This is a bad game limitation!!

ERROR RECEVED...

"The maximum number of building pieces have been reached. Please destroy components."

What is that all about?  That takes the fun right out of building more and having fun other than just completing the game.  I have finished the game and want to build a huge maze with a surrounding kingdom...but I can't?  Why??

I could see the DEMO having that limitation but when you pay $10.00 for a game you expect more!!

Please update and fix!!!

Heh, sorry about that. I totally understand the complaint.

The Xbox, as powerful as it is, still has limits. Buildings, components, keflings, and everything else in the world take up memory and processing power. Eventually we run out and we have to put in a limit so we don't make the system crash.

I put tons of stuff in mine and didn't run out of space your map must be packed

I agree as what is the reason of having unlimited resources if you cant use them.

I think the point being the developers maxed out the number of items you could build in the game to the point that it didn't crash. again, see above about the memory, and such. sure the limit could be removed, but how buggy would your game be then?   you take 12 hours to fill your map to the brink, fighting the slowdown, and the glitchy movement for the last 4 hours, and then the game freezes, oh by the way, you didn't save once in the entire time because of the highly adictive nature of the game. so sad, but at least your unlimited resources will be there when you have to start all over.

---

Hey we all GAME OVER sometime.

 dajuse wrote:

Heh, sorry about that. I totally understand the complaint.

The Xbox, as powerful as it is, still has limits. Buildings, components, keflings, and everything else in the world take up memory and processing power. Eventually we run out and we have to put in a limit so we don't make the system crash.

dajuse...

If that is the case then what is the maximum components you can have before the system crashes?  From my programming experience wouldn't they just be variables to a certain number precision?  Making 1KB of ram equal to 1024 BYTES, which should easily render a component.  So if there is just 1M of RAM available that would still be 1024 components.  Don't make sense to me!  Although I really don't know much about game development!

How much RAM is available to developers in an XBOX360 also?

Its *way* more complicated than that - I really wish it was that simple.  I'll try to elaborate on just a little bit of the issue here...and you're going to have to forgive me in advance for a long and boring post.

There are two issues - RAM and framerate.  The components aren't really the biggest issue either(although they do have their own limitations as well).  A bigger issue is that you can then build buildings out of the components that you have sitting on the map and buildings are much more expensive than components in just about every way (they are all subtly animated, have seasonal textures, and are paintable).  We made some poor decisions about texture usage early on which caused them to just suck up most of our 512MB RAM in complicated, full scenes(which by the time we realized it was a problem, it was *way* to late to fix).  I know that sounds like a ton of RAM, and it really is but consider that we have (I don't remember exact numbers here) something like 60 unique buildings (each with at LEAST 4) high res textures plus like 50 unique components, etc.  Really this shouldn't have been an issue but it is and we're not going to be making it again - it has been quite painful, believe me.  It's much too large an issue to fix in the current game so we simply have to work around it.  So that sucks about the RAM.  We actually can fit more than what we've got if you just look at RAM, however.

I must mention that as wonderful as it would be if an object in the world only took up 1KB, it's simply not realistic.  Each object not only has a 3D mesh (and most are animated and all have 1 or more textures), but it has collision data, physics data, and all sorts of statistics about it, which include text (which by itself is easily 1KB, especially since it's unicode).  We use a double buffer for drawing so you've got at least 2 vertex and index buffers, etc. per object as well.  Anyway, the point is that it's much more expensive per object than you're thinking.  We, of course can (and do) use instancing of similar objects (to a point), etc. but anyway...

Also you've got framerate and let's be totally honest about it - the framerate is not great already in a fully developed kingdom.  We simply have to process each object individually and run collision on them in addition to AI and pathfinding and other logic.  If we had the time and resources of a larger company I'm sure this could have been done more efficiently.  We also could have been better about multithreading certain systems, etc.  Okay so by now you're sick of reading this post and the point is that we've given this a *ton* of thought.  We obviously want to make the best game we can and I wish there was no limitation at all.  Honestly we set it at a point that we thought no one would ever really hit.  People are more obsessed with building as many things as they can than we expected.  We played around with the limit and set it at a point where we thought "there is no way anyone is going to hit this but we have to put a limit in and things pretty much suck with too many more objects than this anyway".

