Blockland needs a revised ghosting / saving system

[siba²]

Blockland builds are becoming exponentially larger as time goes on and Blockland still remains in a state where if you haven't ghosted every single brick in a server that you intend to save, you won't get the full build upon saving it.

This goes for even the hosts of dedicated servers, as I have just suffered a rather serious blow due to it in my own.

Just lost a stuffload of progress thanks to the ghosting system in Blockland and the way clients of even their own dedicated servers must ghost every brick to save every one of them.



Anyone happen to have a save of the build with the completed harbor?

I was well aware of the dangers of this but managed to handle it for long enough that I didn't really create any backups of my save, f8ing around the entire build commonly enough that I felt I was safe.

I was using serverDirectSaveFileLoad to load the build each time I started up since the only difference between my client loading it and the server seemed to be the unnecessary loadtime, but that also seems to leave the danger of not ghosting every brick loaded (not sure if both have the same issue)

In short; the larger a build gets, the higher the chance you'll lose a potentially massive portion of its progress if you haven't been within render distance of every single brick on the server.

EDIT: Just managed to get the save back thanks to an automatic windows backup of the file.

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[Darryl McKoy]

I always thought it was a bit strange that the ghosting of bricks isn't just part of the loading before you spawn. It'd improve the experience substantially imo.

[siba²]

Until such action is taken, I think scopeToClient'ing(?) every single brick in a server on spawn would be in order.

[Lord Tony®]

I always thought it was a bit strange that the ghosting of bricks isn't just part of the loading before you spawn. It'd improve the experience substantially imo.

Oh yeah sure and then you would have a much longer loading screen. I hate loading screens.

It takes me like 2 seconds to ghost a 250k brick server anyways.

[Darryl McKoy]

Oh yeah sure and then you would have a much longer loading screen. I hate loading screens.

It takes me like 2 seconds to ghost a 250k brick server anyways.

I much rather a loading screen than having the ghosting actually interrupting gameplay. If you ghost so quick it wouldn't make a difference for you whether it was in a loading screen vs in-game. For those of us joining games from overseas, it is actually annoying.

[Pecon]

Oh yeah sure and then you would have a much longer loading screen. I hate loading screens.

It takes me like 2 seconds to ghost a 250k brick server anyways.

I think he just means to perform all the ghosting during the loading phase so that clients aren't left with some limbo-y state where they are 'loaded', but are still loading because brick ghosting needs to be done. To me it seems like doing initial ghosting on the loading screen would make the game experience much more solid.

[siba²]

Or at least a warning that the total number of bricks ghosted by the client isn't actually the total number of bricks on the server.

[Freedom Bringer]

god damnit siba

[Conan]

this is why you need a server sided autosaver

the autosaver vis posted in addons, although not perfect, serves this purpose extremely well.

[Alkatjo]

I always thought it was kind of silly having to wait a couple seconds after you spawn, at least hold the player at the screen until the game is sure he/she's loaded all the bricks.

[Jasa]

Get ChunX
It's a chunk based brick saver and loader I threw together that saves bricks in the background as they are modified instead of all at once.
Saves are also manually backed up periodically and in the event of a critical failure you can still piece together the saves with the other files.

[YounqD]

Yeah I've dealt with the losing of some things because I didn't ghost it on a dedicated server, so all that did was just teach me to not host dedicated if I plan to save it. Like for instance if you're making a huge build such as the one you're making now, just host it yourself not on a dedicated server in that case you wont have to worry about ghosting everything it'll still save. Then when you're ready to host it for good and not save anything else and I guess play on it then host dedicated and you're good. The saving system isn't bad tbh it just has somethings that if you knew about them before hand you wouldn't get screwed over like with the saving over a dedicated server.

[Tezuni 2.0]

As I recall a few years ago, Badspot made ghosting reversed, so that it will ghost things starting farthest from you. Doesn't seem to apply to my terrains though.
Whenever I edit my Slopes CTF I make a point to orb the entire perimeter before saving and then save it with a date stamp in the name. "Slopes CTF 11.22.15" for example.

[sir dooble]

Oh yeah sure and then you would have a much longer loading screen. I hate loading screens.

It takes me like 2 seconds to ghost a 250k brick server anyways.

Then 2 seconds of extra loading screen makes no difference to you, so why complain?

I would much rather have ghosting happen in the loading screen, than watch it all load piece by piece and have my camera/movement spaz out because I spawned on a baseplate or in a building that has yet to finish ghosting.