Given the stupid amount of energy and words wasted by all kinds of people in the PC election thread, i wanted to present a different idea out there. This not just about PC. It could probably replace several councillor positions, maybe even the entire Council of Setons.

The goal of the system is mostly:

• Transparency about who does what in FAF.

Ill call it the "Badge System" or maybe "Roles system" because i have no better word.

• A person can hold more than one badge
• Each badge is linked to exactly ONE kind of responsibility
• We hopefully only ever discuss exactly one badge at a time, if there is an election. No more "discuss these 30 responsibilities that councillor position XYZ comes with" for fucks sake.
• There is a "Main" Badge for every responsibility that only one person can hold, and that person hands out sub-badges of the same type (but not "Main") to anybody they want. Only Main badge is voted onto a person by election.

Example:

• "Main Tournament director" can hand out and remove "tournament director" badges to anybody.
• "Main TMM director" can hand out "TMM director" badges to anybody
• and so on...

Pros:

• Non-insiders can finally see who the fuck is actually doing what.
• We see more people with badges which makes it look like its easier to participate in FAF. right now "PC councillor" is a scary word.
• FTX can still do everything because he can hold literally every "Main" badge in the world.
• The conversion from the old system to the new one doesnt require any kind of power being handed over so we could get it done without too much drama.
• Maybe we can convert the other councillor positions as well because i see no reason to have a mix of old and new system.
• Badge holders can give their badge to somebody else (maybe a bad idea?).

Negs:

• The forum needs to be able to display all badges a person holds.
• We need to implement a system that tracks who has what badge i guess? Otherwise there will be chaos.
• Handing over badges needs to be done though the mentioned system (like a tab in the client)
• We still need to decide which badges are voted/eleted, so i expect that would be a shitshow of a discussion. But for now we could just make all PC related badges votable and assign them to the winner of the PC election.

Its basically Discord roles on steroids but for FAF.

Opinions?

Edit:
There might the some badges for which sub-badges dont make sense, so maybe restrict those.

People always tend to prefer things they know, when they have a choice. This is why the mapgen can do what handmade maps cannot.

If a person goes into the map vault, they see a bunch of maps they have never seen alongside ones that they already now, and their brain is automatically going to dismiss the maps they dont't know because anything thats new is frightening on a primitive human level.

The mapgen solves this problem by frontloading that choice:

• Do you want to play an unknown map or not?

And then forcing you to stay with that choice by preventing your brain from categorizing it as just another map and therefore reverting your decision to try something new. So the way in which the mapgen creates an advantage is not necessarily by just creating unknown maps, but psychologycally.

Of course the mapgen should eventually still reach higher level of quality. But its important to realize how important the UI is here.

Lets assume that there is a way for the client to automatically select a handmade map that

• Follows some easy to use filters (size, amount of water, etc.) similar to map generator
• Guarantuess to select a map that is generally not very actively played by the community and of certain minimum quality
• Introduces some sort of UI-barrier to backpedalling from the decision to play something new

Then maybe handmade maps could in some way fullfill the same function that the mapgen does. However, we dont have that kind of UI for handmade maps, and as long as it is that way, people will resort to the mapgen to play unknown maps instead of simply selecting a not much played handmade map.

The mapgen also crates some sort of unspoken contract: The map is guarantueed to be new to everybody (in reality thats not true because you can regenerate a seed, but this is still the expectation that people have). This is of course very hard to replicate with handmade maps.

PS:
Could participants in this thread please stop assuming that everybody else argues in bad faith or against their interests? Turning this thread into a mapgen vs handmade war will not create many usefull insights on this topic. Too late probably.

Stop claiming that "icon confusion" was intended by the devs.

• You have no idea if that is true.
• The whole point of the stratetgic icons was that it was supposed to allow players to play at the strategic level instead of zooming in. So the icon confusion actually goes against stated goals of this game's design.

@javi said in Introducing Mapgen Week on Ladder:

(thanks Neroxis)

don't forget Sheikah who has improved it a tremenduous amount for more than a year now : )

+1 like to mapgen week.

The game simulation is updated (recalculated) every 100ms (at speed 0). One such update is called a "tick". Only when a new tick is calculated can inputs be applied to the simulation. This means input is delayed by 5 ticks (500ms / 100ms). So the tick in which the input was made (and sent to others) is different from the tick in which it is applied to the game.

The F11 windows mostly tells you for how many past ticks a player's input has not arrived yet at YOUR computer. For example if you see that "player 2" is behind by 3 updates/ticks/packets that means that you havent yet received the input that you will need from that player 2 ticks in the future. When a player is behind 5/6 ticks, your game simulation stops, because you need his input (which he should have made and sent 5/6 ticks ago) RIGHT NOW.

The F11 window shows you only the connection between you and other players, not between two other players. (every player is connected to every other player), so everybody sees something different in the F11 window.

