As the number of players in the game increased, I noticed some issues with the histograms. Initially, the histograms started growing as expected, but over time, they began to look incorrect. Some lower percentiles appeared nonsensical, which was pointed out by another user. It seemed as though half of the histogram data was missing, prompting me to investigate further.
I discovered that the issue stemmed from the steam_download_scores function, which only retrieves the top 100 scores. This limitation is likely in place to reduce network traffic. When the game had a small number of players, this restriction didn’t affect the leaderboards, so the issue went unnoticed. However, as the player base grew, the impact became evident.
To address this, I implemented a solution that downloads scores in chunks of 100 across 10 calls, allowing the game to retrieve up to 1,000 scores. This approach resolves the problem for now, though I may increase this limit in the future if needed.
When loading a leaderboard, the game now takes up to 10 ticks (or until the leaderboard bars stop rearranging) to ensure all data is properly downloaded. Once complete, the leaderboard is saved locally on your computer. This allows you to view it instantly the next time without requiring a reload.