ALOT of comments about the microservices thing, my bad! Yes they are not new and intrepid did not invent them, I just missunderstood :) The information is difficult to absorb convey in such a short ammount of time as these videos are litterally scripted and editted in the space of 2 hours.
SC has not sunk hundreds of millions into server meshing what an ignorant uninformed statement to make as they have a small team the same size as AOC working on it for almost the same amount of time and to be clear dynamic server meshing has been used for years in the corporate world such as Amazon and Wall Street to spool up new servers on demand, you should educate yourself on a subject before making a video because you look very foolish.
"too nerdy for the general audience" *looks @ wow plyers who had to learn to lava jump so they were in the air when the server checked if they were in lava when it was going to calculate the tick of lava dmg.
Once again totally missing the point that the solution for AoC doesn't work for SC and CIG has to deal with a much more complex system. As an example: The map of AoC is flat and static... the land masses and cities don't move through the map and stay in the same place. Star Citizen does not have this luxury. So you have the problem that the planets and moons have to move through space around the star. This means that the server that is responsible for a planet and the server that is responsible for the space must be able to exchange information so that the server that calculates the planet travels through the space of the server that calculates the space. And then you have the issue that the moons should also orbit the planets. In addition, Star Citizen servermesching should be able to manage even a single room of an apartment or a spaceship from servers. This is also a point Server should also be able to be assigned to spaceships which also travel through the al of space server down to the planet server. This means that the server that simulates the spaceship must understand that it has to travel from the world server over to the planet server and then to the server of a city and finally hand over the ship to the infected hangar. they can "simply" divide the intire Map it into a grid like AoC can do... For SC this is simply not an option. The complexity of what Star Citizen needs is so incredibly more.
And the complexity even grows, if a person walks on a ship that is moving through the atmosphere of a planet that moves through the solar system. What if a part of that ship already is on one server and the rest of the ship is still on the other? That is what people really miss here. Asmongold said, the system is even bigger than in SC. That is total non sense. The systems in SC are so far ahead of everybody else in the industry, it is ridiculous.
@@quecksilber457 Ture i just wished i could get the chance on Asmons this mans CHanel to talk to them about it. If they get some one to talk to is always some one how is chust a gamer, no one who could actuly talk about the tech and explain the difrences and the details... Im a part of Asmons viewer since his WOW how to YT Vids... and i follow SC since 2012 and been a backer since early 2013. It even inspired me to go in to IT and it so hurts to see so much miss invformation just because UA-camrs and Streams just whach Videos abput the tech and cant like ask questions so they make asumtions of of inclompleate information. some time it realy hurts. I mean i guess i sound like a SC whight knight and i am aware that SC has a lot of problems and had a realy rought developmend but the missinformation about the tech out there from all these wanna be specialists... man
@@enzotheold To add to your comment, this is mainly because it doesn't scale very well and it makes running the whole system for debugging and analysis incredibly annoying. As always its a thing that should be used in a specific usecase, not just spamming microservices because you can. The approach they are taking with intrepidNet is good use case for it because they use a hand full of complimentary microservices that solve a specific issue.
I think the TLDR is that Intrepid is creating a proprietary networking platform in the Unreal Engine that will allow AOC to host a very large amount of players while minimizing lag.
Its not the fact that they have microservices, its that fact that these microservices function seamlessly across several/all servers at once since one realm will be made up of many separate servers. Its the seamless part that is impressive, same with the server border technology that uses proxies/replicants, etc
The issue is not the name... The issue is that the service can be reinitialized without impacting any of the other services or requiring a server restart. If something happens in WoW, the server has to restart and you get booted for a minute to re-log.
There is another disadvantage without a replication layer. If a server crashes you are gone. But I could imagine having no replication layer might also cut down on delay?
If you watch the showcase it not the microservices that are impressive, its the technology implementation of those services across all servers seamlessly
@@SETHthegodofchaos the Games industry is always behind the corporate world and will always be. Money talks, these are passion projects with the possibility of making money, keep that in mind. I work with micro-services daily so I mentally paused when they said that sentence until I realized what they meant by it. It's novel for the Games industry to a degree and the big one is the way in which they are implemented. Essentially each server (that players and the "game" are on) within their "realm" can communicate to another "micro-service" a separate application that handles some functionality e.g. Chat/Mail/Messaging. Separating that functionality outside of the "server" (where the players and game are) implementation allows ALL the "servers" within a "realm" to use it seamlessly. There's a bunch of new terminology introduced by Intrepid so it's tricky to understand for the average person. There's a load of concepts that need to be understood to grasp this fully e.g. cost of running, how to manage faults. It's important to understand why "micro-services" were created in the first place. To me the micro-service piece on the video was the LEAST interesting, the others are really pushing the boundaries of the genre. Exciting times guys!
The picture they show for the "typical server-meshing solution" is just totally wrong. The clients are connected to a server wich is connected to a replication layer (just another server/graph database that keeps track of the data). The servers themselves always have to be interconnected, hence the name server-meshing. In SC it goes so far, that players are even able to hit players on a another server.
2 years ago i believed this game was real. That it would launch and i would be able to play it. I dont believe this game is real anymore, and if it is im 80% confident a catastrophic world event will take place before we can play it.
Star citizen didnt solve it. They are still working on it. Server meshing is a term and can be used for more then star citizen. Like you see in this vid.
Server meshing is a tech that been in use for decades, it just hasn't been used in Gaming much if at all This Game and Star Citizen being the only one i can currently think of. hey if it works as intended Bravo to whoever gets it right other will then follow that how tech Works.
@@AlbertoMartinez765 Server meshing has been used for gaming for the last 30 years it is nothing new, having a replication server that shares entities states across other servers seamlessly is new.
@@SETHthegodofchaos And both were not able to scale for consumer or commercial use, which is why the tech isn't used to scale in either. Dual Universe ended up going with a much simpler solution and completely removed all traces of the proposed tech from their website.