So when you see that one player is 6 ticks behind in sending you their input and game has stopped, but every other player is 1-2 ticks behind, that means:

• Maybe that players internet has a temporary problem (might reconnect though)
• Maybe that players computer/game has crashed so he not longer sends his input
• Maybe only the connection between you and that player has a problem (his connection to other players could still be fine, this is why its useful to ask others in chat if they see the same player being behind)

Sometimes a player is not constantly behind 6 ticks but is oscillating between about 4 and 6 ticks, resulting in a stuttering game, that means:

• Maybe ping spikes above 500ms regularly
• Maybe that players computer is so slow that the game cannot slow itself down enough to account for bad performance.
• Maybe that players computer has performance spikes (thermal throttling) that confuse the game enough to make it not slow down how it should

If one player is constantly sending his input but at a slower rate than other players, the game slows down (time between ticks is increased) until that player can keep up. Thats why game speed for everyone is determined by the slowest players computer (because the game simulation must be kept in sync on every players computer).

Edit:
Keep in mind i don't know if the input delays is fixed to 500ms or to 5 ticks. If it is defined in ticks, that means it would change when you change game speed. Not sure. If it is defined in ms that means that the amount of ticks that somebody can be behind without causing the game to stutter/stop can vary based on game speed.

As FTx said, desyncs are a different problem.

Ok now i want to look at the far future.
Arguably there is still a lot of time until map generator maps reach a level of quality where somebody like FTX will replace 100% of the 1v1 queue with random maps. But still.

Lets make some likely assuptions:

• The quality of the map generator maps will improve, to a point where most people (except handmade map makers) will not notice the difference in asthetic quality.
• More and more people will like the notion of a guarantuee that makes BO-whoring impossible, and we make it so this is actually enforcable (we mark mapgen maps that where created from known seeds vs newly generated as such). What doesnt matter is if BO-whoring is actually a problem, what matters is if people perceive it as a problem and want that guarantuee in ladder.

If we make these assumptions, it should be quite easy to see, that after a long period of transition, the endgame is AOE2, in other words, the death of handmade maps in competitive play. You might disagree with those assumptions, but please think about wether you actually disagree with them OR if you just dont want to follow through to the conclusion, maybe because this conclusion is subjectively horrifying.

Now, in that scenario, a lot of people will just not care and go with it, some people will be sad, and handmade maps will fight a war for dominance, that they will slowly and agonizinly loose as more and more players desire the things that mapgen can provide. This thread is a good indicator for how that will look like imo.

Now, there is another hidden asumption here:

• Handmade maps mostly stay as they are know

But we could change this if we want. We already have adaptive maps. What if handmade maps could provide the same guarantuess that generated maps could in terms of BO-whoring?

• Predefined mex groups that sometimes appear and sometimes not.
• Mexes that slightly move position
• Several possible positions for hydros to appear, sometimes they dont appear at all.
• Same for big wrecks

Im not saying we need to do this. But if the first too assumptions hold, i think that handmade maps need to evolve in the long term. And i think they can, and anyway discussing how that would look like would be much more productive than descussing how far along the trajectory mapgen maps are right now.

In in additon to that, we can think about maybe a better way to present handmade maps or allow players to select them, but that is mo harder to achieve.

I think that the most engaging way (not the most efficient in terms of time spent) to learn stuff as a very new player is by "tutorial campaign". Unlike the vanilla campaign (which really doesnt teach much, it just restricts units/buildings) it would be much more focused and showcase specific mechanics, encounters with specifically restricted toolkit.

• Start with the player only controlling the com and having to escape from an invasion, pretty much a on rails mission, teach about ACU health, survivability and overcharge specifically.
• Teach player how to evade an incoming air snipe, let them run to allied mobile AA safety (teach about T2 gunships vs com health vs AA relationships), dont let them control units yet.
• At some point force the players to have certain upgrades and teach the difference between a no-upgrade sera com and a double nano double gun monster for example.
• Have a situation where player is required to collect X reclaim in Y amount of time so that they can overflow enough mass to let allied AI finish a needed experimental, otherwise player looses. Reward is of course cool experimental saving the day in the nick of time.
• Put the player in a sitation where he can clearly see how having radar affects effective shooting range.
• Have a situation where a player needs to surround kill an enemy com with a fixed number of T1 spam that he cannot increase and one where he has to fend of T1 with com (the beginning of prothyon is quite nice in this regard, but i don't like the second half)
• Have situations where the player needs to counter higher tech units with cheese / lower tech units, and the other way around where they micro a small number of higher tech units against lower tech ones.
• Basically make it fun and interesting first (good story is important for that) but weave in lots of situations that all teach one specific thing.

Some things cannot be thought well like that, for example general tradeoff between eco / tech / bp / units and general game progression, but make sure that the player is aware of the entire toolbox that the game gives them. Its much less frustrating to get beaten in PVP if you at least have some idea about all the tools.

Problem with this is that of course if big balance changes happen, that might cause certain situations to play out differently than planned. The idea itself is not new, i think several people have mentioned the small starcraft missions that you play with fixed units, but those seemed a bit boring because its just the same thing over and over with different units (and im not suggesting to always put the player in fixed unit situations, that is too repetitive).

At the end of the day, if learning is not enjoyable, not many people are gonna try to get gud. When you first joined FAF, your goal was probably not to dominate ladder rating. The competitive aspects comes after you have seen the potential of all the tools that the game provides. The game must prove that its going to be worth the time spent to improve.

