8/22/2022 - devlog
Michi talks memory consumption and faction contracts while Nick works on the PRO license comparision table and website changes.
Michi (molp)
I continued to work on improving the server performance this week. I already wrote a bit about it in last week's devlog. Besides the accounting system, we found other places where we can improve the memory consumption. To our astonishment, the behavior responsible for notifications came up in the memory analysis as well. Usually in-game notifications are removed after they have been marked read and seen for a while. It seems though, there are players who never mark the notifications as seen, and thus they stay around forever. In some cases we have found companies with 25k+ unseen notifications. The fix was simple: Even if notifications are not marked as seen and read, they will be removed after 45 days.
We also identified a potential problem in the behavior responsible for the commodity exchange trading. This behavior is used by both player run companies and by the automatic market makers. It seems that parts of the trading information, like order matches, are not deleted properly and stack up as well. We haven't gotten around to fixing this yet, but it is on the list.
All in all, we are pretty happy with the recent performance improvements. The general stability is very high, and we haven't seen an unscheduled restart in the last five days. Let's hope it stays like this for a while ;)
Besides the performance issues, I started working on faction contracts. Faction contracts are an addition to the recently added custom contracts, where faction agents send contract offers to players on a regular basis. These contracts are primarily intended for new players to increase their income, better utilize their starter ships, and get to know the game's mechanics. Faction contracts can be accepted by any license type. Older player will also receive faction contract offers from time to time. I just started with the implementation of the feature, and I intend to go into detail in the devlogs as the implementation progresses.
Nick
Last week I continued to do more toying around with the pricing pages and decided to work on the PRO license comparision table. Right now, the chart really makes the PRO license look amazing and free verision look very vanilla and bare bones. Previously we were trying to really push the PRO license on new players, but we know that players will always check out the game for free first and then decide if it's worth it to upgrade or not to PRO. I decided to completely redo this table with three categories: Free, Basic, and PRO and also stress that PRO is geared towards players that have already put a significant investment into the game and want more to do. The Free license column will be completley reworked to show off the best aspects of the game that is available for everyone. The table will become less of a comparision table and more of a tool to understand how each license works and who it is for. I think this will help drive home that idea that Prosperous Universe can be played at different speeds and is not pay-to-win.
As always: we'd love to hear what you think: join us on Discord or the forums!
Happy trading!