You know what I find funny. Second Life had this type of server connections 20 years ago but here it is phrased as if it is a new invention and a better solution over the replication service in the middle. Even tho the latter one is the new approach. Even more funny: it might just be me but you know what I heard: "we dont have one large replication server, instead we have many small ones because we ran into the same problems everyone else did and why they ended up with a replication service". Great! Hilarious! You know what this reminds me of? Star Citizen's planned Replication Layer V2. Yep. The current large single Replication Layer is going to be split into many smaller (micro) services to manage replication and other aspects like missions, AI, etc. So really, the only difference here is that game state isnt routed through a separate replication service to the clients. It is routed through the game server. Which at that point acts like the replication service. But kknd of worse because now each game server has to do the replicating instead of a separate service which you could scale independently. I swear people just gobble up terms and then make up their own headcannon for why stuff is better. And marketing knows this and phrases it so people can make such connections and conclusions. Star Citizen does it, AoC does it, everyone seems to do it. Seeing the layman talking about tech is hilarious. It is the new way to control the masses, I guess. Foundation's tech religion is at full force here. Issac Assimov knew whats up 60 years ago.
GW2 has 1 “realm” (megaserver) which itself is dynamically layered (ie channels) per map. AOC is open world AND has no layering so cannot just assign a map layer to a server. Completely different set of constraints to work with.
Microservices aren't a new concept, but maybe the way they're using them is? I might be an outlier but I'm actually kinda excited to check out the full stream run-down on it haha.
@@stickyrubb nope, Steven commented under the official Ashes of Creation video that the release date for Alpha 2 will be announced during the next livestream.
As long as its smooth and fluid Entropia Universe and other games use similar technology, but unpolished and for example causing rubberbanding when moving the character at higher speeds ingame through the individual yet linked server areas.
How did they change it? This presentation was pretty much same as CIG's dynamic server meshing presentation lol. The tech is not new, but it is new for the gaming industry. And it is a game changer for them, and future open world MMOs will definitely want to develop something like this.
It was pretty much Exactly the same, they may have their own tweak here or there but its all basically the same system, I mean its just another form of Server networking. It just hasn't seen much use in gaming.
The key differences are that they are not doing a single replication layer, each server still has a replication layer and they communicate with each other directly. Star Citizen only has a single replication layer and the servers are not communicating with eachother. The second thing is the gridding. Its like Star Citizen's object containers but for a planet surface, rather than rooms or structures. Star Citizen most likely will do a similar gridding solution for planet surfaces if necessary, most likely by adding object containers in a grid. The difference however is that the dynamic gridding divides the chunks geometrically, rather than how Star Citizen will do it based on the child object containers within a parent object container.
@@herobrine024star citizen isnt doing a single Replication service either. Its just how they decided to roll out the initial version for testing. The Replication Layer V2 has been planned from the start. Which is also microservices. The current Replication Layer V1 is just a collection of many services which are later split off. To be honest, AoCs solution just uses the game servers as their intermediate replication services. Putting load on them. In the other design you can scale game servers and Replication services independently. Which seems superior to me.
Amazing Right? basically SC showed it was possible to do this for Games and now other companies will follow. Its just annoying when people start making claims that nobody else thought of this or is working on implementing this tech in games.
Not "right after SC" solved the problem of server meshing. AoC has been working on this for years, so they were developing their solutions at the same time. I would award the spot of "first" to whichever of the two puts it into active and continuous service to the public first, but I don't know enough about SC to answer that question of first.
@@alexanderroeland8093 I may, admittedly, be a little biased on this subject. At the end of the day, however, the ones who truly win the "server-meshing race" are the gamers who get to play these games.
Steven said early on, and over time with the node system that every server would have a different world experience due to it's dynamic nature. With 1 realm/server that seems like a big design flip.
But the game will have multiple servers. It just won't have layers like wow. Meaning if you go to a spot where there are other players, you will see all of those players
Its nice what they are doing, but they are yet to show us a working server mesh. Saying its reasy foe alpha 2 and it realy beeing ready is very different.
Mortal Online has had server meshing tech for around 15 years now from the first game and into the second, this stuff isn't as new as people are making out and has been done before by other games.
But the game will have multiple servers. It just won't have layers like wow. Meaning if you go to a spot where there are other players, you will see all of those players
Am I the only one that thinks it's a little unfair to sell Alpha 2 keys at a lower price, while people like me who paid much more are getting it at the same time? I honestly think they should give older buyers a month to play and then introduce new buyers.
From my understanding it's not 100% sure they'll do it, and if they do it will come without the other benefits and for further testing only.. I'm sure you will get your unique rewards and playtime when launch comes
No Alpha testing a buggy game sucks so they will need as many testers as possible because so many will quit within a week, they already warned everyone last month that this is a true alpha and it is going to be rough as not everyone is into filling out bug reports constantly or testing the same focused content for days on end.
99% of people arguing who did it first and how it's not an achievement are probably people who think they are hackers for building a NAS or reinstalling Windows. I don't want to be mean but that's the truth, I think any developer who's not an egomaniac would admit that even solutions that are pre-made by someone else (not that this is the case here but making a point) to solve complex problems can be really difficult to integrate and adapt to work for your use case. In this case the use case is AoC with all of its particularities and things to optimize. This is a very complex thing to do and that's why working on it for 4 years doesnt sound like a lie. And yes it doesn't matter who did it first nor are they claiming they did it first but they would probably be right to say they are the only ones who did it in this exact way because they are building the solution for a specific game with their own set of goals and priorities in mind.
This is exactly the same approach of Star Citizen, the names have just been changed in some of the technology used, the techniques are almost exactly the same except the few that are left out simply because Ashes of Creation isn't trying to create a perfectly persistent true-to-size universe, they only need a large land/sea map. Ashes of Creation "Griding/dynamic griding" is just "Object Container Streaming & Shards" from Star Citizen, even their replication system is the same as Star Citizen, the replication layer in Star Citizen is exactly how it was described in this video, a series of servers running services above the game servers and replicating that data to each individual server instance.
@@TheEminemOwns Definitely very good! It's technology and techniques we've seen working in Star Citizen, and it will work even better for Ashes of Creation. Star Citizens' struggle was because they're trying to ensure the networking can remember and compute a lot more shared simulation & persistence than would ever be wanted/needed in a game like Ashes of Creation.
