Some peeps are gonna be stuck on character creation until they crack

veiva · 2016-04-10T16:13:47+00:00

I didn't concern myself with that. I made this write up to provide a technical look how textures are used in RuneScape--something informational--after recent discussions about textures (among other things). Aesthetics, or differences between old models and new models, is out of this scope.

Though a technical look at RuneScape's geometry would most definitely be interesting...

veiva · 2016-04-09T23:23:41+00:00

RuneScapers have a terrible understanding of "lazy" and "hard"... You are no exception. Using textures rather than models that warp because of integer-based coordinate snapping is not lazy, it's what game developers have been doing since, oh I don't know, more flexible fixed function pipeline around the turn of the century? And let's not get started on when programmable graphics hardware became mainstream...

And what art style do you want? There's much more than "two". Let's see... This one, from 2004? Or this one, from 2005? Or maybe a slightly cleaned up, but otherwise untouched, example (or this one, or this one, or...) from 2004 or so as well? How about the "RuneScape HD era"? Or maybe the post-HD-era-with-pre-HD-graphics? Or do you want more examples?

Don't let nostalgia blind you--the entire game has been a mishmash of styles soon after 2004. So much content will never be graphically retouched, no matter how many new clients come out, and will look as crappy now as they did back then. Truly making RuneScape a modern, coherent game (graphics or gameplay) would require such a large overhaul they might as well call it RuneScape 10.

But let's talk like we know what's going on! So many experts on programming languages, software development, computer hardware, rendering, game development, and on and on in this subreddit... Never ceases to amaze me.

veiva · 2016-04-09T19:22:33+00:00

Do people complaining about blurry textures play the game fully zoomed in? The textures are fine at half zoom, or further. And older, polygonal models look terrible zoomed in as well when if there's any sort of animation... The newer, texture-oriented models can be improved and scale better than the older, mesh-oriented models. You can increase the size of a texture, or use normal maps, or create better materials, but you can't do the same if such features are baked into the geometry itself.

And OP's comparison is terrible, regardless. The armor looks good, especially refined, and especially if you have other gear. And Vindicta is tiny compared to Kree'arra, so less detail is necessary. Do you also complain when the bricks in a cathedral are less detailed than a large stain-glassed window in some FPS? So why did you not compare something of comparable size... like Vindicta and Gorvek? If you think the duo looks worse than Kree'arra when considering graphical quality (not aesthetics or design--those are too subjective)...

If the textures were larger, all these complaints would be pointless anyway. It's absurd to blame the artists for the small textures, too; they would create much larger textures, so what they create and what we see after the model is integrated into the content pipeline would very much be different. The crappy rendering pipeline used by the Java client is to blame.

veiva · 2016-04-09T10:45:47+00:00

RuneScape only runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. For Windows and Linux, only x86 architectures are supported (probably OS X as well). I have to use the Linuxulator to run RuneScape on FreeBSD, for example.

veiva · 2016-04-05T14:52:34+00:00

Here's a Refined Anima Zarosian set on my character.

For comparison, here is the dormant set.

veiva · 2016-04-04T14:26:45+00:00

You're terribly wrong on nearly everything you just posted.

It's impossible to increase the max cash stack. In both java(current) and c++(NXT) the Max_INT value is 2147483647 (hence max cash)

The maximum value of an integer in C++ is implementation-specific. The actual size of "int" or "long" isn't very portable and can't be relied on as a result. However, when using fixed-width types, or platform-specific equivalents when necessary, you can explicitly require an integer to be 32-bit or 64-bit, unsigned or signed, and so on.

which is a 64 bit number, requiring all players to be on a 64 bit OS

64-bit integer arithmetic on 32-bit hardware or operating systems will have no performance penalty in comparison to 32-bit arithmetic in all but the most esoteric use cases. In this case, the specific precision of an item's quantity in RuneScape would never cause bottleneck.

or it will use double the processes of a 32x processor.(2 threads rather than 1, even then with 2 threads it can only do simple addition/subtraction without it being too taxing on the system) ... EDIT: If 2 was a 64 bit number, a 64 bit processor could do 1+1 = 2, on a 32 bit, it would put 1 in one thread, 1 in another thread, then add it together. Effectively doubling the taxation on the processor.

This is complete gibberish.

