Remove clouds from Desolation of Salt


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Ziggurat Zagger

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Joined: Sunday, 5th May 2013, 08:25

Post Thursday, 22nd September 2016, 18:59

Remove clouds from Desolation of Salt

The performance is really, really, REALLY bad and Crawl is still played on online servers. The clouds aren't needed for any gameplay reason, just increase the wall density by a bit if you want.
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Zot Zealot

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Post Friday, 23rd September 2016, 01:43

Re: Remove clouds from Desolation of Salt

Bad performance in a rarely entered portal is not a concern for online play, imo.
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Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Friday, 23rd September 2016, 01:59

Re: Remove clouds from Desolation of Salt

Why not? The portal is supposed to exist for testing it to potentially become an actual branch(elf replacement)...
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Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Friday, 23rd September 2016, 02:01

Re: Remove clouds from Desolation of Salt

PF made it sound like the entire point of the branch was to be based around the clouds so i think this is a good opportunity to figure out what is making the performance bad instead of sweeping the problem under the rug.
take it easy

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Cimanyd, nago, Sar, Seven Deadly Sins

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 23rd September 2016, 02:42

Re: Remove clouds from Desolation of Salt

chequers wrote:Bad performance in a rarely entered portal is not a concern for online play, imo.
On cbro a single 5 press took about 10 seconds for me.

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Doesnt, nago

Dungeon Master

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Post Friday, 23rd September 2016, 11:29

Re: Remove clouds from Desolation of Salt

There has been some work done on cloud performance thanks to that portal. Clearly it hasn't been completely solved yet, but it seems worth doing.

Edit: I complained about that element of the portal too. I think it's a serious issue, but I'd like to see it fixed rather than wallpapered over.

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nago, ydeve

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 23rd September 2016, 16:39

Re: Remove clouds from Desolation of Salt

I guess I don't see how the clouds are important to the branch.

Lair Larrikin

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Post Friday, 23rd September 2016, 20:28

Re: Remove clouds from Desolation of Salt

duvessa wrote:I guess I don't see how the clouds are important to the branch.


The idea of vision blockers that are not movement or sound blockers causes a number of interesting tactical decisions in a large, open area with no real terrain to speak of. Since they often move, and can be dispelled by one of the enemies in the area, it makes combat mroe interesting than "choose walled position to stand your ground, fight here".
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Tomb Titivator

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Post Saturday, 24th September 2016, 01:02

Re: Remove clouds from Desolation of Salt

How about making Desolation's salt clouds nonmoving and immutable, instead of placing cloud generators? Surely that would speed up processing, and it could actually be said that a new terrain type is being experimented with.
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Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Saturday, 24th September 2016, 02:03

Re: Remove clouds from Desolation of Salt

duvessa wrote:I guess I don't see how the clouds are important to the branch.


Neither do I, frankly, seeing as how I haven't played .19 yet. However, PF's commit message did very clearly state that the portal was meant to be centered around the clouds (whether this is a success or failure, I don't know, and that's probably a matter for another thread). If it is a serious performance problem though (which again I don't know about, but I don't see why you'd lie about it), we should treat it like a performance problem, instead of making decisions that affect gameplay to try and hide it.
take it easy

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