The key differences are that they are not doing a single replication layer, each server still has a replication layer and they communicate with each other directly. Star Citizen only has a single replication layer and the servers are not communicating with eachother. The second thing is the gridding. Its like Star Citizen's object containers but for a planet surface, rather than rooms or structures. Star Citizen most likely will do a similar gridding solution for planet surfaces if necessary, most likely by adding object containers in a grid. The difference however is that the dynamic gridding divides the chunks geometrically, rather than how Star Citizen will do it based on the child object containers within a parent object container.
Just to be clear. Unlike Star citizen AOC can skip the replication layer because it does not have to track millions of physicalized objects over billions of sq Km, all with their own physics. The way AOC wants to do SM is kinda SC lite. which is perfectly fine and all that's needed for a game like AOC. Still very cool tech and I'm glad that these "indy" company's are attempting making this new tech work. These are very different approach's to static/dynamic server meshing though. Like night and day different.
Software Engineer here. The whole AoC video is a PR tech stunt to laymans. All the techs introduced in the video as "innovative and revolutionary" are actually old as fuck and are considered normal practice nowdays. I laughted when he said "A brand new concept known as microservices". Did you know that New World has server meshing? The problem is that neither New World, AoC or Star Citizen use server meshing to the full extent of its capabilities. Thats why even with server meshing, there will be multiple realms limited 5k-10k players each realm. I don't like that, it shows their architecture has limits and a true server mesh should be limitless. What would be truly impressive is a single realm with millions of people, but for that DYNAMIC server meshing is needed and no game has developed that.
While the dynamic gridding and multi-threading are fantastic technologies, I do not think these should be viewed as the holy grail of solutions to the server problems. They COULD be, but the fundamental issue of fast and efficient communication between server and players still stands. I watched the entire showcase, and the dev essentially explains that while servers can get smaller and smaller, they can’t just put a server on every player (I assume due to allocation). So, when everyone is literally in the same place like in parts of node wars, dynamic gridding can only help so much. Think of a farmer that wants to harvest his field. Let’s say the field is 100 m^2 and he can farm 1 m^2 a day. With the amount of money he has, he can hire up to 4 others to help him work different portions of the field (dynamic gridding), and in addition, everyone can be cloned 3 times (multi-threading) for free. So now, you have (yourself + 4 others) * (real + 3 clones = 4) = 20 people that can work the field, each at 1m^2/day. Then, while you have drastically reduced the amount of time it takes through these technologies, it will still take 100/20 = 5 days. The farmer still needs to think about how to increase his base work speed to further improve performance. So, while these technologies could be the solution to the issue (for ex. if the field were only 20m^2 and you think finishing in a day would be great), it does not address the fundamental work speed, which is something the dev explains still needs work. Nonetheless, huge props to the team for implementing these ideas and we will only know for sure once we actually test the system out. If you haven’t already, I would definitely recommend checking out the livestream recording. The devs are so passionate and the technologies are fascinating. Looking forward to the A2!
actually, Vanguard still used the Replicator layer, they just had all the cluster servers each player was on talking to it, trying to offload the single thread process by splitting between four single thread servers, whichever one was "closest" to the party leader was Master, which is why it was laggy. Client/Server even between servers, while secure, just made more work for the Replicator. At least that's what I remember from the long Reddit discussion about it.
@@MrMalkraz I mean did you watch the stream or didnt you? If there's something logically wrong with their approach please feel free to break it down for me :)
So after 8 years they just realize that they need to work on network server. The game has pretty nothing inside (core mechanics) and they just talk about server now !!! Server meshing is now the best excuse to delay Mark my word.
I am tired of hearing this argument because it is also made for SC. This isnt even about networking as in hiw game state is serialized or how netcode and lag compensation techniques are implemented. These were already implemented. This server meshing tech is more about managing and transferring "simulation rights". And this aspect can definitely come after the other networking tech.
There might be some benefits and the tech is awesome and all, but what Throne and Liberty does is more than enough and it was barely mentioned, 10k players per server with 2k players in a war and good performance, I never seen that in any mmo and I have to see it in AOC or any other game, because one thing is that the server allows thousands of players, another thing is how many can be at the same spot in a war and what is the performance. For now TL is king on this.
Microservices just sounds like replication layer but the info is split and handle by a bunch of different replication layers, and to star citizens credit their static server meshing is coming in this year and eventually dynamic which will operate the same way turn on and off and merge servers depending on population, also star citizen has alot more numbers to crunch from massive playable space combined with potentially massive ship battles and player base building to the point that 80 player ships like the javelin could be a server of its own for the times when 2 javelins are fighting eachother
That is exactly how it sounds like. Besides Replication Layer V2 is going to be microservice as well. I think handling replication in the game servers was the reason why SC's first implementation in 2020 failed. They also tried to connect servers directly and clients to them. And it makes sense why one wouldnt do it that way. You cant replicate state of hundred of players from other servers once the area of the servers becomes small enough where many servers are nearby and have to exchange data. With a separate service for replication you can scsle that independently and not overload you game servers at the same time. AoC portraying their implementation as the better solution seems questionable. I think they just made it sound better because they couldnt move UE's replication graph out of the engine and onto its own servers.
The scene opens up on Narcs studio surrounded by pizza boxes, open cans of cope-a-cola, and a thick haze of Copium Narc sits facing Steven Sharif, who is sitting facing Narc Narc: Oh shit Steven: You alright, man? Narc: Oooh, nah that's nit dawg Steven: Word? Narc, looking at pre-dynamic server tech AoC "Shit was good, but was not it" Steven, presenting new dynamic server tech: "Yo money, yo money, aight, aight, bet" Steven: So check this muthafuckin hyperformic shit out Steven: This shit is from molten fuckin' copium broken down in it's purest form, man Steven: Check this shit out, install that shit Steven: Take a puff that shit out Narc: Let me try this shit Narc huffs deeply Narc: Woooooowheeeeeeeeee! Thanks to ODB and the Gravediggaz Defective Tripping opener for the inspiration
It's not the same type of server meshing., it's only similar in concept but WoW is very limited which is why you have a server selection screen. What they are trying to do is an actual single massive world
I appreciate your broad strokes videos condensing lecture-length presentations into shorter, more understandable presentations. A midwit like me wouldn't be able to keep up with that sort of thing. I know the process is arduous and at times chaotic, but the work speaks for itself.
