[Question] How does the brick limit work?

[superdupercoolguy]

It is somewhat common knowledge that the blockland brick system is limited to 256,000 bricks because of the networking. What if I wanted to exceed that limit, but full-render distances apart--so I'd have an island consisting of 256,000 bricks, island A, and then 2x the full render distance away is another 256,000 brick island, island B. Now say I started on island A and took a teledoor to island B. What would happen? Would island B render or just be invisible? If it doesn't render, can I force the client into unrendering island A? Again, these are 2x the full render apart, you cannot see island A while standing on island B and vice versa.

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[zombekillz]

you cant surpass the brick limit.
its a limitation that is very much hard coded into blockland's engine.

you can use certain hacks to exceed it, but it messes up your game, so ive heard.

oh yea, and the only way to get around the limit by "unrendering" would be to completely deconstruct and reconstruct the island, thus temporary lowering the brick count, it can be done, but it would be waaay to much work and, as for a multiplayer standpoint, probably not a good idea.

gsf's terrain generator does something similar pretty efficiently, but uses an algorithm to construct randomized land, and sadly doesn't generate anything extremely detailed on its own without players building it themselves, you might be able to use code from it to get the desired effect, although, again, in a multiplayer game this still wouldn't work, as multiple players could cause blockland to build more then 256,000 bricks.

[superdupercoolguy]

uh...
I really don't mean to offend here, but have you researched this? I can confirm that your statements are flat out wrong.
There is no limit to bricks on blockland, as I said, it is a networking limit as to how many bricks a player can render. You can have over 256,000 bricks in one server, but only 256,000 of them will render to your client.
While it will not let you place or load more than 256,000 bricks, scripts such as, for example, gsf's terrain generator, can easily place more than 256,000, although they will not render.
By the way, and the main question is still needing to be answered, but really quickly could someone also tell me why the limit is 256,000?

[Thorfin25]

I can confirm that your statements are flat out wrong.

[zombekillz]

[superdupercoolguy]

-snip-

I have no idea what the forget you're trying to accomplish or say by this.
If you actually do some testing on this(ex. load up saves to 256,000), you'll find that things such as the duplicator can exceed the brick limit, although bricks over 256,000 will not render to the client.
If you're going to post stuff like that, you can at least make sure you're correct
edit: I've posted a screenshot of my findings. While a chat message might not prove it to you, it can atleast show I went out and tried this thing. Try it yourself-load until you hit the brick limit, and duplicate something.
Sorry for the downres, the file upload limit is too small.

Also: Even if you are completely correct, we have addons, and since the client can't tell a difference weather terrain out of his view vanishes or not, you could simply lie to the client that the bricks where deleted as it vanished from his view.

[zombekillz]

like i said before

you can use certain hacks to exceed it, but it messes up your game, so ive heard.

i'm pretty sure that saving and loading a build that exceeds the limit would have its consequences, (probably why the bricks aren't rendering for you) and when you say the client can render only 256000 bricks at once, that is a complete lie, because brickcount has no effect on rendering, its the amount of polygons that make up the bricks, and the only limitation to how many polygons you can render depends on what hardware you are using, not to mention bricks that are out of a players view, weather they are behind them or are simply too far away to see will not render for that player, that's why when you look at a massive build you get lag, and when you look away the lag is gone, the bricks ur computer were struggling to render before aren't rendering anymore, thus no more lag.

I can confirm that your statements are flat out wrong.

i guess what i mean is, before you tell me im wrong, you make sure you're right, because your not.

if you are looking for a way to have more then 256000 bricks loaded at once, well, sorry you can't, blockland can count the number of bricks that should be there, but you cant actually have that many bricks at once, and i dont think anyone has ever found a way around that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/256-bit <-- and this is why you cant have over 256K bricks BTW, my understanding is that blockland literally cannot process that many bricks.  256, and 256,000 are some very common  reoccurring numbers that involve the largest number (of integers) that processors can handle at once.  and its also found as a limit in RGB color scales.

and ill admit im no expert on the subject of how processors operate and why they are limited to 256K integers,  perhaps someone who knows more on the subject can correct me if im wrong.

[ZSNO]

You guys are dumb, actually try this crap ingame and stop ACTING like you know, because you're wrong.
We've hosted 300k brick dedicated servers before.
What happens when your client reaches ~256k bricks is the bricks stop ghosting client side, but the collision remains server sided, so basically invisible bricks.

i guess what i mean is, before you tell me im wrong, you make sure you're right, because your not.

lol get out, stop posting false information like you know about it.

[superdupercoolguy]

You guys are dumb, actually try this crap ingame and stop ACTING like you know, because you're wrong.
We've hosted 300k brick dedicated servers before.
What happens when your client reaches ~256k bricks is the bricks stop ghosting client side, but the collision remains server sided, so basically invisible bricks.lol get out, stop posting false information like you know about it.

thank you

[zombekillz]

Oh, hey, you can place more then 250k? I guess I've never noticed the collision,  but I'm pretty sure that the reason the networking is cut off at 256k is because of the integer limit, sorry I doubted you op, I owe u an apology.

But I wasn't wrong untill I said op was wrong, because I guess you can place that many bricks, there's just a limit to how many of them are visible.

[portify]

There is no "specific brick limit" in the engine, in the networking or anywhere. There is, however, a limit to:

• How many bricks can be loaded from save files
• How many bricks can be placed by players
• How many objects clients will ghost locally from a server

The limit for all of these is 256000. Yes, you can have two separate far-away islands with 256000 bricks each, but the issue is that when you leave one island, it won't "disappear" for the client. When they reach the second island all the bricks from that island will still be ghosted, and thus it won't ghost the second island.

[Pah1023]

As port said there isn't a specific limit.
Out of curiosity I started a server up and just created a loop to create 30 bricks every 33ms and got up to 650k so far.
Still going now actually.
Though, I believe there is an issue when an objects ID gets to high it bugs out.
Since you normally wouldn't get up to 650k this shouldn't be an issue but if it's a large enough build it could become one.
Oh look, by the time I finished this it has reached 700k.
Edit: Passed a million, and still going lol.
Edit #2: Crashed at 1,340,000~. Friend of mine connected and the game locked up as he tried to spawn. Then my computer. Then blockland closed.
A server might could handle 512,000. As long as the clients disconnects as they go to the other island.

[superdupercoolguy]

There is no "specific brick limit" in the engine, in the networking or anywhere. There is, however, a limit to:

• How many bricks can be loaded from save files
• How many bricks can be placed by players
• How many objects clients will ghost locally from a server

The limit for all of these is 256000. Yes, you can have two separate far-away islands with 256000 bricks each, but the issue is that when you leave one island, it won't "disappear" for the client. When they reach the second island all the bricks from that island will still be ghosted, and thus it won't ghost the second island.

Thank you.
Can I make the client unload the other island and load the next one? If not, can I just lie to the client and say the bricks where deleted?

[Pah1023]

Thank you.
Can I make the client unload the other island and load the next one? If not, can I just lie to the client and say the bricks where deleted?

Ehhh, I wanna say you can't, but I'm not entirely sure.
I'll take a look into this however.

[-Jetz-]

Thank you.
Can I make the client unload the other island and load the next one? If not, can I just lie to the client and say the bricks where deleted?

Not through a scripted add-on, or any kind of mod you could release publicly. Theoretically possible, but the number of people in this community capable of actually doing it could probably be counted on one hand, and it's not really that great of a solution anyway.