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 Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2011 8:27 am
Honestly, no, I don't think the game could handle it.
Yeah, the tutorial is horrible, and there are still a few game-stopping glitches out there.
But the issue, more, is just the lag.
Look when zOMG! puts out an event.
It's still just a fraction of the site, but they have to put up 6 or 7 servers, which still get slowed down to hell.
zOMG!, from a purely technical standpoint, can't handle having how many players the site wants it to.
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Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 2:50 pm
I'm tired of seeing this and thinking of nothing else.
Main site announcements aren't a problem anymore at least. Well, getting stuff to announce seem to be however.
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Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 8:17 pm
Quintafeira12 I'm tired of seeing this and thinking of nothing else. Main site announcements aren't a problem anymore at least. Well, getting stuff to announce seem to be however.
Which is precisely why I'm probably moving this tomorrow. I'm too late to get Friday traffic, but at least we'll get the weekend forumgoers - hopefully it'll get a little attention. sweatdrop
I'm also thinking about letting it sit in z!F for about a week, then making another in Site Feedback, to reach the slightly larger audience - just because this includes the mainsite, as well. Does that sound fairly reasonable?
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Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2011 10:42 am
SykoCaster
Honestly, no, I don't think the game could handle it.
Yeah, the tutorial is horrible, and there are still a few game-stopping glitches out there.
But the issue, more, is just the lag.
Look when zOMG! puts out an event.
It's still just a fraction of the site, but they have to put up 6 or 7 servers, which still get slowed down to hell.
zOMG!, from a purely technical standpoint, can't handle having how many players the site wants it to.
Sometimes I think of how many potential players have already been driven away from the game merely by the lag issue, and it makes me cringe. I stumbled upon zOMG! in the beginning of November. Yeah, that didn't go very well for me. Actually, it didn't "go", at all. I was in a screen, I couldn't go up, I couldn't go down, nor left or right, nor shoot the things Leon was telling me to shoot: behold, the infamous Lag Monster! Indeed. Lag was the first thing I ever saw from zOMG!. It was not pretty and it was not at all attractive. Well, what did I do? I went to look at the forum (step 1!) to see what was being said there and whether other people were actually able to play this game, or whether it was "supposed" to be broken. I didn't post, but, from lurking around, it immediately became abundantly clear that this was a problem for everyone and that it was hopefully temporary. So, I took step 2: I made a mental note "Come back and try the game when the Halloween event is over, it might actually work then." And I did. And I got hooked. BUT. The problem is, many people would not take step 1 (there are a lot of people trying / playing the game without ever coming to the forum), let alone step 2. For many people, if a game doesn't work, they just simply close the window and go on their merry way, seeking their entertainment elsewhere. With most people, a game gets ONE chance and one chance only. That is how the majority of the public thinks, and therefore, pardon me for stating the obvious, a first impression is of vital importance. If efforts are made to draw people towards zOMG!, the game has got to work. Because if it doesn't work, we don't get more players, we get more bad publicity. So I guess my question to the more technically-savvy people here is: can it work? In the post I quoted, SykoCaster says: no, with the current state of technical affairs it cannot work, the servers can't handle a large influx of players. What I want to know is: how possible is it to change the current technical state of affairs to prevent an event from becoming a lagfest? What exactly would be needed for that, and is it in any way within the resources available? On a positive note, I do get the impression that the whole "lagggg" thing has been less prominent lately. Yay for cycling the servers during the weekend!! Apart from that, does anyone know whether steps have been taken to avoid lag? Because I've really hardly been affected by lag at all lately - except last weekend on one specific server (don't remember which one). And on a different positive note (but maybe some people will call me "naive" again for this): I would hope that the experience with the Halloween event has been an inspiration to take precautions for the next event. Does anyone have information on any specifics about that? Yes, I know, I'm asking more questions than I'm giving answers. I am a very inquisitive dino. wink
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Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2011 8:38 pm
Well, one small tweak (which fits in with the tutorial repair, actually) that would reduce the number of lag complaints would be having the game explain the Graphic Quality and Ring Animations settings - low framerate is actually the cause of most 'lag' that occurs in the game, but it's something that's mostly outside of the control of the developers. By explaining that those features exist specifically to make the game run better, the tutorial could clear up a lot of 'lag' trouble all on its own.
Of course, that does nothing for true lag. As always, the main cause of true lag is server degeneration, which apparently comes from the fact that our servers don't properly dump unused variables - these variables pile up, over time, taking up memory that could be used for processing, causing those processes to run more slowly. Without knowing exactly how the game is programmed, it's hard for me to say just what could be causing the issue, but it seems to me there are only a couple possibilities:
The Garbage Collector isn't working right. Honestly, I don't know how that would even happen - unless the Servers' ability to run the program has been corrupted, itself. To be quite frank, I don't know the first thing about Servers, so I don't know if that issue would be as easy to fix as it would on a normal machine (re-installing the runtime environment), or if it would require something drastic like replacing the whole unit. eek
Or: the Garbage Collector's working fine, and the offending data isn't being properly marked for Garbage Collection. This would be a developer oversight, involving leaving open references to unneeded objects, or leaving up Event listeners on an object you're trying to delete. As much as I hate to pin blame on the developers, this seems like the more likely of the two issues, and also the more difficult to fix - it requires manually looking through code for places where objects aren't being disposed of properly. Honestly, I doubt anyone there has the time for that, so I fear that if this is the cause, we're out of luck; at least for a permanent solution. whee
Of course, cycling the Servers consistently is a perfectly effective solution (though wasteful, I imagine - cycling Servers likely isn't as easy as it sounds) - if the game's population does pick up, it may simply become a more regular occurrence. Of course, that only works so far - if the game becomes very popular (which is everyone's goal, I believe) they could be cycling the servers every day, or multiple times a day, just to keep up with traffic. No, that's not necessarily a worry right now, but it's something to consider in the future.
Events are a problem regardless, though - there's just so much information going back and forth that the Servers can't keep up. I believe what slowed the game so much during Hallowe'en, specifically, was Server-hopping - that is, the Server dealing with lots of large data transfers simultaneously, when hoardes of players would all try to join the same Server at the same time. Perhaps... Partitioning the Server, somehow, to handle loading requests and actual gameplay separately? That way, no matter how many people were loading the game, it would only slow down the loading, never the gameplay; if possible, make it a one-way barrier, so that gameplay processes can still utilise unused memory from the loading sector. Of course, that still doesn't account for general lag, but...
Nothing will. We can try to stop Servers from degrading. We can try to keep loading requests from intefering with gameplay. We can try to make an individuals graphics run more smoothly. But when it comes down to it, the game's always going to have trouble processing lots of information at the same time - because computers always have that problem. The only solution is more power. More servers. Better processing. Of course, I imagine the game would have to be a lot more popular before Gaia would be ready to devote any more of those - and we're right back into the resources Catch-22... neutral
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Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2011 3:46 am
z!F thread is open... 3nodding
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