Was it just me or did it feel like they droped a bomb? Everytime they show their tech i go full mind blown last time was the weather tech... Imo those Tech streams are the best because they make the game real so it was definitly one of the best 3 streams imo great great work! And thanks narc for your coverage as always :)
I think this is a huge red flag. This presentation means that they were previously using the default replication mechanism in unreal engine, which was designed for an ego shooter (unreal tournament) and were expecting to scale a normal multiplayer game to the size of an mmo. These replication issues are unique to unreal engine, because it wasn't designed to have a massive amount of players. These new features should have been the first things that should have been developed to even consider unreal as a valid solution to create a mmo. These new features are good, but they fix unreal engine specific problems and don't change MMOs Forever, because other MMOs don't use unreal engine.
Yeah it would seem that way. They seem to cant rip put the replication logic out of the engine that easily. However, I do think UE's ReplicationGraph should be able to handle many hundred players. A devs stated as much in a video about it. It is currently running Fortnite, so unreal tournament doesnt quite do it justice.
@@SETHthegodofchaos Ehh, Fortnite is extremely limited in its design, though, and it required a lot of refactoring on Epic's end to support up to 100 players, which sounds nice for Unreal Engine games, but is still kind of small fries in the scope of MMO games.
@@Billy-bc8pk what did unreal refactor? Where do you have this info from? You mean them implementing the Replication Graph replacing the UE's previous Area of Interest Management system? You think in AoC a single game server is going to handle more than 100 players?
obviously not one realm for every player it's for sure being layered. imagine 1 million players on the same realm that would be insane you'd need to wait 1 year to kill 1 mob. it's the same as classic wow and OSRS were the developer can add layers depending on the amount of players there are on said realm. the grid thing increases the draw distance of player models you see in the world but also adds a tonne of latency. there are 2 games that are still undefeated as far as server tech goes. MAG aka massive action game on the PS3 and planetside2 2000 players on 1 server without lag and i have been in battles that big with 100s of tanks and 100s of airplanes when the game was at an all time peak over a decade ago oh man just thinking about it makes me sad knowing how awesome games could be but aren't.
People need to understand that up until this point server meshing has been "faked". This is true server meshing. Its not the meshing or the microservices that are important. its what they're using them to accomplish thats a big deal.
ALOT of comments about the microservices thing, my bad!
Yes they are not new and intrepid did not invent them, I just missunderstood :)
The information is difficult to absorb convey in such a short ammount of time as these videos are litterally scripted and editted in the space of 2 hours.
I do not forgive you
You can dynamic server mesh me anytime Narc
@Narc I'm relying on you to keep me informed on the alpha two key nar. Please dear God let this game consume my life as I have consumed many a copium
so it server meshing but with constraints
SC has not sunk hundreds of millions into server meshing what an ignorant uninformed statement to make as they have a small team the same size as AOC working on it for almost the same amount of time and to be clear dynamic server meshing has been used for years in the corporate world such as Amazon and Wall Street to spool up new servers on demand, you should educate yourself on a subject before making a video because you look very foolish.
Let's see Paul Allen's meshing technology
"Ooh..very nice.."
"Impressive"
"too nerdy for the general audience" *looks @ wow plyers who had to learn to lava jump so they were in the air when the server checked if they were in lava when it was going to calculate the tick of lava dmg.
Once again totally missing the point that the solution for AoC doesn't work for SC and CIG has to deal with a much more complex system.
As an example:
The map of AoC is flat and static... the land masses and cities don't move through the map and stay in the same place.
Star Citizen does not have this luxury.
So you have the problem that the planets and moons have to move through space around the star.
This means that the server that is responsible for a planet and the server that is responsible for the space must be able to exchange information so that the server that calculates the planet travels through the space of the server that calculates the space.
And then you have the issue that the moons should also orbit the planets.
In addition, Star Citizen servermesching should be able to manage even a single room of an apartment or a spaceship from servers.
This is also a point Server should also be able to be assigned to spaceships which also travel through the al of space server down to the planet server. This means that the server that simulates the spaceship must understand that it has to travel from the world server over to the planet server and then to the server of a city and finally hand over the ship to the infected hangar.
they can "simply" divide the intire Map it into a grid like AoC can do... For SC this is simply not an option.
The complexity of what Star Citizen needs is so incredibly more.
And the complexity even grows, if a person walks on a ship that is moving through the atmosphere of a planet that moves through the solar system. What if a part of that ship already is on one server and the rest of the ship is still on the other? That is what people really miss here. Asmongold said, the system is even bigger than in SC. That is total non sense. The systems in SC are so far ahead of everybody else in the industry, it is ridiculous.
@@quecksilber457 Ture i just wished i could get the chance on Asmons this mans CHanel to talk to them about it.
If they get some one to talk to is always some one how is chust a gamer, no one who could actuly talk about the tech and explain the difrences and the details...
Im a part of Asmons viewer since his WOW how to YT Vids... and i follow SC since 2012 and been a backer since early 2013.
It even inspired me to go in to IT and it so hurts to see so much miss invformation just because UA-camrs and Streams just whach Videos abput the tech and cant like ask questions so they make asumtions of of inclompleate information.
some time it realy hurts.
I mean i guess i sound like a SC whight knight and i am aware that SC has a lot of problems and had a realy rought developmend but the missinformation about the tech out there from all these wanna be specialists... man
Microservices are not a new concept created by Intreprid.... it's a pattern that has been used by all big tech companies for years.
Not only that, but some companies are moving away from it. Ofc, because different reasons.
@@enzotheold To add to your comment, this is mainly because it doesn't scale very well and it makes running the whole system for debugging and analysis incredibly annoying. As always its a thing that should be used in a specific usecase, not just spamming microservices because you can. The approach they are taking with intrepidNet is good use case for it because they use a hand full of complimentary microservices that solve a specific issue.
