World Optimization and additions to the resourcepack

Hello everyone !

The resourcepack is obviously an essential part of the server, everything you will see on wynncraft has been added through it. And it means that there are a lot of files inside

The size (file weight) is important since increasing the size of a resourcepack makes it longer to download and harder to run.

While browsing files on my old computer I noticed that I still have the old version of the resourcepack in my folder (the one from 2016, when 1.8 was still allowed) and I noticed it weighted 3.06 MO. Now, in 2021, the 1.12 version weights 5.93 MO, which represents and increase of roughly 94 %, in other words, the size has almost doubled in 5 years.

Seeing this, I decided to compress it. And I did. Almost very single file has a lighter weight, even the models ".json" files now have a reduced size. Now, after being compressed it weights 3.78 MO instead of 5.93 MO which represents a decrease of 36,25%. And WITHOUT QUALITY LOSS

I remembered that back in 2015 and until 2019, when I had to play on a computer that was a damn toaster, and I often struggled with fps. Now I have a decent pc but I know there are some players that struggle the same way I did, so I uploaded my compressed version (also as a proof of concept fot this suggestion)

https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/wynncraft-resourcepack-optimized.295209/

Going further into optimization

As a pack maker I took a look into the pack files and noticed some things that could be optimized:

Spoiler: Skin models:

As you'll see here, most of the skins have a lot of elements (the number at the right of the screen, here 225. This number is caused by the fact that there are smaller elements instead of bigger ones. When 3d modelling you can make an element that is quite big, like 5 voxels (3d pixels) high, 6 voxels wide and 1 voxel thick and then apply a texture through a process called "UV Mapping"


And there are models that are far worse like this bow, with 1287 elements which is insane when knowing that most of the regular weapon models have between 10 and 30 elements only.

In this bow, there are absolutely no "bigger elements", even a straight line of 20 voxels will have 20 separate elements (and optimized version would be 16+4 so it doesn't mess up the uv mapping) This is probably due to the fact that the software used was Cubik Studio which tends to produce models with such a high number of elements, the solution would be to redo it or manually correct this. Sure it would take some time but at the end we could end up with roughly 120-200 elements which would mean a 10 times lighter model.

Spoiler: Skin textures

There are textures like this one which is way too big for something that has less than 20 colors (probably generated by Cubik studio too)


This could be fixed by drawing the shape of the bow and then extruding it (for example using Blockbench)
Like for this one:


Same thing for the generated 1x1 textures

Most of these problem are caused by the software used but don't blame those who made the models, a big part of them were made before blockbench even existed or before it was as popular and developped.
But now that we have better tools, why wouldn't we use them ?

Adding more things through the resourcepack

The resourcepack adds tons of various things, for instance:
-Several models and textures are applied to the same item using damage values, it would be too long to explain how it works so in order to shorten, the game is told to use a defined model when a defined item has a defined amount of damage (ex: a fishing rod with 7 damage would become a golden fishing rod)

this also allows to not waste textures by dedicating items to a specific thing (a wooden hoe when not damaged is still a wooden hoe but depending on the damage it can be something like 8 other things)

-Some blocks are added through Blockstates: depending on the orientation/position/state of a block a new model is applied (which is possible without removing any block because some have more states than variations)
You probaly also noticed that custom crops are way too numerous to be vanilla ones uh ? that's because while having up to 8 states depending on the age, most crops only have 4 models which means there are 4 "empty slots" that can be filled with a new model


Now that I explained it a bit, keep in mind that adding blocks/textures adds weight to the resourcepack and you probably know that there are some big updates coming in the next years like Dern and Fruma. With an optimized resourcepack the impact that these additions have could be lowered a lot, meaning more performance and a shorter download time for the resourcepack.

Even more additions ??


Some custom mobs are made from blocks and 3d skin models. How are they made together to form a shape ? using armorstands. A lot of armorstands.

The economy update brought refining stations (that no longer exist now) and those custom mobs

Spoiler: Examples

The problem being that a lot of armorstands represents a lot of lags, Server-side as well as client-side and the resolution of the elements doesn't match, as well as sometimes resulting in an abstract or awkward look

Spoiler: Like this big boy right here

With the weight removed through compression and optimization, adding new models for some of the bosses wouldn't be as heavy as it would be with the unoptimized version and would require less armorstands which would increase performance even more.

This can be achieved with plugins like "Model Engine" even though Wynncraft is probably using it or a similar system, judging by how Orphion looks and the presence of a "boss" folder in the resourcepack with orphion's textures, and I guess there's more to come so my suggestion probably comes at the right moment

Spoiler: Proof

To conclude, my suggestion would be to replace the current resourcepack by my or a staff-made compressed version and operate some changes like those I talked about earlier. There are now plenty of people in the team so even though it would mean some rather big changes, the outcome would be more performance and some more accurate models which would be cool for everyone.

Thanks for reading.

If a staff member has somequestions, feel free to send me a private message and for those who have suggestions/questions feel free to ask it here !

 

Da, good idea
idk how it would affect my pc as i havent tried it, but if it reduces lag, is nice
bump

 

My frames are trash when I’m playing Wynn and the resource pack takes forever to load
Ima try this out and if it makes a dif then this needs to be added as every frame counts for ppl with lower end pcs

 

I've been in a situation where even 5 or 10 FPS would have made a great difference so I understand how you feel ^^

 

Wow, man. Insane. Me around 4 months ago would have downloaded this right away but now with a new computer frames aren’t a problem

 

Ok, what the heck is this resource pack? This needs to be changed.

 

Bumping this

 

Bumping again

 

Very cool, if that's okay with you I might take some of the optimized models you fixed and put them into the pack properly; I never got around to it because making more models with blockbench was just a better use of my time and I also don't have nearly enough experience with cubik to fix the model issues (Really this post just confirms my displeasure with cubik, bad program >:( ). Hopefully these changes will be in for 1.20.4/1.21 depending on what update comes next.

 

I didn't fix the models, I didn't know if my suggestion would be buried and forgotten so I just detailled how it could be optimized, the pack I posted just contains a compressed/shortened version of the .jsons (and every texture, sound...) Even though I managed to greatly reduce the size of the pack there is still a lot of job to do with the models that have 300-1000 parts

I would recommend Blockbench to fix the models because in my opinion it is way better than cubik when it comes to models with uv mapping.


Regarding my compressed version of the pack, do whatever you want with it, I did this for wynncraft so I would be happy if it was used for the official pack !

Also I would be glad to help if needed. Anyway, if you want to discuss or get some informations here's my discord username : SKZR#5304

Yeah, especially when it comes to low res or optimized models

 

More and more servers I see nowadays are using compression to lower the sizes of their packs. There are definitely other ways that can be looked into improving packs as well (although Mojang recently increased the size of server resource packs but it is still incredibly important for download, load time, etc.)

Also the voxel method is definitely a very large source of client side lag, even rendering 3-4 of them at once could halt the game and improving them would be very beneficial, great suggestion!

 

thanks for your support !

bump btw