Author Topic: storage capacity (Read 1453 times)

Hellblazer · « **on:** July 02, 2006, 06:36:34 AM »

I just bought my self 2 large crate yesterday for storage and i'm astounded to see that i could only put a page and a half of corn kernels but i could fill out my whole inventory of the stuff. I cant understand how a man, no matter how strong he is, can actually carry more stuff than a crate that is about as tall as him and quite larger than him. The same goes with the ox. If you actually fill it up you will see that you can carry more than your own ox who by nature is way stronger than a man. I wonder if there would be any way to actually balance those facts out and have the crates and ox carry more that what you player can?
OK they will say that you have a limit of weight you can carry without being encumbered but I have gotten 600 lbs over my limit and still was able to walk!! In such it makes no sense as when i tried to put the stuff on my ox it stopped at the 4th page and had a little bit more than half the things i had on my when that happened. Magic bags?? they would help yes but it is still illogical to have large crate and ox carry less than what you are able to put (encumbered or not) on you player inventory. I mean you have what 9 pages on you player inventory and you can only have 4 or 5 on your ox? Doesn't make sense to me so I'm asking if there is a way to actually change that?

Leanthar · « **Reply #1 on:** July 02, 2006, 07:01:36 AM »

"...OK they will say that you have a limit of weight you can carry without being encumbered but I have gotten 600 lbs over my limit and still was able to walk!!...."

Agree wholeheartedly. The whole stat system with D&D is pretty ludicrous if you ask me. One could carry/lift so much with the numbers they throw out, not to mention the other stats. As to the walking and such, yeah I agree. About 2.5 years ago I wanted to make it so that if you were encumbered you could not move at all but that never happened for various reasons. But yes, I really feel that if you are encumbered you should not move, thus the need for magic containers and the ox and even a wagon system. But then we would have to modify the crafting system quite a bit and because it is so easy to gather mass quantities of items we would in turn flood the market with the changes. So yeah, all balance stuff in the end.

Stephen_Zuckerman · « **Reply #2 on:** July 02, 2006, 07:10:02 AM »

Actually, I've tried testing the "normal" range of carry limits, and it's absolutely right; problem is, those weights listed are the MAXIMUM that someone can carry and still be affected no worse than that. Most people think that a STR 10 person can carry 66lbs and not feel a wee bit of burn.

The push/pull and Lift Over Head things are a bit skewed, but then, those can easily be affected by experience with lifting as opposed to raw strength.

As for how it works in NWN... I always RP dragging something heavy along on the ground when I'm encumbered. Or, if it's because of poison/disease, staggering.

Hellblazer · « **Reply #3 on:** July 02, 2006, 07:43:17 AM »

aye but do you think at all possible to actually put more storage spaces in the ox and containers vs the player. meaning that if the player can have 9 pages the ox and containers should have more pages than the player?

Leanthar · « **Reply #4 on:** July 02, 2006, 07:48:41 AM »

@Hellblazer, no that is an NwN/User Interface limitation. Nothing we can do about that.

Hellblazer · « **Reply #5 on:** July 02, 2006, 08:07:47 AM »

o well hope they fixed that in nwn2.

Stephen_Zuckerman · « **Reply #6 on:** July 02, 2006, 09:59:05 AM »

No. No, they didn't, and there's no reason they should...

The reason the oxen can only carry 40 objects (REGARDLESS of weight - 40 suits of Fullplate is 2000 pounds!) is for balance. Otherwise, I'd bring my oxen along on gem-mining trips and load her down with 2000 pounds of garnet. My gemcrafting skill woud be through the roof! It's the same with ore, and people who try using them as portable persistent chests.

As for persistent chests, it's the same thing; characters are limited in how much junk they can have. Helps cut down on server lag, too.

Weeblie · « **Reply #7 on:** July 02, 2006, 10:21:43 AM »

Actually...

The number of items in a closed oxen/persistent chest doesn't effect lag at all, as those items are stored in a SQL database and not really "in game".

Stephen_Zuckerman · « **Reply #8 on:** July 02, 2006, 10:28:10 AM »

But when you access a chest, the game looks the items up in the database. The more items...

Weeblie · « **Reply #9 on:** July 02, 2006, 11:00:41 AM »

I don't think that performance hit is so bad even if you increased the limit to 400 item.

It's probably worse if your character are carrying around 5000-ish arrows in his inventory on login...

But to get back on topic... Heh... There's a lot of things that doesn't make any sense. Like... Carrying around 4 full plate armors. Even though you are strong enough, you won't have the "space" to carry those around! Would be nice if those things would take up a lot of inventory space like, a "whole tab" just for that single item alone!

Stephen_Zuckerman · « **Reply #10 on:** July 02, 2006, 04:10:50 PM »

Personally, I liked the (and I know I'm gonna get teased for this, but come on...) Pack system from Pokemon Gold & Silver.

Think about it. You've got different locations on your body you can store different amounts of gear... The only way to make it better would be to make the packs removable. Why waste time unloading each individual item when you can drop your haversack (Heward's-Handy or not) into a chest and be done with it?

Hellblazer · « **Reply #11 on:** July 02, 2006, 07:26:09 PM »

OK i understand that but could you tell me why my president chest wont accept more than 20 kernel corn ( i have less than that at the moment and I could post a pic if I have an image viewer compatible with non Sp and that could read tga files). I just find it a bit ludicrous that.