I think the TLDR is that Intrepid is creating a proprietary networking platform in the Unreal Engine that will allow AOC to host a very large amount of players while minimizing lag.
Literally this, well summarized.
almost every mmo has microservices.. even if I remember correctly vanila wow had mail microservice back in 2004
wows chat log is a micro service im pretty sure too
Its not the fact that they have microservices, its that fact that these microservices function seamlessly across several/all servers at once since one realm will be made up of many separate servers. Its the seamless part that is impressive, same with the server border technology that uses proxies/replicants, etc
by definition the main purpose of microservices is to work across multiple servers
The issue is not the name... The issue is that the service can be reinitialized without impacting any of the other services or requiring a server restart. If something happens in WoW, the server has to restart and you get booted for a minute to re-log.
What the fuck microservices have been in tech since 2014. They arent something new that Interpid created.
There is another disadvantage without a replication layer. If a server crashes you are gone.
But I could imagine having no replication layer might also cut down on delay?
Calling micros services a brand new concept is the craziest thing
If you watch the showcase it not the microservices that are impressive, its the technology implementation of those services across all servers seamlessly
the way they are implemented is definitely new.
@@Koaki913so like any modern cloud backend application?
@@SETHthegodofchaos the Games industry is always behind the corporate world and will always be. Money talks, these are passion projects with the possibility of making money, keep that in mind.
I work with micro-services daily so I mentally paused when they said that sentence until I realized what they meant by it. It's novel for the Games industry to a degree and the big one is the way in which they are implemented. Essentially each server (that players and the "game" are on) within their "realm" can communicate to another "micro-service" a separate application that handles some functionality e.g. Chat/Mail/Messaging. Separating that functionality outside of the "server" (where the players and game are) implementation allows ALL the "servers" within a "realm" to use it seamlessly. There's a bunch of new terminology introduced by Intrepid so it's tricky to understand for the average person.
There's a load of concepts that need to be understood to grasp this fully e.g. cost of running, how to manage faults. It's important to understand why "micro-services" were created in the first place.
To me the micro-service piece on the video was the LEAST interesting, the others are really pushing the boundaries of the genre. Exciting times guys!
@@SETHthegodofchaos Show me another implementation like this in Unreal Engine
this was really hard to watch, i didnt know there were people who actually talked like that unironically
The picture they show for the "typical server-meshing solution" is just totally wrong. The clients are connected to a server wich is connected to a replication layer (just another server/graph database that keeps track of the data). The servers themselves always have to be interconnected, hence the name server-meshing. In SC it goes so far, that players are even able to hit players on a another server.
2 years ago i believed this game was real. That it would launch and i would be able to play it. I dont believe this game is real anymore, and if it is im 80% confident a catastrophic world event will take place before we can play it.
Star citizen didnt solve it. They are still working on it. Server meshing is a term and can be used for more then star citizen. Like you see in this vid.
Server meshing is a tech that been in use for decades, it just hasn't been used in Gaming much if at all This Game and Star Citizen being the only one i can currently think of. hey if it works as intended Bravo to whoever gets it right other will then follow that how tech Works.
Same goes for microservices. I've built two entirely alone this year as part of a suite of tools that my employer needs.
@@AlbertoMartinez765 Server meshing has been used for gaming for the last 30 years it is nothing new, having a replication server that shares entities states across other servers seamlessly is new.
@@AlbertoMartinez765Dual Universe and SpatialOS were the initial leaders for this tech.
@@SETHthegodofchaos And both were not able to scale for consumer or commercial use, which is why the tech isn't used to scale in either. Dual Universe ended up going with a much simpler solution and completely removed all traces of the proposed tech from their website.
really dig your energy and your way to cover this game.. looking forward to it! GGs
You know what I find funny. Second Life had this type of server connections 20 years ago but here it is phrased as if it is a new invention and a better solution over the replication service in the middle. Even tho the latter one is the new approach.
Even more funny: it might just be me but you know what I heard: "we dont have one large replication server, instead we have many small ones because we ran into the same problems everyone else did and why they ended up with a replication service". Great! Hilarious! You know what this reminds me of? Star Citizen's planned Replication Layer V2. Yep. The current large single Replication Layer is going to be split into many smaller (micro) services to manage replication and other aspects like missions, AI, etc.
So really, the only difference here is that game state isnt routed through a separate replication service to the clients. It is routed through the game server. Which at that point acts like the replication service. But kknd of worse because now each game server has to do the replicating instead of a separate service which you could scale independently.
I swear people just gobble up terms and then make up their own headcannon for why stuff is better. And marketing knows this and phrases it so people can make such connections and conclusions. Star Citizen does it, AoC does it, everyone seems to do it.
Seeing the layman talking about tech is hilarious. It is the new way to control the masses, I guess. Foundation's tech religion is at full force here. Issac Assimov knew whats up 60 years ago.
Did narc just said intrepid created microservices?
MF that type of server architecture is in popular use already XD
Granted, not for games but still
ashes changes mmo forever! cant wait for it to come out
How does this compare to Guild Wars 2 server architecture? GW2 has like 99% uptime and seems like a solved problem
GW2 has 1 “realm” (megaserver) which itself is dynamically layered (ie channels) per map. AOC is open world AND has no layering so cannot just assign a map layer to a server. Completely different set of constraints to work with.
keep strong Narc, soon the game will launch.
Microservices aren't a new concept, but maybe the way they're using them is? I might be an outlier but I'm actually kinda excited to check out the full stream run-down on it haha.
my companie's entire stack is built on microservices, what do you mean with "new concept" lmao
Came here first before I go watch the official one. Always good to get the tldr incase it goes over my head. Great work!
Also they mentioned that the Alpha 2 date will be announced in the next livestream
and that they will show off the Bard in that same stream!
@@sevenddeadly They said they *_THINK_* a date is coming next month.
@@stickyrubb nope, Steven commented under the official Ashes of Creation video that the release date for Alpha 2 will be announced during the next livestream.
@@sevenddeadly I didn't see that, thanks!
@@stickyrubb No worries, mate! It's easy to miss these things. You are welcome.