@FtXCommando

I said nothing about who should be Player Councillour in my post. you are creating a horror-scenario out of it. The most important point seems to not have come through:

• With the split, the primary purpose of the Player Councillor is not to ACT or DECIDE, but to LISTEN, COMMUNICATE and basically have good social skills. Most general conflicts are caused by misunderstandings. The player councillor would recognize this and therefore be able to facilitate constructive discussions and if necessary de-escalation.

You are the kind of guy that NEEDS to be judgemental to do your job. Because if you don't judge, you cannot act. The player councillor could look at FAF from a completely different viewpoint andi think that could be very valuable.

As it stands, we don't need to do this exact split, but we need SOME split. The current amount of responsibilities that are piled on this position is absolutly ridicoulous. The list of stuff you do is laughably out of any reasonable bounds. We are talking about work that is supposed to be done by volunteers in their free time here. This is not a critique of you, its a critique of the position, you are doing a great job DESPITE the job description.

Mavor most iconic unit confirmed.

This guy still has not understood what it means to not have the source code. I doubt he has ever written code in a compiled programming language ever.

@Spy_Emanciator
Im sorry to say that there is probably no random hero dev hiding in the woods that is just waiting to be encouraged by your non-sensical expectations and will spring into action once you say "its so easy" 100 times in a row.

Or set a different font (one that comes with windows) in a CSS customization file. Where would that go again?

Mavor most iconic unit confirmed.

I think it would make more sense to just allow any player to add a note to any other player, like steam chat does, regardless of friend/foe status. I would not add more fixed labels in addition to foe, it doesn't make sense unless the client can actually do something useful with the information and is strictly less flexible/useful.

If you wait until there are no more bugs for 1.0 release, you have successfully adopted ZeroVer : )

I have written something that we could maybe use as a base for a better memory benchmark:
https://gist.github.com/Katharsas/89b0e12b3cc751a51d0c278421d6599a

I have tried to not run into any of the problems described in my first post. I have taken care not to call the random function inside hot loops in case that this is a slow function.

It consists of 2 benchmark functions operating on a previously filled table. Based on the assumptions about Lua object sizes, it should have a minimum memory size of about 50MB. The Lua interpreter that i used in VSCode will take up 220MB after the table is filled with objects by the setup functions.

I have adjusted the iterations so that each benchmark runs in about 2 seconds in my machine. Now, i don't know how Lua works in the game, so im not sure if this could be ported to the FAF Lua benchmark. It would obviously require normalization / resscaling so that we get numbers that are in a usefull range. However i cannot really see in the FAF source code how the number that we see at the end is calculated and how the time is measured.

I get that it is really to hard to make a proper benchmark. But this kind reads like you just created some code for the benchmark more or less by chance and the numbers lined up on 4 PCs and thats it. We have no idea what this benchmark is really measuring, and the spikes by people that seem to have normal RAM tell me that his benchmark is neither measuring RAM bandwidth nor latency.

Maybe Supcom is really dependent on caches and maybe the code is measuring L2 and MAYBE thats a good thing, but it seems to break down for a bunch of systems obviously. If those systems are not actually as slow as the benchmark indicates, we should tweak it, and making sure it actually is liekly to hit RAM seems like a good tweak to me.

Even if each table in the actual game fits in cache, the game will use all of them per tick (causing cache pressure), so we cannot use a single table that has typical game size if the game uses a whole bunch of them.

Maybe i can write up an idea later.

I would try removing as many USB devices as possible (in your case Razor Chromo) and try if that works. USB devices include their own sound card as well as sound driver and i suspect the game might not like that. So try with Aux only. And maybe fully uninstall anything related to your USB audio device.

Yeah but if you let the CPU decide to sync the cache whenever it wants (because you don't put pressure on the cache), it might do it after the benchmark ends, or god knows when. But even if it would work, you would only measure RAM write, never read.

You can force the CPU to pull things into the cache that i doesn't have yet in the cache (= cache miss) really only by randomly demanding from the CPU to give you content of memory addresses over a larger area of memory than what would fit into cache.

I have no source on this, is just pick up tidbits here and there, like links from SO like https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8126311/what-every-programmer-should-know-about-memory or just youtube videos. Problem is i have never implemented a interpreted language nor my own HashTable, so i have to make a bunch of assumptions about how tables in Lua work and my understanding is definitely far from complete.

Measuring computer performance is fucking hard xD

In my mind it would be better to

• either make the table much bigger (and NOT measure the table creation) and then measure the inserts / reads on that table
• save randomized objects inside the table that are much bigger than strings (again, not measung creation time of table and objects), and then do reads into parts of the object to pull the objects into the CPU cache (which would push parts of the table outside of the cache if you read enough objects.)

@jip said in 2 Crashes in 2 games. New patch unstable.:

I missed those - it could be a combination of the two. Good spot.

@TacticalBacon1st make sure to have stereo sound on. There is a topic about this on the forums, but I can't find it right now.

https://forum.faforever.com/topic/796/i-can-t-hear-some-of-the-audio-or-other-sound-issue-what-should-i-do