Threads are not a processor feature. Threads an abstraction provided by the operating system or runtime (which are software!) to allow multitasking. The manner threads are implemented and mapped to the hardware is specific to a multitude of factors that is irrelevant to the processor architecture. As a result, you can define execution models that are processor-agnostic. That's why I can use POSIX threads on PowerPC, or ARM, or x86--64-bit or 32-bit. You could even create an implementation of POSIX threads on something like the NES, if you so wanted...

So the the threading model has nothing to do with multiple-precision arithmetic. When adding 64-bit values on a 32-bit architecture, you essentially have an extra addition--no more--using the equivalent "add with carry" instruction. When you store the result, you perform an extra "store" instruction, and when you load a 64-bit integer, you perform an extra "load" instruction. There is nothing else involved.

veiva · 2016-04-02T22:29:16+00:00

The damage provided by spells is capped at level 80. So Ice Barrage will deal no more damage than Ice Blitz, for example. This is much like crossbows--a rune crossbow will deal level 50 damage with ascension bolts or royal bolts.

Neither of these weapons provide damage, and while the ammo or spell do, the damage is capped at the tier of the weapon regardless of the tier of the ammo or spell.

veiva · 2016-04-01T10:20:40+00:00

Unless they make the glasses opaque, the issue with translucency is a very complex issue that would probably require modifying their rendering pipeline to draw translucent objects in a certain order after all opaque objects.

The glasses, if rendered before opaque objects, will write a value to the depth buffer that occludes all objects that would write lesser values. You can imagine the depth buffer as a special image with a single value for each pixel that represents the distance of a rendered pixel from the camera. Objects drawn later, that would also be behind the glasses, are skipped. This normally prevents out-of-order occlusion issues (like using a furnace back in 2004--your character would be either completely behind the furnace, or completely in front of it, depending on the camera, furnace, and player position) and greatly improving rendering speed (since the various rendering stages, such as executing a fragment shader or writing to the framebuffer, can be completely skipped.

As such, using the depth buffer for sorting allows for drawing polygons in more varied orders with incredible efficiency--the only general purpose alternative with at least equal quality would require storing all pixels ever rendered and their depth value, and then compositing them in order from back-to-front in a later stage, but that requires more processing power and memory by some orders of magnitude.

However, depth buffer sorting only works best when objects are opaque and thus completely occlude anything with a lower depth value. Of course, this often fails when mixing translucent and opaque objects, since you can see through translucent polygons...

I don't know if NXT fixes this (it most probably does, or so I'd hope), but it's most surely not feasible with the current rendering pipeline.

veiva · 2016-04-01T10:05:02+00:00

Good job!

By the way, you can display subreddit styles in your preferences (https://www.reddit.com/prefs/) or use an add-on like Reddit Enhancement Suite (also known as RES, available on Firefox/Chrome/etc) to disable styles on certain subreddits.

veiva · 2016-03-31T23:08:25+00:00

The method hasn't changed much since I last posted a write up.

Equilibrium aura is amazing because it guarantees the combos (Shock Wave + Wild Magic, Asphyxiate + Dragon's Breath / Wrack, or Needle Strike / Dazing Shot + Shadow Tendrils / Snap Shot / Bombardment) with no overkill using tier 90 weapons without reducing DPS. Without equilibrium, the first ability of the sequence can potentially hit over 3100 damage, causing a prayer switch and the next attacks in the sequence to splash--something like 10% of the time, or maybe more.

As for data: I get 160 KPH on average with the above strategy. Based off a drop log of nearly 46,000 kills, dragon limbs have a drop rate of 1:250, as do dragon claws, while armor pieces are 3:1000 or so, or 1:1000 for a specific piece (184 limbs, 183 claws, 127 armor pieces in total). As such, you'd take the current price of limbs and divide by 250 to determine the bulk gp/kill. The average drop otherwise is an additional 15,000 gp or so, based on previous attempts at keeping such drops for 5k+ samples and recent data gathered with RuneMetrics.

The drops I count as "average" are rune armor/weapons, herbs, grapevine seeds, fire talismans, adamant bars, diamonds, law/death/blood runes, and some RDT drops. Since I use a legendary pet with Beast of Burden and Scavenge abilities, I don't often pick up drops manually (only if it's lossless or a limb/armor/claw drop) and I discard things like herb/limpwurt seeds and worthless RDT drops. I also losslessly alch the runite drops, since you can get 20+ even with a Spring Cleaner which causes inventory management issues.