Microservices are not something Intrepid invented. Companies like Netflix made it popular. But the concept had been around for a while.
Damn you are quick Narc preesh
imagine winning the server tech vs a 100+mill demo tech company
the scale is very different any way.
honestly I'm just happy the tech is being developed by more than one company. Makes it more intersting
Well the scale is not really a problem, even if ashes were 100 times bigger the technology would not change only the amount of servers@@TheCorgies
@@alexkompare-pavlic3935 bro.. idk are you high or not but if AoC is 100 times bigger, it wont just be "more servers" solution.
Kind of, it is a matter of scaling, from my plebian viewpoint
As long as its smooth and fluid
Entropia Universe and other games use similar technology, but unpolished and for example causing rubberbanding when moving the character at higher speeds ingame through the individual yet linked server areas.
Needed longer version with more details but thanks for the summary
"Brand new thing, microservices"... As a software developer, I'm already tired of them after them being a buzzword for 6-7 years.
How did they change it?
This presentation was pretty much same as CIG's dynamic server meshing presentation lol.
The tech is not new, but it is new for the gaming industry. And it is a game changer for them, and future open world MMOs will definitely want to develop something like this.
It was pretty much Exactly the same, they may have their own tweak here or there but its all basically the same system, I mean its just another form of Server networking. It just hasn't seen much use in gaming.
The key differences are that they are not doing a single replication layer, each server still has a replication layer and they communicate with each other directly. Star Citizen only has a single replication layer and the servers are not communicating with eachother.
The second thing is the gridding. Its like Star Citizen's object containers but for a planet surface, rather than rooms or structures. Star Citizen most likely will do a similar gridding solution for planet surfaces if necessary, most likely by adding object containers in a grid. The difference however is that the dynamic gridding divides the chunks geometrically, rather than how Star Citizen will do it based on the child object containers within a parent object container.
@@herobrine024star citizen isnt doing a single Replication service either. Its just how they decided to roll out the initial version for testing.
The Replication Layer V2 has been planned from the start. Which is also microservices. The current Replication Layer V1 is just a collection of many services which are later split off.
To be honest, AoCs solution just uses the game servers as their intermediate replication services. Putting load on them. In the other design you can scale game servers and Replication services independently. Which seems superior to me.
I think you mean Star Citizen. Crazy how, right after SC solves the problem of server meshing, other studios are now figuring out how to do it "first"
Amazing Right? basically SC showed it was possible to do this for Games and now other companies will follow. Its just annoying when people start making claims that nobody else thought of this or is working on implementing this tech in games.
Not "right after SC" solved the problem of server meshing. AoC has been working on this for years, so they were developing their solutions at the same time. I would award the spot of "first" to whichever of the two puts it into active and continuous service to the public first, but I don't know enough about SC to answer that question of first.
@@alexanderroeland8093 I may, admittedly, be a little biased on this subject. At the end of the day, however, the ones who truly win the "server-meshing race" are the gamers who get to play these games.
Sc Server meshing IS a hole another Level than AOC am tbh
@@sirbonobo3907 it absolutely is..
Steven said early on, and over time with the node system that every server would have a different world experience due to it's dynamic nature. With 1 realm/server that seems like a big design flip.
But the game will have multiple servers. It just won't have layers like wow. Meaning if you go to a spot where there are other players, you will see all of those players
Its nice what they are doing, but they are yet to show us a working server mesh. Saying its reasy foe alpha 2 and it realy beeing ready is very different.
Yup, step one reopen alpha 2 sales after selling fomo copies. Step two feature creep the game and never come out of alpha. Wow.
What gets me is that they are so confident about the technology that they open up Alpha 2 keys again. Which is wild to me
One Realm to Rule Them All... man non-instanced real estate is going to be contested af, hope the map is huge!
Asmon said you might need some extra viewers, so here we are!
Mortal Online has had server meshing tech for around 15 years now from the first game and into the second, this stuff isn't as new as people are making out and has been done before by other games.
But the game will have multiple servers. It just won't have layers like wow. Meaning if you go to a spot where there are other players, you will see all of those players
Unfortunately, all this technology existed before the games that were mentioned.
Am I the only one that thinks it's a little unfair to sell Alpha 2 keys at a lower price, while people like me who paid much more are getting it at the same time? I honestly think they should give older buyers a month to play and then introduce new buyers.
From my understanding it's not 100% sure they'll do it, and if they do it will come without the other benefits and for further testing only.. I'm sure you will get your unique rewards and playtime when launch comes
No Alpha testing a buggy game sucks so they will need as many testers as possible because so many will quit within a week, they already warned everyone last month that this is a true alpha and it is going to be rough as not everyone is into filling out bug reports constantly or testing the same focused content for days on end.
didn't Eve Online have a one server system many years ago? I don't get why they could do that, but this is somehow groundbreaking.
99% of people arguing who did it first and how it's not an achievement are probably people who think they are hackers for building a NAS or reinstalling Windows. I don't want to be mean but that's the truth, I think any developer who's not an egomaniac would admit that even solutions that are pre-made by someone else (not that this is the case here but making a point) to solve complex problems can be really difficult to integrate and adapt to work for your use case. In this case the use case is AoC with all of its particularities and things to optimize. This is a very complex thing to do and that's why working on it for 4 years doesnt sound like a lie. And yes it doesn't matter who did it first nor are they claiming they did it first but they would probably be right to say they are the only ones who did it in this exact way because they are building the solution for a specific game with their own set of goals and priorities in mind.
Fixing the single thread limitation of Unreal Engine is going to be insane
This is exactly the same approach of Star Citizen, the names have just been changed in some of the technology used, the techniques are almost exactly the same except the few that are left out simply because Ashes of Creation isn't trying to create a perfectly persistent true-to-size universe, they only need a large land/sea map. Ashes of Creation "Griding/dynamic griding" is just "Object Container Streaming & Shards" from Star Citizen, even their replication system is the same as Star Citizen, the replication layer in Star Citizen is exactly how it was described in this video, a series of servers running services above the game servers and replicating that data to each individual server instance.
