Feature: Block Deco

Just had a player fail to load a pot scene due to the players limited pc hardware and eventually crashed. They have made similar attempts previously with a similar result.

Can we get the ability, by right clicking on deco items, to block deco from loading according to one of the video settings. Possibly the "Fastest" video setting or even a new video setting.

By allowing us to choose which deco loads on our lots, we can reduce the loading time for these players when they visit our lots to join in on our events and get access to our dungeons, basements, vendors and conversationalists. Those players would get increased performance and possibly aid in player retention since they would have better system performance.

I know many players wouldn't use this ability when placing deco but some would to allow friends, guildmates, etc to gain access to areas they would otherwise avoid.

 

There are already options to lower the details for weaker PC´s.

e. g. under Video I have
"Disable Weather on low performance" checked

and there are general options regarding deco, too:
"Cull interior decorations" []
"Aggressive decoration loading" []
and the slider for
"Interior deco cull distance" so that you only have full deco at a closer distance.

Allowing to set a rule on every single deco item (e.g. just a cup or a plate on a table) would multiply the data that would need to be stored for every single item for every single player.
And singling out and hiding *one* deco item or even a handful won´t change enough to allow a weak PC to keep up

 

True, there are other options but its obviously not enough. This would add another ability to improve performance on lower end systems.

Adding a boolean flag on an item shouldn't be that significant an increase in the amount of data and the number of deco items that could be filtered out (not loaded) by this new ability could be potentially massive in some cases for these lower end systems. It's likely a single item being blocked from loading would more than cover the entire amount of added data from that flag for an entire lot or even multiple lots.

 

When you write "a single item" then you mean just ONE item, e.g. a teacup on a table on your lot?
The massive amounts of data saved could only happen if all teacups everywhere would be hidden (which one player could not decide). If only the one teacup on your lot is hidden - and that only to people with weak PC´s, then it has still to be loaded for those people who have a sufficient PC.

If a larger item - then you might have invisible walls when a table or larger deco item would be blocked from being displayed - unless you mean to make it not only blocked from view but blocked from being placed at all?

 

I don't think your teacup example is totally true or having "interior culling" set wouldn't have a significant effect.

Yes, don't place the item at all. When the house/basement/dungeon is loaded just totally ignore loading those items if the "block flag" on those items is set to true. It would only affect lots where the player doesn't have deco permissions since they'd need to see everything on lots they do have deco permissions on.

It could be limited to certain types of deco. So for example you can block animated pets, trophies, lights, and plants, but not furniture. This would prevent weird things like them seeing another player sitting on nothing or vice-versa a player with good graphics from seeing those players, with weaker graphics, walk through a table or counter that doesn't exist for them.

For a specific example. The player crashed trying to enter my dungeon. That dungeon has roughly a 3500 point deco count of which roughly 3000 is from 150 size 20 planters. So in this case it'd be roughly 650 bits of data to account for the "block deco" flags, 150 for the planters and 500 for other deco.

If I could have blocked the planters from loading how much would that have helped them? They did not need to see those. Other than me nobody really does.
I have roughly 20 animated pets in the dungeon, how much would it have helped if I'd blocked even a half dozen of those?
If I could have blocked a couple pets, some rugs, paintings, lights, and various other deco from loading in the house, how much load time would that have saved them from even getting onto the lot?
​

Maybe a more generic setting would work better. Like...

block loading of planters on other players lots
Block loading of pets on other players lots
Block loading of books on other players lots (some lots have hundreds of them)​

Even players with higher end graphics systems might take advantage of generic options like those. The downside of some generic settings like that is they miss out on the intended "feel" the owner intends to portray for the lot. The block deco gives that control to the lot owner, so they can pick and choose which deco to scale back on to help those players reduce loading times and crashes while they also gain increased access. So a lot owner could choose to not block a book they wrote, but hide other books.

Anyway, just a thought. One I'd be willing to take advantage of to help other players.

 

The player crashed after loading for about 20 minutes. Eventually they did get in scene, but I was offline by that point.

I don't want to take up your time optimizing my specific dungeon. You have other things to work on. ;-)

 

Is your dungeon overcrowded or was the PC of that player not even fulfilling the minimum requirements? I mean my PC is slow but even in the most over-deco´ed large town I never had loading lag of 20 minutes.

 

Not sure what you define as "overcrowded". Ya it has a lot of deco. Roughly 2/3 is a farm. The rest is mostly multiples of similar items. It does include conversationalists and about 2 dozen pets. No idea about his PC specs.