So...there you go, Adam.  You get a super long rant from the lead programmer.

Post of the day! I love learning more about how the games were made Side note how do you tell how much RAM something is using, working on a side project and I need that for the specs on the packaging.

we can have world maps(oblivion/gta4/fallout3)
but you cant put down a few more tiles in the map?

---

My Duty is my Honour.
PSN: Buttoncup

 buttoncup wrote:

we can have world maps(oblivion/gta4/fallout3)
but you cant put down a few more tiles in the map?

If I remember correct Microsoft has set certain limits on arcade titles that are not on titles like Fallout. Also please remember Bethseda is large corp company and titles have an insane budget. I bet if Kingdom of Keflings had the same budget as Fallout 3 they could get you your 10 extra items in.

Give Ninja Bee a break on this.. You can put an insane amount of stuff in already.

It is easy to say do this do that when you have no clue what work is involved in doing it. They gave more than enough reasons why they set the limits at what they did. Even if they could add more items the game you are talking about core coding. Basic patches could not fix this issue and Microsoft will not allow patches that go into changing core coding on a game already released. So it is really a mute issue.

dont get me wrong here, i love the game, but it now seems to be done with, a few new maps or other dlc woud be nice.
i do understand gaming as i had a net Yaroze(sp) on ps1 kit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Yaroze

---

My Duty is my Honour.
PSN: Buttoncup

Yeah, areacode had it right. We didn't have the budget for the kind of engine they use in those games and as YaZeus said we made some development mistakes. We'll do better next time! :) Also, there will be DLC coming, so keep an eye out for that. (Not sure when, yet...)

Ah well DLC is a dif story. From what I have heard they plan to do some DLC of some type! **edit see above lol

 xOmni Bahamutx wrote:

I think the point being the developers maxed out the number of items you could build in the game to the point that it didn't crash. again, see above about the memory, and such. sure the limit could be removed, but how buggy would your game be then?   you take 12 hours to fill your map to the brink, fighting the slowdown, and the glitchy movement for the last 4 hours, and then the game freezes, oh by the way, you didn't save once in the entire time because of the highly adictive nature of the game. so sad, but at least your unlimited resources will be there when you have to start all over.

I have gotten almost to the point where is seems useless to save the game since you are limitted on what you can build.I have froze several times  but it they have set it up I guess I need to pick what is important in the game as far as buildings.

The only reason you would need to do that is if you really get into the design part of the game and build a huge garden or want to put a wall around your entire city. I have almost every building in the game and 36 Banners up in one map and have not ran into any problems yet. I know a few people with over 100 Banners and a large city with no problems. So I wouldn't worry too much about it until you get to that point.

I went to college for  3D modeling, video game design and technology, and considering the data cap on the DLC games, this game is pretty massive, beautiful to look at, fun to get lost in for hours at a time, and all around a blast to play. I look forward to any add ons, but this game is great as a stand alone. If this is the quality we have to look forward to in future titles from ninjabee, I think anyone in the arcade is better off for it. I'd be happy to get involved, cause this is exactly the kind of game I enjoy working on.

---

Hey we all GAME OVER sometime.

YaZeus and others!...

Ton's of thanks for the reply's and I read every word.  I knew it was not simple and you proved that.

My limitation may be coming from the number of (GEMS, CARVED PIECES, BRICKS, SILK...etc) that I have laying around and not so much the building component’s (Buildings, Walls, Tree's...etc).  See I have way overproduced and there is no way to break down some of the components to there RAW materials once they have been converted.  Or to recycle extra resources.  Which would be nice also!  Like a waste management building!...Or a landfill!  So I am storing these insane amounts (1,000's) inside the already made workshop's and factories.

