Demigod: Day 8 Status Report!

By Frogboy on April 23, 2009 8:56:38 PM from

Me (Draginol is my other handle) and my friend at GPG working on a problem

So today we got a pretty good new update from Gas Powered Games that we’ve been testing with today.

A lot of the changes have to do with tolerances. How much time should the game wait for others to join before it assumes they’re too slow and kicks them out before the game even starts? How much time should it wait for someone to join a lobby or a game before it says “No, they’re not going to get in?” and blocks them?

So today we played a lot of games with the new build and saw a lot of improvements. Thanks to tricks we’ve picked up from last week when the servers were being crushed, we have gotten a lot better at simulating peek server hours where the connection stuff is most likely to fail.

Right now, the issue we’re trying to fix is where people join a custom game and because they joined at the same time, they are not connected to each other. That’s what we’re play testing right now and the results look very promising.

Developing games is like a strategy game

Like a strategy game, I’m in the unpleasant position of having to make choices on what people work on and what doesn’t.

If, by now, you have concluded that Demigod is an unusual game in many ways, you’re right. Typically, the publisher (Stardock) releases the game, collects data and sends them off to the game’s developer (Gas Powered Games) and waits for a “patch” which the publisher then puts through QA and then releases.

Demigod, as you probably have surmised, has been developed differently. Early last year, I pushed for Demigod to have more single-player elements. But over time, it became clear that everyone involved (at both Stardock and GPG) really enjoyed it more as a multiplayer game. But in my mind, if you’re going to do that, you need to have lots of cool things like match making, and tournament stuff and long-term expandability.

That’s where Stardock started getting involved in development little by little. At first, it was just a single developer. Then another, and then another. Pretty soon, we were adding overlays to present more player data, developing a friends list and other community features along with a multiplayer match-making, pantheon stuff, etc.

Stardock and GPG get along great. But you are talking about two veteran development teams working on some pretty sophisticated stuff at great distances. That’s where I’ve increasingly become involved in pressing both Stardock and GPG development teams on what needs to go in when. So if you have an issue with Demigod, don’t blame anyone but me because since the game’s release, I’ve essentially taken on the overall development prioritization for good or ill.

Ramifications

So for example, we know that most people can connect to other people. We know this for a fact. The problem is that for a significant percentage of people, it’s #$%# flakey.

You know what I mean. You set up a custom game and it becomes a fiasco getting people into that custom game because people aren’t connected. Or you try to get a pantheon game going and players get kicked out or you end up with 2 on 2 with a bunch of bots. Or the same thing with skirmish.

And then there’s the people who just get NAT failed messages or who just can’t connect no matter what.

I’ve gotten a lot of email telling me that I’m “killing Demigod” because I keep making things out to be “worse than they are”. It’s not my job to paint a happy picture. I’m an engineer, not a marketer. And I hang out enough on the chat channel and on the forums to know that the problems mentioned above are real, must be addressed ASAP!

So anyway, during this week the big architecture change going on is the UDP proxy server setup. But IT has told me that it will take a few days to do proper load testing on it (i.e. what happens when there’s 20,000 people on there?)

But the tactical things I’ve been focusing Stardock/GPG onto this week are fixing the connection issues for those who play but find the game flakey, making Pantheon and Skirmish not have bots in them if people have experience, working on the favor point tracking, etc.

Since I have only N developers at Stardock and M at GPG, that means that if I’m focusing them on those things, other things will go more slowly (including the Proxy stuff).

Tonight’s build is being tested

So like on Tuesday, we do have a new build, this one much more significant because it includes a new Demigod.exe too, but we’re testing it and since it’s 9pm as I write this, it’s not a good idea to put it up this late so it looks like it’ll be tomorrow.

Status Updates long term

I’ve read comments that some people do like these status reports. Since we’re starting to come to the end of the serious connection problems (it may not seem like to some externally but it really is getting pretty close) I was wondering if people would like to continue to see these things when we start to talk about ideas for new Demigods, new items, new multiplayer modes, how you’d like to see clans and groups and friends handled. I really don’t mind doing these but obviously don’t want people to get sick of reading these walls of text.

Cheers all and see you tomorrow!

+912 Karma | 116 Replies

Frogboy these updates are what seperate the boys from the men of developement teams. We all know Demigod has takin quite a lashing from some highly acclaimed review sites, and we all know that Demigod had a pretty rough start. I'm not everyone, but I can say that due to these daily status updates I am loving this game and it's future. No game out there has the support like this. You give us hope, understanding, and CONTROL of what seems to be going on with the game and where it's future lies. I know id love future updates after these immediate problems are solved when it comes to bug fixing, reports, new content and new ideas for Demigod. Thanks for all your hard work!

quoting post

I really don’t mind doing these but obviously don’t want people to get sick of reading these walls of text.

