August - September: Server Changes

Good morning community! We hope your Friday the 13th is a safe one. While late updates can feel a bit frightening this update is less than spooky. We are happy to report on a major internal update which was completed on the 7th of September.

This month’s update is primarily a technical one that will entail our collective work on the backend over the last two months. We’ll also explain the server merges and the server updates we mentioned in previous posts. We have improved the development workflow which in turn provided us with a performance boost for the Development and Production servers.

Server merge and upgrades: Our engineers have been diligently working to help us get the server transfers established for migration and implementation. Originally The Repopulation was spread across multiple servers and clusters. We now have the development server onto the same cluster as Test, Staging and Production (live). This means that though there is a clear separation between the different worlds they are now on the same server cluster.

Workflow: The improvements to the workflow has been achieved by merging servers and removing much of the old historical files. This has shown that we are able to push to test much quicker and now have most of the ‘Live Update’ system built into HE working again.

This will help us cut server costs as well as having created a more seamless workflow from Dev to Production.

Total File Size: The primary benefit with this work is that we have been able to reduce the file size down to about 62%, by removing a lot of the bloat from the previous pre-2016 builds. With this move we have reduced the total size of the Repopulation’s server file size from over 1tb down to 60gb There is still quite a bit to go yet, but this also helps performance on the blade and client side. It all falls under one big umbrella.

With the removal of a lot of the old unused files and history we have multiple benefits which include but not limited to; eliminates a large amount of erroneous errors coming from old unused scripts, eliminates or reduces the number of conflicts between old unused scripts and newer ones, resume full usage of the DOM/GOM tools (allows us to use, save and compile our scripts for the game systems), find and fix issues with prior changes made to the environment and astronomy system (or revert back to the HE defaults), and much much more.

Databases: Both The Repopulation Development and Production servers also have new and clean databases. This took several months to clean and repair many old and broken game tables that goes back to 2011. This will not “fix” the game, but it does get us a lot closer and enables us to work and develop in parallel to the old/current systems.

The new dB, in addition to the amount of erroneous data being removed, works hand in hand with the file reduction mentioned above. It also allows us to fully utilize the DOM and GOM. This means that we will be working on fixing bugs and that we can patch and work on creating the new container system.

Testing: Pending on the evaluation of the new workflow and hardware, we will give you the information that contains details to an approximation of when the next game update will be planned and what it will include. Before we release this information we must test all scripts that were reverted back to HE default, the files we removed as well as server hardware changes. This may result in some adjustments needing to be made to optimize our development and deploy process.

The testing will consist of resuming (slowly at first) the development of the island. Any issues we find regarding these changes will be addressed at that time.

Game Update: At this time the next game update is planned to include: 1st Phase of the Island, the new container system foundation, New art, current art optimization and removal of old art that we replace.

Most of the missions will be the same or very similar to what is in the current Training Facility. A few things we will be adjusting to fit the island a bit more and allow you to see what is to come. The primary point for this first phase of the Island is to build and test the areas, seamless changes (or reverts back to default HE systems) and to show off a tiny bit of what is to come.

Known Issues: There are several known issues that will not be solved with this internal update. However, it will make things a lot easier for us to work through and find causes, conflicts or missing files. The more we clean up, the better and easier it will become so we can target bugs and push out more hotfixes and updates.

Current issues that we know will not be solved with this internal update:

The Client delay: There is a client delay issue that hits the game from time to time. It can last a few hours to a few days. For those that have not been in-game for a while, we’ll explain. When you use a skill or any other button push, (skill, talking to an NPC, containers, etc) it can take between .5 to 5 seconds before the call is sent to the server. System revamps will help narrow down and solve this issue. It may take a few things to reduce or pinpoint and fix it. However, we believe it may be a combination of a few areas that the scripts run in a sort of a round-robin type way. For those that are familiar, think of an old token ring setup for computer networking. With the new combined server set up, this will help make the process much easier for everyone.

Crafting Database Usability/Update: The crafting Database will be able to be updated once we finish the last bits of cleanup. It is currently still at a previous version. The plan is to get that updated when we do our first push test to Production (live).

Screamer chat spam: Many of the default HeroEngine scripts are working again. However, around 25-30% of the default scripts are still not set to default and fully functional as intended. These, for now, can still be ignored until we have done a full cleanup or new ones are found after the next game update.

We are eager to begin implementing some of the revamps we’ve spoken of in previous updates. While we would love to hit the ground running we’ll need to begin slowly. Our initial work will be testing to ensure the new production server is stable. Things look very good in this early stage, and we look forward to keeping you updated. Keep your eyes peeled for a survey and sneak peeks of new art soon. As always we invite you to discuss the update with us on our personal forum, Steam forum, and discord. We look forward to your input.

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