Anyway...I guess my next question for you all is do these (GEM's, CARVED PIECES, BRICKS, SILK...etc) count and is my limiting factor on trying to build more stuff?

Maybe you can come check my try at a kingdom out sometime...I am usually online...send me a message and I will stop what ever I am doing and be more than happy to get a developer banner tower in my kingdom!

Don't get me wrong...GREAT GAME!

psst...I am starting a new kingdom and building to AS NEEDED specification this time!

The piles of resources in the world has no effect on how many components you can build. They are handled separately. If you end up with too many piles of resources, they will consolidate themselves.

The component limit is based solely on the buildings and components in the world.

Ok Mr developer guy who is telling me you made the game to a size you thought nobody  would ever hit. 

Your crazy  i built every building from the print 1 time and that is just about all you can build.. Over half the map is bare and i cant buid anymore stuff.

I hope that you will make this game again but not for the arcade make a a disk game and make it so you can fill every square inch of your map if you want......

 Dock Holidaiy wrote:

Ok Mr developer guy who is telling me you made the game to a size you thought nobody  would ever hit. 

Your crazy  i built every building from the print 1 time and that is just about all you can build.. Over half the map is bare and i cant buid anymore stuff.

I hope that you will make this game again but not for the arcade make a a disk game and make it so you can fill every square inch of your map if you want......

I've built every building plus enough homes to house all the keflings and I still haven't reached the cap.

---

[Airplanes are] near perfect, all they lack is the ability to forgive.

— Richard Collins

ok so you callin me a liar.  Why dont you try to build 50 castle walls and then let me know what happens...

So what if you built all the prints my problem is customizing away like the king tells you to ...Well about  1 hour later your maxed out .  So you have to tear down just about everything and then about half way through tearing down all the stuff you dont need no more the game starts to freeze and freeze and freeze.........

Dont take this all the wrong way i love the game to death and for the price i cant complain. But when you really really love a game it sucks so bad when you get to the end and well it dont end the way you wished ...................

That sucks. I hope i dont get that far then. And i think arcade games have a 150mb limit

---

Xbox 360 Battlefield Bad Company Forum Moderator

Wishlist:
Modern Warfare 2 Single player
BF: Bad Company 2 Multiplayer

That is true and i thought of that but then i seen portal on the arcade and its well over 500 mb..................

If microsoft is going to make exceptions for 1 Publisher then they need to let all the publishers go up to 500 plus to.......................This is my opinion

 buttoncup wrote:

we can have world maps(oblivion/gta4/fallout3)
but you cant put down a few more tiles in the map?

You are forgetting that games, like Oblivion, don't show the whole map as active.  There is a small percentage of the map that is active and loaded at one point in time.  That is the power of CDs  and DVDs.  As you move in a direction, the parts you are distancing yourself from are dropped from memory as the parts you are moving to are loaded up.  This is subtle and you may not realize that it is happening.  Look at the fast travel feature.  You are moving to an area that is, in most cases, not near where you are and you have to drop the whole, current live area of the map for a new whole map.  This is more noticeable as you get the loading screen.  That in of itself should have cued you in that the world maps are not 100% all in memory.  Once again, I bow to the power of the CD and DVD.

New Maps Please!!  Something.  Anything.   (Example: Put a river in the middle with a bridge you have to build then cross to get to more open land/etc.)

I feel like they rushed the coding for a lot of the games main engine, for instance even in a new game the FPS starts of considerably slow for such a simple game.

It would have been nice to turn of the weather effects because they just cause a lot of slowdown.
I've had no gameplay yet where I couldn't visually see the  FPS chugging along with my character and kefling teleporting slightly to the left or right instead of walking smoothly.

I'm rather tempted to turn down the XBOX's display resolution just so I can play are regular speeds but I don't want to have to do that.