No need to worry there. Some of us are used to dealing with Fortresses of Text and even Crystalline Mountains of TEXT. Yes, there are some who don't like reading walls of text, but you're not requiring them to read these so they're not burdened. It costs you relatively little time/energy to write them compared to the benefits of doing them - you keep people informed.

Humans don't like not knowing what's going on, to the point where they'll fabricate simple fiction to get rid of this feeling. For whatever reason, people generally look down on others when weaving those "simple fiction" explanations for why the situation is bad. Therefore, keeping the player base informed wards away the little maliceful fictions that tend to creep around everywhere.

Keep up the good work and thank you for caring about us.

Like updates, want more.

Status reports are absolutely fantastic! No matter how long, they are not a wall of text. More info you give us, more good will you gain.

Only reason i havent gone through the refund procedure (and barring that AMEX dispute claim).

EDIT: Ok, i lied, the reason above AND that GalCiv2 and Sins kicked so much ***

yes Brad, we love those status reports, thanks for asking and yes please, keep going on, i suggest you make a journal-blog, so everyone can bookmark the page where all status reports are listed in chronological order

your average gamer

Wall O' Text =

tl;dr

I'll start with the whole "anybody who doesn't want status reports should just stfu and not read them" bit. They're fantastic; the type of gamer that cares about the company they're getting their game from to begin with ALL love to hear what's going on.

But my purpose of this post is to ask what I feel to be a very valid question. Why are there bots in pantheon at all? It's Demigod's ladder system, why are you worrying about noobies doing badly in the ladder system? They have single player, skirmishes, and custom games to get good at the game. If you start up Demigod for the first time and jump right into the Pantheon, you've helped screw your team over regardless of how many bots there are on either side. I understand that the problems you're trying to fix apply to skirmishes, too, but the Pantheon should be a different can of worms.

Any half decent player can pick up on when an enemy is a bot versus an actual player, and pick on the bot until they're overpoweringly strong. Even if this is not the intention, it can sometimes not be helped as the bots can be pretty dumb sometimes..

I'm suggesting bots not participate in Pantheon creation. What happens when a player drops mid game is separate issue, and on that, if they are to stay as bots that people can take advantage of, could we at least have a way of finding out who has been disconnected? Some players would actually avoid spam killing a bot to get powerful. Think of the honorable thing to do when somebody's "feeding" the opposite team, as an example.

Keep up the good work Brad & friends, the level of effort you are all putting forth actually makes me proud to be your consumer.

I also humbly request the next pantheon not be started until all issues with the recording of stats and favor are ironed out...Some of us take it very personally that we've never lost one of the 10 pantheon games we've finally gotten into, (man oh man is regulus cheap ) and still show up with a 1-2 W-L record! No pantheon > bugged pantheon! (Amirite?)

dang with all the problems with the game I have to say Im pretty please with your game and your company. If you didnt give us these updates what would we as your community have to look foward to.

If you didnt do this during these hard times, I might have not forgiven you . When you go this far for your playerbase, its hard to get mad. Good job guys

Please keep the info coming, it is nice for a dev to share info consistantly like this. Keep up the good work!

Great status report(s). One thing I have noticed monitoring the traffic is that a lot of players give out invalid IP's like 192.168.x.x as their IP. So when I look at my connection tables in the router, there is often times a player that has 192.168.x.x as their IP. These players always cause the game to fail to start and is often why you will see one player that can't connect to anyone, but everyone else is connected and then it just hangs.

As far as AI players for newbies, while the idea would seem to have merit on the surface, I think in the end its just annoying for everyone when AI players are present. Newbies will learn much much faster and have much more fun if it's all real players. AI players are really not smart and teach bad play habits. Anyone who has played a bunch of single player and then jumped into multiplayer knows exactly what I'm talking about. My suggestion would be to eliminate AI players for online mp games, except for perhaps custom games where players could specify them explicitly.

First of all I would like to mention that I really like these status reports. It's nice to know what's going on with the game. I would like to see patch logs, to see what's been changed if it's not to mutch to ask.

Last but not least, I would like to thank you all for the hard work.

I must admit I have been very frustrated by this game. I understand that games have bugs when released, but when they are this severe it is not easy to sit back and hope that the game will be patched sometime in the future. This post definitely eases my concerns. It is nice to know what is being worked on and when to expect it to be done.

Thank you very much.

192.168.x.x

192.168 is not an invalid IP, it's a local IP for someone who is using a router and it's probably all their computer can give them. Now, if you mean you're seeing 192.168 on your end as the sending / recieving address for someone across the internet, that is a problem.

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Demigod: Day 8 Status Report!