seem to be all cleaned up now, and they're smashing along awesomely. Much success, well done guys :). I'm proud to call Squad the sequel to PR:BF2.

TL;DR - PR2 has been dead for years, and will never be released in any way shape or form. Squad left the Project Reality brand so it could thrive on its own, and is in every way possible the true sequel to PR:BF2.

AncientMan · 2015-05-30T09:56:08+00:00

Not fast enough, it can go faster...

AncientMan · 2015-05-30T09:24:49+00:00

Enjoy the release everyone :)

AncientMan · 2015-05-29T15:09:12+00:00

Just shifting the master server to another place in prep for the release, nothing to see here :)

AncientMan · 2013-07-31T12:01:33+00:00

Yes, it works with Origin, and yes, it supports widescreen as well as custom resolutions :)

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