And beside if every one can do the same and load up its ox the same way, then the balance would be kept. Just a thought. But then there would be lag as we try to access the chest or ox as the system has to put the items on it while we try to access it or at login of the player. Still, if it was feasible, i would personally put a little more space on the chest and ox's just so we don't have to buy so many crates (which i cant load more than two pages, and that is if i use 4 squares items else it only loads it at one page and a half of one squares items and cost a bundle).

Any how I did not want to start a debate and I'm sorry that every time I post a question or idea it always come to that.

Dorganath · « **Reply #12 on:** July 02, 2006, 07:32:32 PM »

Oxen and containers do a lookup into a database when accessed, so the lag factor comes into play there, not just by having items in them.
Oxen hit the database when a pack is removed from or replaced on the ox. Chests hit it when opened or closed. In either case, these events cause items to be created or destroyed within the particular container. Object creation is among the most "expensive" operations in NWN, so there's lot of CPU overhead in that process, and that does contribute to lag, though lag spikes vs. continual lag. To make matters somewhat worse, chests can store stackable items, customized items and the like, making the lag spikes potentially worse.
Ultimately though, the primary answer to your question is Balance, with a capital "B".

Hellblazer · « **Reply #13 on:** July 02, 2006, 10:03:36 PM »

Aye but if every one has the same how does it change the balance, every one has the capacity to have the same amount of stuff now or IF you would augment them (if possible). There for the balance would be kept the same just more space to store things for everyone.

Stephen_Zuckerman · « **Reply #14 on:** July 02, 2006, 10:26:18 PM »

It's not balance between characters and other characters, it's balance between characters and the world.

Honestly, this is something we've lived with since the systems' introduction to Layonara; isn't this something you've gotten used to already?

Hellblazer · « **Reply #15 on:** July 02, 2006, 10:32:36 PM »

used no, but defeated by, yes :p . I love the game and everything but i get sometime hung up on little things like that at one point or an other. . I was just wondering what kind of balance you guys were talking about as I never really consider the server ( world ) as a part that needed balance in such a way. First time I ever see someone speak of the balance between the player and the world

of even though I have been playing the game for two years this is actually the first server I have ever played on.

Stephen_Zuckerman · « **Reply #16 on:** July 02, 2006, 10:41:57 PM »

Well, the hardest thing developers have to worry about isn't balance between characters... It's balancing the difficulty of the world, with its rewards. Allowing such vast amounts of storage space... Heck, I'd take my ox and harvest every resource on Rilara, then go back and watch my alchemy levels go up as a matter of statistics rather than long-term effort.

Hellblazer · « **Reply #17 on:** July 02, 2006, 11:38:34 PM »

never ask to have an ulimited space but just have the ox and crates be bigger, but eh!, if this is what we get, this is what we get.

haha can't belive i have more hours logged on my xfire than you stephen. (knowing of course you didtn use your xfire from the start as I did not.)

Talan Va'lash · « **Reply #18 on:** July 03, 2006, 01:39:00 AM »

The issue that seems to have been slightly looked over that I think was the core issue is this:

"Why can a chest hold 30 full plates or 30 pole arms, oooor.... 30 kernels of corn?"

The answer is:

Because that is the best way to code the limit of how much it can hold in terms of the speed of the script (and the amount of time to write the system.) It becomes apparent why this is a tricky issue when one tries to think up a better way to limit chest contents.

1) current system, by # of items. Scriptwise: 1 function call and 1 arithmetic operation per item.

2a) by weight? ok, in this scenario a chest can hold... say.. 400 lbs. Now instead of just counting the number of items in the chest, we still need to get each item one at a time and then get its base type and then add in the weight of that base type to the running total. 2 function calls per item, 20ish comparisons per item(if/else if cascade to find the weight of the base type) 1 arithmetic operation per item.

2b) but to do this properly we have to also check items for the weight reduction property to see if there's something thats lighter than it appears to be. Now we have to perform n + 1 more function calls on each item to check all their properties, n + 1 more comparisons per item, and 1 more arithmetic operation per item (where n is the number of properties on a given item.)
Grand total: 5 function calls, 23 comparisons, 2 arithmetic operations (assuming 2 properties per item on average and assuming there are 20 base item types, there are probably about double that.)

3) By weight and volume: well, this is going to be even slower than the last method and I think I've made my case by now so I won't write it out.

Function calls per item: Current Method = 1, By Weight = 5
comparisons per item: Current Method = 0, By Weight = 23 (or more)
arithmetic operations per item: current method = 1, By Weight = 2

So, thats the real reason chests are limited to a hard # of items rather than by a more realistic method like weight or volume or weight and volume.

Edit: oh thought I'd add this, expand these numbers for a chest full of 30 items.
Current method: 30 function calls, 0 comparisons, 30 arithmetic operations
By weight: 150 function calls, 630 comparisons, 60 arithmetic operations

This would be every time a chest is opened, or an item is put in. Now imagine 50 people on west opening various chests at various locations. Then imagine them looking through many chests quickly as they look for the one they put the item they're looking for in. Just 10 people opening their chests close together in time could cause a lag spike with the weight method as these numbers get into the thousands. The current method stays at a relatively low 300 calls and 300 arithmatics.

Hellblazer · « **Reply #19 on:** July 03, 2006, 01:43:00 AM »

hahaha =P good one talan.