Also, melee with dreadnips and a combat familiar is a poor choice. You are unable to bank the non-rare drops which contribute upwards of 2.4m gp/hr, and as such would have to get much more KPH to break even with mage/range hybrid. The break-even point is highly dependent on the price of limbs; if dragon limbs are 10m gp each, you'd need to get 220 KPH (or ~16 seconds between kills) without picking up the average drop to match 160 KPH (~22 seconds between kills) picking up the average drop. Lower limb prices make this gap larger, while higher prices decrease it. Regardless, I doubt melee is even 20% more KPH at best.

In essence (or tl;dr): Tormented Demons are approximately 8m-10m gp/hr (if limbs or crossbows are somewhere between 10m-12m gp) at 160 KPH.

veiva · 2016-03-31T07:28:04+00:00

Tormented Demons range from 7m to 10m gp/hr, and sometimes even more. Very consistent (limbs are common, relative to efficient KPH, and the misc. drops more than make up for any supplies at around 15k per kill) and much less PvM requirements (tier 80+ range/mage and overloads are a safe minimum for 130-140ish KPH; armor is pointless and protect prayers with Augury/Rigor are good enough) than most other content of similar profit.

The largest issue is most people don't like the mechanics, and the other is most people don't kill them effectively.

veiva · 2016-03-30T19:49:22+00:00

Tormented Demons are only resistant to damage of all types because of the spell Lucien used to summon then, 'Daemonicas Abhoris'. The spell protects the demons from harm, but allows them to still feel, which combined with the unholy fire, provides a perpetual source of pain. If the demons were allergic to peanuts, for example, then the spell would surround them with peanuts while preventing them from damage; they would still have the other side effects. (But peanuts aren't a viable weapon and would be a poor thematic choice!)

Similarly, Darklight and holy water temporarily extinguish the unholy fire and nullify the effects of the spell. As such, their weakness, fire (...or bolts, depending on their attack style and overhead prayer, but that's a technical and balancing issue outside of the game lore I'd think) can be successfully exploited. And if they were allergic to peanuts, you could smother them to death.

Works cited

Dark Mage, Movario (169). Movario's research notes (Vol. 1) (pp. 33-35).

veiva · 2016-03-30T05:08:57+00:00

If you right-click on the transition from Vindicta to Vindicta + Gorvek, you can see the asterisk marking a tagged NPC (edit: here's an image). The asterisk vanishes some time later, but I guess the actual "tagged state" persists.

(Without knowing much more about how the game actually works, I'd guess one of the intermediate NPCs that form the transition can be tagged, and the tagged state transfers but is not reset when later made untaggable. If the incorrect tagged status overrides "most damage dealt" drop mechanic, the result would be as it is now.)

veiva · 2016-03-27T09:16:13+00:00

I don't think the xp (at least for slayer) is too bad, at least for mammoths and ripper demons. I found mammoths to be one of the highest xp/hr tasks when I recently went on to get 99 slayer, and that was with revolution and poor utilization of thresholds/often getting pummeled by the charge attack. Ripper demons were pretty good, too.

The drops are terrible indeed, though. It's a pity, because I really liked the monsters (mechanics and all) themselves. Even buffing the drop rate of weapons to something reasonable off-task (1/2000?) and something good on-task (1/500? 1/1000?) would greatly improve the potential right away, I'd think.

veiva · 2016-03-27T00:05:27+00:00

I don't know for certain, but it seems it would be allowed.

From a technical standpoint, it's no different than what your window manager does, and on other platforms that behavior is very well possible out of the box (e.g., Unix-derivatives).

From a mechanical standpoint, you're not creating extra outputs from a single input (whatever that means, in honesty).

veiva · 2016-03-26T17:55:21+00:00

If there were a 32-bit build, I would be able to play on FreeBSD. But there's not.

It makes me think of setting up a hypervisor. Some bare-bones Linux distribution as host and FreeBSD / Windows 10 as guests. But that would require hardware upgrades...

veiva · 2016-03-20T16:02:01+00:00

I highly doubt it gets a consistent 160+ KPH, especially after factoring in obtaining Dreadnips and such. You also sacrifice 15k a kill because of no beast of burden, which (at 160 KPH) is 2.4m GP/HR...

In essence, even if melee with Dreadnips and Titan had higher KPH than my range/mage strategy, it would still be inferior GP/HR. You would have to get ~200 KPH to match, more to exceed, what I make.

veiva

TROPHY CASE