2/28/2022 - devlog
Michi snapshots with actors, Fabian implements ghost plots, and Nick plays tag.
Michi (molp)
Two weeks ago, when we release the Atlas update, I wrote about the performance problems we are currently seeing with the server. It was this devlog.
Right now, we have two types of actors that together make up almost 75% of the loading times: users and companies. The company actor is the obvious one: every player runs a company in the game and each company consists of many sub behaviors that deal with the various aspects of the game: bases, storage, contracts, ships, contributions, accounting, etc. etc.
Every player also has a user actor in tandem to their company actor. These actors deal with everything related to the player minus the company. This encompasses, for example, communication, parts of the rating, screens on the desktop and stacks in the mobile version, and so on.
Since the user actor has fewer components, we started to implement snapshotting for it first, as a second proof of concept after the system actors, which already use snapshotting. I deployed the changes today, and while we saw great results on some user actors, others, especially those with lots of data, failed. We are currently investigating and trying to fix the issues. Unfortunately this means that nodes will restart from time to time, causing everyone connected to these nodes to drop out and resulting in hydration timeout errors. So, I kindly ask for your patience, while we figure everything out. Thanks!
Fabian (Counterpoint)
I spent most of last week implementing the previously mentioned "ghost plots" for the upcoming Steam launch. Basically this is a mechanism that will prevent us from running into a "too many new players" deadlock, no matter how many new players there are at a time. A separate, but related feature that'll come with the possibility for these "hidden" (i.e. not visible on the a planet's surface) bases: Each company's public profile will hold a list of all base locations!
Nick
Over the weekend, we had another influencer video come out from Zlewikk; I had been in negotiation with him for awhile so really happy to finally have this video out. There should be another video out this week for you Spanish speakers, and I will probably post it in next week's devlog.
Aside from the other usual marketing activities, I spent some time optimizing our Steam page "tags." These are the keywords that you find on the page that help Steam and players know what kind of game it is. After doing some research and even taking a free online Steam class, I reworked the tags so that they associate us with 3 chosen games: EVE, Factorio, and Dyson Sphere Program. Of course there are many other games that could have been chosen, but we decided as a team that these would be the 3 that we wanted to closely associate with. After that, it was kind of game of trying to organize the keywords so that all 3 games appeared on the "More Games Like This" section. Sometimes if I just moved one keyword down a space or two, the whole result would change. I think I got it though since after checking today with the team all 3 games do appear in the section for most of us.
Also don't forget about the "Name THAT Planet" community event that is going on now. We will be voting on a name for LG-913e!
As always: we'd love to hear what you think: join us on Discord or the forums!
Happy trading!