Hey all,
So a couple of weeks back, we invited you all to join us on Sophie once again for another playtest of SAND. As most of you will now be aware, we unfortunately had to cut short the playtest due to a number of technical issues that arose during this period, promising to resume the playtest at a later date.
Today, we’d like to run you through what happened during the playtest, what we’ve been doing since to address it and talk about exactly when the playtest will resume.
First off, if you’d rather avoid all the techy details, here’s a TL;DR:
Basically, the playtest was suspended due to a number of technical issues that arose only after launching to a significantly larger test group, which had not been present in our internal testing processes.
The main culprits being:
Matchmaking system overload: Bugs caused the matchmaking system to lock up under heavy load, preventing players from logging in, creating characters, or joining expeditions.
Expedition server bugs: Errors in how expeditions were registered led to players getting stuck on screens, losing progress, or facing other expedition-related glitches.
Server capacity limits: Running out of server capacity due to regional demand spikes for our server setup.
These have been the primary issues we've focused our attentions towards resolvingduring the playtest intermission.
Finally, if you want to hear about when the playtest will resume, head to the end of this article.
Why did we pause the playtest?
In previous playtests, we had experienced some problems with server caps limiting the number of players who were able to access the game and resulting in a number of server related issues.
In preparation for this playtest, we significantly increased the number of servers, but were impacted by a different issue with a similar outcome.
Essentially, what happened was that, at the same time as our playtest, demand increased in the same region for the same server configuration we use.
This is a complex issue, but one that we plan to solve for when the playtest resumes by combining multiple nearby datacenters under a single virtual region.
(For example, in the case of the Europe region, that would mean not only servers in Frankfurt, but also, potentially, in the Netherlands or Belgium (we are still testing which setup works best).
Playtest bugs and issues
Throughout pt.1 of the playtest, we saw reports of a number of issues that hadn’t been present during our internal testing.
One of the more prominent issues was the result of player expeditions being registered incorrectly on the game server. Which resulted in behaviors such as:
getting stuck on the drop-in screen,
getting stuck on the death screen,
getting stuck on the extraction rope,
losing the trampler after an expedition,
receiving a prompt to return to an expedition they had just finished.
A lot of work has gone into improving this system to make it more stable, reliable, and capable of handling fully loaded servers.
What have we been doing since?
Since the playtest, we have focused on three areas that caused the most problems:
Bugs in expedition registration/removal on the game server
Increasing the pool of game servers
Addressing matchmaker module overload
Matchmaker module overload explained:
In situations where queues formed, the module responsible for distributing players across different game servers would, due to bugs, become fully overloaded.
Because of this, players in the region experienced issues with logging in, creating characters and tramplers, entering expeditions, and acquiring trampler compartments.
We have been working to address the root causes of this problem and to optimize this part of the system so that it doesn’t become a bottleneck when the playtest restarts.
When will the playtest restart?
Well, following some successful internal playtests over the last few days, we are happy to announce that the playtest will resume tomorrow (Saturday 25th)!
With all of that out of the way, we want to say a massive thank you to everyone who has participated in the last playtest, not just for your involvement but for your patience and understanding as we navigated these issues.
See you all back on Sophie tomorrow!
Hologryph/tinyBuild Games