Turbine Games Q&A/Dungeons/Q-06

Original Link (now dead) - http://www.turbinegames.com/qa/view_questions.html?id=1136

About the *huge* dungeon question

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Asked:	2000.11.02
Name:	Eviloce of DT
Question Title:	About the *huge* dungeon question
Category:	Dungeons
Question:	"The pit, for instance, takes about 30 hours to go through the pipe once it's ready to integrate into the world." Could you clearify this? I don't quite understand what you mean. "Additionally, there are server concerns with large numbers of players in a single dungeon that have to be considered." Is the code for a dungeon much different than code for Dereth? Why can you add a whole new island but not a dungeon that big? Thanks for any replies, Evil

Answered:	2000.11.03
Name:	Sean
Answer:	Dungeons exist in one landblock, they are not spread out over a series of landblocks like a new island would be. When you have a large number of people in one landblock, the server can't divide that block up to balance load. It does that on a landblock level, where one landblock is the minimal unit. So overcrowding of one landblock can cause server issues. A dungeon, no matter how big, is considered to be ONE landblock, even if it were built large enough to cover the entire space of Dereth. Which means, no matter how many people you have inside the dungeon, the server can't divide them up and share the load. While on a new island there are many many landblocks, and the servers can pick and choose how to balance their loads. "The pit, for instance, takes about 30 hours to go through the pipe once it's ready to integrate into the world." This simply means that when we preprocess the dungoen, our fastest CPUs take this long, as dungeons calculate visibility graphs which can be VERY CPU-intensive. Sean.