Which is good? or is it bad? I've never played Star Citizen. Will this work nicely?
@@TheEminemOwns Definitely very good! It's technology and techniques we've seen working in Star Citizen, and it will work even better for Ashes of Creation. Star Citizens' struggle was because they're trying to ensure the networking can remember and compute a lot more shared simulation & persistence than would ever be wanted/needed in a game like Ashes of Creation.
@@TheEminemOwns for star citizen it doesnt so far
Its Not the Same approach is Copy pasting
The key differences are that they are not doing a single replication layer, each server still has a replication layer and they communicate with each other directly. Star Citizen only has a single replication layer and the servers are not communicating with eachother.
The second thing is the gridding. Its like Star Citizen's object containers but for a planet surface, rather than rooms or structures. Star Citizen most likely will do a similar gridding solution for planet surfaces if necessary, most likely by adding object containers in a grid. The difference however is that the dynamic gridding divides the chunks geometrically, rather than how Star Citizen will do it based on the child object containers within a parent object container.
Just to be clear. Unlike Star citizen AOC can skip the replication layer because it does not have to track millions of physicalized objects over billions of sq Km, all with their own physics. The way AOC wants to do SM is kinda SC lite. which is perfectly fine and all that's needed for a game like AOC. Still very cool tech and I'm glad that these "indy" company's are attempting making this new tech work. These are very different approach's to static/dynamic server meshing though. Like night and day different.
Good to see gaming tech of 2024 is catching up to the rest of enterprise IT of 2015
Not even close in complexity
OK, The final product is all that matters at the end of the day. Tired of them flashing "Tech" like some AAA studio.
Bros I can't wait to see the meltdown when Ashes of Creation copers realize what fools they've been this whole time.
And how are they fools?
Im glad I didn't pay £300 for the alphas, but I know too many that did so at least I can see it all.
Software Engineer here. The whole AoC video is a PR tech stunt to laymans. All the techs introduced in the video as "innovative and revolutionary" are actually old as fuck and are considered normal practice nowdays. I laughted when he said "A brand new concept known as microservices". Did you know that New World has server meshing? The problem is that neither New World, AoC or Star Citizen use server meshing to the full extent of its capabilities. Thats why even with server meshing, there will be multiple realms limited 5k-10k players each realm. I don't like that, it shows their architecture has limits and a true server mesh should be limitless. What would be truly impressive is a single realm with millions of people, but for that DYNAMIC server meshing is needed and no game has developed that.
While the dynamic gridding and multi-threading are fantastic technologies, I do not think these should be viewed as the holy grail of solutions to the server problems. They COULD be, but the fundamental issue of fast and efficient communication between server and players still stands. I watched the entire showcase, and the dev essentially explains that while servers can get smaller and smaller, they can’t just put a server on every player (I assume due to allocation). So, when everyone is literally in the same place like in parts of node wars, dynamic gridding can only help so much.
Think of a farmer that wants to harvest his field. Let’s say the field is 100 m^2 and he can farm 1 m^2 a day. With the amount of money he has, he can hire up to 4 others to help him work different portions of the field (dynamic gridding), and in addition, everyone can be cloned 3 times (multi-threading) for free. So now, you have (yourself + 4 others) * (real + 3 clones = 4) = 20 people that can work the field, each at 1m^2/day. Then, while you have drastically reduced the amount of time it takes through these technologies, it will still take 100/20 = 5 days. The farmer still needs to think about how to increase his base work speed to further improve performance. So, while these technologies could be the solution to the issue (for ex. if the field were only 20m^2 and you think finishing in a day would be great), it does not address the fundamental work speed, which is something the dev explains still needs work.
Nonetheless, huge props to the team for implementing these ideas and we will only know for sure once we actually test the system out. If you haven’t already, I would definitely recommend checking out the livestream recording. The devs are so passionate and the technologies are fascinating. Looking forward to the A2!
So im guessing the open beta will be around 10+ years from now?
Vanguard called it chunking. It didn’t work well. It got better overtime but still lagged
Intrepid has the right people to tackle this don't worry.
actually, Vanguard still used the Replicator layer, they just had all the cluster servers each player was on talking to it, trying to offload the single thread process by splitting between four single thread servers, whichever one was "closest" to the party leader was Master, which is why it was laggy. Client/Server even between servers, while secure, just made more work for the Replicator.
At least that's what I remember from the long Reddit discussion about it.
@@MrMalkraz I mean did you watch the stream or didnt you? If there's something logically wrong with their approach please feel free to break it down for me :)
Asmagold sent me, Subscribed
So after 8 years they just realize that they need to work on network server.
The game has pretty nothing inside (core mechanics) and they just talk about server now !!!
Server meshing is now the best excuse to delay
Mark my word.
I am tired of hearing this argument because it is also made for SC.
This isnt even about networking as in hiw game state is serialized or how netcode and lag compensation techniques are implemented. These were already implemented.
This server meshing tech is more about managing and transferring "simulation rights". And this aspect can definitely come after the other networking tech.
There might be some benefits and the tech is awesome and all, but what Throne and Liberty does is more than enough and it was barely mentioned, 10k players per server with 2k players in a war and good performance, I never seen that in any mmo and I have to see it in AOC or any other game, because one thing is that the server allows thousands of players, another thing is how many can be at the same spot in a war and what is the performance. For now TL is king on this.
Where did you get the info that CIG spent hundreds of millions on dynamic server meshing??
Why so many videos on this game? Kinda tired of sensational news about this at best mediochre game.
I witched the original video in 2x and I think this update is one of the best one.
Never heard about this tech...good to see intrepid is capable of makin something brand new and revolutionary.
WTF does Margaret Krohn do for the project other than just sit around trying to look like a princess?
Nice of them to sell A2 keys without cosmetics before A2 as they said they wouldn't do lmao, surely that does not feed the narrative of a scam...
