Demigod Status Report: Saturday

By Frogboy on April 18, 2009 8:05:48 PM from

Most of the current status can be found here.

So I played a lot of games of Demigod online today. And the issues mentioned in the Friday status report were ones I experienced occasionally. I didn’t experience many problems with the exception of people getting kicked out of a Pantheon game. But I’ve gone through the responses here and forwarded them on to both Stardock’s NetDev team and GPG after doing my own analysis.

One of the things I’ve concluded we’re going to need to do to make things better quicker is to set up proxy servers for people who simply can’t directly connect. So the player would connect to us and then to that user. In theory, it should add relatively little lag but it would dramatically ease the pain some users, especially those overseas, are having.

The plan is to bring the team together tomorrow (Sunday) to finish up what we had on Friday which should help a lot with skirmish and pantheon.

One request I do have for the community: While we know statistically that multiplayer is working in most cases, there are a lot of people who cannot connect. Please refrain from telling users that they need to learn how to use their router or whatever. The fact is, people shouldn’t have to configure their routers to play a video game. We do ask those who are having problems to have as much patience as they can muster. Both Stardock and GPG are doing their best to make the multiplayer experience good for everyone.

Anyone familiar with Stardock can also tell you that we support our games – for years. We’re on the job.

+912 Karma | 44 Replies

Thanks for keeping us informed.I hope this works out.

Frogboy, PLease check my stats they are jammed in your system imo I cant search for my name and every game I do its not updated anymore. and it tell me im the RANK 0 ??

http://pantheon.demigodthegame.com/10942

My ID in the database is 10942

Any plans on removing bots from multiplayer? It totally ruins the game. They do not belong in tournament or skirmish.

Other than that I think the connection issues being ironed out will help. I do not have issues playing tournament games but trying to get connected in skirmish or anything just takes forever. We need a better/quicker gaming/matching system to move things along.

I believe that is part of the reason you introduced bots in the first place but really they just detract from the gaming experience. Plus a bot going 0-14 helps no one. I also assume that the stats and record keeping will be ironed out. My game name, and forum name, is Popsmear. My initial name was Popsmeared. For some reason it has not registered that change in your system and still calls me Popsmeared. Little things like this are just frustrating. Plus the interface between impulse and the game are not very fluent.

EDIT: Guess I need to RTFM. Still think bots should not even be an option but thank god you are removing them

There are a lot of issues in this game at launch. This is my first Stardock product and I am hoping it will all smooth out. As it feels right now however I paid $40 for a $20 game.

I have seen you on Neowin for a long time Frogboy and am familiar with you and your company. I hope this will all get worked out and be what it could be.

I live in USA east and I have my computer set as DMZ. Yesterday I was able to play a bunch only under skirmish, and today I've been able to play a skirmish maybe once every 2 hours.

However the biggest problem is I work hard to get a specific favor item and every few games my score resets back to 100. Very very frustrating. When will my progress be saved so I can get the item I want?

Having quite a bit of trouble joining and starting Custom Games. I've been successful at it but in the past hour or so the servers have not been cooperating. Was hoping to see something about this but FYI connections right now are having issues big time. It was working pretty well about an hour ago but whatever changed since then is keep me from getting into or hosting games.

Some games have multiple people connect and then one person never shows up in the lobby but everyone is connected. Some games have one person connect to some and not to others, it's very hard to get games started.

gaah ill buy it wen i get a new computer!

Like a Boss!

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 7

One bit of news that made my day today is that we can, with very little effort it appears (famous last words), set up these proxy servers around the world using Amazon's service or GoGrid or what have you. Players would simply connect through these servers instead and life would get a lot easier.

I'll keep you guys up to date. I'm not really a network guy so maybe someone else can comment on this.

And Amazon's service will not cost too much for Stardock ?
I don't know how it works but in the long term it must be an important expense.

im just hoping eventually favor points and pantheon games will be recorded legitimately and not on a some games count some games dont basis lol because im tired of -505 favor points one game then 25 points another game on top of at least 9 out of the last 10 pantheon games played not seeming to count for anything, playing a game is just playing a game if u cant measure it to any outside accomplishment like games won or favor points earned. if its not done correctly or honestly whats the point?

i cant wait, the only not-fun thing in this game is the wait time to get a game started. this should lessen that should it not?

quoting post

4. Favor Points and such. There’s some annoying stuff happening with favor points which is related to the ranking system in Demigod as well. First off, we plan to reset the rankings at some point when we enter Epoch 1 (we are in Epoch 0 presently game-wise, I’ll explain Epochs later but in short, every so often we’re going to reset the rankings, save the results as an epoch and go from there). In Epoch 1, custom games won’t count anymore as there’s too many ways to game it.

Does this mean there's no point saving up favor points and trying to buy the expensive favor items because we're just going to have them reset periodically?

Just use a traditional host/client system. It works well, only one person has to configure their router or whatever, and the difference in responsiveness is not that noticeable.

Um, most (if not all) RTS are going to use P2P, because of the bandwidth issues.

Quoting Ranbir,

reply 24

Thanks for this. This is probably the most intimate consumer-service exchange I've ever experienced and it makes me feel like I matter. Thank you.

Exactly my feelings as well. Keep up the great work!

Peace,

Cor

Yes, this really makes you feel like someone at Stardock has come along and done this like, just because they care.

Love it! Thanks Frogboy, and thanks so much Stardock and Gas Powered Games.

Loving the game, but multiplayer is very hit or miss for the setup working.

Also, my stats don't show up at all.

Quoting comanoodle,

reply 12

Wait, so instead of using a direct host/client system like used in most RTS games, you are going to use a host/client system for the people who can't connect, and P2P for the rest? Seems very roundabout. Your original goal with using P2P was reducing latency... if you do this, it's pointless.

Just use a traditional host/client system. It works well, only one person has to configure their router or whatever, and the difference in responsiveness is not that noticeable.

By proxy server he means connecting to some over server that connects to the other user you probably can't connect to directly. It's just a hop in your connections, not a change in the P2P architecture.

Changing from a P2P game engine to a Server/Client multiplayer engine may actually be impossible now, depending on how the game was written.

My experience so far is that the multiplayer game works great once everyone can get into it. It's the getting into a game that is so painful. I just outright cannot join most games being listed in the custom games. When I can, it takes a substantial amount of time to negotiate the connections. And then inevitably, someone has a connection issue and has to drop and re-log in. But once we get the game going, it works great.

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Demigod Status Report: Saturday