Hello Everyone!
As everyone knows, our server has been down for the better part of the entire time since launch. For a MMO, that's devastating, it's not like you guys can jump on single player and check things out! ABD: A Beautiful Day is a entirely PVP ran, operated, and conducted environment; meaning, there are no NPC AI (Non-Player Character Artificial Intelligence) for you to interact with so we haven't gone the single player route. Below is an explanation as to the problem, and the solutions we are faced with.
The networking architecture we were using showed promising capability of running the game, in fact, it actually DID run the game. As you can see in the stats below, this is how the game was running for a month going 24/7 at peak simulation pressure:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4l1pkwx3f52xdg3/DevBlog8_21_15_1.png?dl=0
For OVER a month actually, we had the game running on Steam for our internal testing purposes at peak capacity, yet ten minutes after we go live it dies off on us. In the graph, you can see the volume spikes of players joining, this was our testing periods with the community.
We found that through a reason who could not have anticipated or foreseen, our networking method was a land mine for us. With this being said, we are switching over to a rock solid solution that is much more common and widely used. Infact, it might actually support the post-Alpha volume of players per server instance! 200 players versus 10,000, that's just wild. Anyway, Allen and Dmitry (Our two programmers) are working on getting this issue swapped over to the new architecture as fast as we can. What does that involve?
Switching over to a new architecture involves breaking the ENTIRE game down, modifying various components to fit the new framework, then plugging features one after another into the new game structures. At the state of the game as of launch, I was very confident that things were going to go very smoothly. As of now, it appears we will have to take the next week to fully implement the higher-level components of the game. Which is great, because most of you won't survive past T1-T2 for at least a couple weeks, the games very hard. What does this mean though?
I am told we will be up and running TODAY! It won't be until later today (US EST), as we want to pack in as many of the existing features as possible into the new networking framework so that we are live for the whole weekend with as much content as we can. On a #sadface note, it looks like we will be taking the entire projected timeframe to squash these launch bugs and problematic hiccups. So next week we will still be squashing bugs, and then we can get back into asset creation and feature refinement.
As usual, we are available in the games Group Chat if you have questions, concerns, comments, or ideas. I'll be in there playing with you guys this weekend as well!
In other news:
Reactions for the little amount of time we all get in ABD these days were very positive, all around everyone seems quite excited. I logged the first recorded kill in the game, and the guy I killed was actually THE REASON why we were able to find the server error - so a huge round of applause for @Andrew everybody! Andrew is now famous, we will be making a statue in his honor to be found at the upcoming capital of the Homosapiens!
The environment has been improved significantly, capitals are coming, and we have new art inbound.
Lastly, we have hired another programmer this week and anticipate a couple more coming onboard over the next couple of weeks to help speed this all up. Once Dmitry decides to stay on, I will make a formal announcement to welcome him to the team.
As usual, a huge thanks to everyone for their amazing patience, respect, and interest in the game. I'm sorry this was such a long read, but this week has been very awkward for all of us, and to those just coming into the game, it's important there is a record of it.
-Robert Bonner
Creative Producer - ABD
G.A.M. Entertainment, LLC.
www.GagAMaggotEnt.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtewSF1jqHRmdrP-uEDQ76Q/about?view_as=public
IndieDB: http://www.indiedb.com/games/a-beautiful-day
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Twitter: www.twitter.com/gam_ent
Steam Store: http://store.steampowered.com/app/384920/
Steam Greenlight: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=462500400