Microservices just sounds like replication layer but the info is split and handle by a bunch of different replication layers, and to star citizens credit their static server meshing is coming in this year and eventually dynamic which will operate the same way turn on and off and merge servers depending on population, also star citizen has alot more numbers to crunch from massive playable space combined with potentially massive ship battles and player base building to the point that 80 player ships like the javelin could be a server of its own for the times when 2 javelins are fighting eachother
That is exactly how it sounds like. Besides Replication Layer V2 is going to be microservice as well. I think handling replication in the game servers was the reason why SC's first implementation in 2020 failed. They also tried to connect servers directly and clients to them. And it makes sense why one wouldnt do it that way. You cant replicate state of hundred of players from other servers once the area of the servers becomes small enough where many servers are nearby and have to exchange data. With a separate service for replication you can scsle that independently and not overload you game servers at the same time. AoC portraying their implementation as the better solution seems questionable. I think they just made it sound better because they couldnt move UE's replication graph out of the engine and onto its own servers.
Im here from Asmon"s video. Best regards 🎉
Man, do I hope this game is like the original WoW, I have high copes.
Isn't this just basicly the same thing that Eve Online has been doing for decades?
Bro, I know you're only at 50k subs still but those list of subs and patreons is impressive. Glad to see you still covering Ashes
When are we gonna be able to do something simple, like reserve our in game names?
alpha 2 keys at a much lower price... really ?! first time Im mad at AoC.. wtf
So how do they test it is working "ok" before alpha 2?
Magic?
**Doomium evaporates!**
The scene opens up on Narcs studio surrounded by pizza boxes, open cans of cope-a-cola, and a thick haze of Copium
Narc sits facing Steven Sharif, who is sitting facing Narc
Narc: Oh shit
Steven: You alright, man?
Narc: Oooh, nah that's nit dawg
Steven: Word?
Narc, looking at pre-dynamic server tech AoC "Shit was good, but was not it"
Steven, presenting new dynamic server tech: "Yo money, yo money, aight, aight, bet"
Steven: So check this muthafuckin hyperformic shit out
Steven: This shit is from molten fuckin' copium broken down in it's purest form, man
Steven: Check this shit out, install that shit
Steven: Take a puff that shit out
Narc: Let me try this shit
Narc huffs deeply
Narc: Woooooowheeeeeeeeee!
Thanks to ODB and the Gravediggaz Defective Tripping opener for the inspiration
HOLY SHYYYYYYYYYUYUTTTT THE ALPHA KEEEYYY IS COOMMMINNGGGGJSHEGUDFUUEHEIFIDHEEHDHDHDJD
Wait what they announced alpha 1 testers getting let in? I should have watched until the end of the stream.
I just want to ride around on my unicorn with 500 other unicorns at the same time.
And why do you not link the video?
Raw alpha key purchase? Consider me enticed
FINALLY THE BARD
Time to Shill
Link to the original stream of devs?
WoW has had this server tech for like 8 years
no it didn't, nice try tho
It's not the same type of server meshing., it's only similar in concept but WoW is very limited which is why you have a server selection screen.
What they are trying to do is an actual single massive world
No WoW uses basic static meshing.
I appreciate your broad strokes videos condensing lecture-length presentations into shorter, more understandable presentations. A midwit like me wouldn't be able to keep up with that sort of thing. I know the process is arduous and at times chaotic, but the work speaks for itself.
Where do you buy that Copa Cola you show on your videos i can't find it anywhere online at all.
he brews it at home himself
microservices have been around for a decade.
Sounds good , lets see if it works under load
Was it just me or did it feel like they droped a bomb?
Everytime they show their tech i go full mind blown last time was the weather tech...
Imo those Tech streams are the best because they make the game real so it was definitly one of the best 3 streams imo great great work!
And thanks narc for your coverage as always :)
I couldn't care less that the art update was underwhelming lol. Spot test and alpha 2 hype!
This guy seems like another shill just pushing out whatever videos related to Ashes as soon as possible.
Dude has a whole channel dedicated to a game that isn't even out and probably won't lmao
No A1 invite yet... :)
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I wonder how naming will work... hop they have familly name so we will not end with f*cked up name ... because nothing is available
i can see why they charge so much
I think this is a huge red flag. This presentation means that they were previously using the default replication mechanism in unreal engine, which was designed for an ego shooter (unreal tournament) and were expecting to scale a normal multiplayer game to the size of an mmo. These replication issues are unique to unreal engine, because it wasn't designed to have a massive amount of players. These new features should have been the first things that should have been developed to even consider unreal as a valid solution to create a mmo.
These new features are good, but they fix unreal engine specific problems and don't change MMOs Forever, because other MMOs don't use unreal engine.
Yeah it would seem that way. They seem to cant rip put the replication logic out of the engine that easily.
However, I do think UE's ReplicationGraph should be able to handle many hundred players. A devs stated as much in a video about it. It is currently running Fortnite, so unreal tournament doesnt quite do it justice.
@@SETHthegodofchaos Ehh, Fortnite is extremely limited in its design, though, and it required a lot of refactoring on Epic's end to support up to 100 players, which sounds nice for Unreal Engine games, but is still kind of small fries in the scope of MMO games.
@@Billy-bc8pk what did unreal refactor? Where do you have this info from? You mean them implementing the Replication Graph replacing the UE's previous Area of Interest Management system?
You think in AoC a single game server is going to handle more than 100 players?
People still follow this game?
Dope
Y'all suckin up that copium...
Dude thinks Intrepid created microservices lol
obviously not one realm for every player it's for sure being layered. imagine 1 million players on the same realm that would be insane you'd need to wait 1 year to kill 1 mob. it's the same as classic wow and OSRS were the developer can add layers depending on the amount of players there are on said realm.
the grid thing increases the draw distance of player models you see in the world but also adds a tonne of latency.
there are 2 games that are still undefeated as far as server tech goes. MAG aka massive action game on the PS3 and planetside2 2000 players on 1 server without lag and i have been in battles that big with 100s of tanks and 100s of airplanes when the game was at an all time peak over a decade ago oh man just thinking about it makes me sad knowing how awesome games could be but aren't.
I think the point of it is to cause conflict. So yes, one realm pr server, but multiple servers
People need to understand that up until this point server meshing has been "faked". This is true server meshing. Its not the meshing or the microservices that are important. its what they're using them to accomplish thats a big deal.