Burrito of Peace wrote on Sep 25, 2023, 18:40:Jim wrote on Sep 25, 2023, 17:07:
Why wasn't this caught in advance? Because 200 people accessing a server is very different from 500000 people accessing the same server. To better predict things like this many companies will run a network test where a larger audience and come in and test the game. That might get 50k or 100k people, which may find some issues, but that is still short of being a realistic test.
There are, quite literally, entire test suites designed around this scenario. This was absolutely testable, it probably wasn't done because "the specs say it should work". It was short-sighted.
You can do IOPS testing, bandwidth testing, load balance testing, DB load testing, and on and on. ALL of it is testable and at massive scale. For shits and giggles, we once tested my stack and the network stack against what would happen if the entire population of the State of Texas hit at exactly the same second. Which was 30.5 million connections all at once.
Digitalfiends wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 14:25:HorrorScope wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 13:44:
So many publicly traded companies are hurting for growth, they are trying to monetize anything. My company is now wanting subscriptions on some products and micro-fee's on api's which we never had. We also raise our rates every year, that up to this point was supposed to be all we needed to recoup costs. They then try to compare our model to Netfilx and they aren't the same at all, it's like telling a 1/3 of the story when they do that. But it is either find more revenue or layoffs, because Wall Street doesn't sleep.
The continual pursuit of constant economic growth is leading to so many societal problems (corporate greed, mistreatment of workers, poor mental health, layoffs, etc) and at a certain point, is unstainable. The singular pursuit of maximizing profits has definitely led to the downfall of many companies.
I used to love working with Unity but honestly, Unreal Engine is the better product as a whole. I think it's going to be hard for Unity to come back from this. I do hope they survive, if only to provide an alternative/competition to Unreal Engine, but I'm not optimistic.
Orogogus wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 11:41:HorrorScope wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 10:43:That design element is a lot older than mobile gaming. The original 1981 game (originally written in Pascal) is an overlay option for this remake, so it's definitely not a mobile thing here. It's just how dungeon crawlers were for 7 Wizardries, 3 Bard's Tales and 2 Might & Magics. I think Dungeon Master in 1987 was the first crawler where monsters were on the map, but it didn't become standardized until Might & Magic 3 and Eye of the Beholder, both in 1991. Wizardry 7 in 1992 was probably the last major game with random encounters out of nowhere, except for games from Japanese developers, who seem to have really liked the old formula.
I own quite a few of these myself, with this Wizardry game the one thing that turns me off is the pop-up enimies on top of what looks like always the same background. That yells mobile game to me.
Jim wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 13:13:
eh, any time a company makes major changes like this... it is probably because they are losing money and someone gets tasked with turning the company around. similar to the D&D ruleset licensing fiasco. when you look at unreal engine every .1 release they do is big news. Unity, not so much. What have they done recently? their engine can be used to produce great looking games, but it also produces a lot of junk.
Nailbender wrote on Aug 3, 2023, 06:09:WannaLogAlready wrote on Aug 3, 2023, 00:17:
For some days I've been replaying **Divinity II Director's Cut** as a hero later able to dragon morph for crazy flight and massive battles (*not* the excellent Original Sin 1&2*).
Ahh, love Larian.- High Resol. Textures, moddb.com.
- Exe hex edited: mind reading XP cost free, one and all get read-.
- Did away with XP and level cap: skills and attributes for all 5 classes maxed in a semigod-like hero: begins human enough, later super jumps, etc.
- 4GB patch, and PhysX from Support folder applied: zero crashes, as usual in my games.
No hurry, then, BG3. Oh, what a sweet time.
Wait, are all those additions that come built in with the director's cut, or did you add those yourself?
I remember playing the game for some time back in the day, and getting stuck in a really difficult battle... Maybe it's time to try the DC version of it?
Jim wrote on Jul 21, 2023, 00:07:
I am betting VR will be big money one day... 15 years after meta abandons the money sinkhole. Today it is just stupid and nothing they have done shows any appeal. This is like another star citizen except where the suckers are the shareholders and not the customers.
DarkCntry wrote on Jun 20, 2023, 20:36:Bill Borre wrote on Jun 20, 2023, 19:56:I doubt it...
I wonder if someday they may just drop entertainment altogether and become a sports gaming company.
I see this as a response to the current lawsuit facing the EA Sports side of things. It would appear that divesting EA Entertainment from EA Sports is a way to keep money separate between them so they aren't required to pay "more money" if/when they lose them.
VaranDragon wrote on Jun 17, 2023, 06:34:
Seasons only really made sense to me in Path of Exile, where basically a whole new mechanic was introduced each season (Not to mention new items, maps, etc.) In D2 it was fun making a new Hardcore character each season, because it was a race to 99 (not to mention a race to stay alive) 99 was insanely hard to reach in D2, especially in HC.
I play almost exclusively on Hardcore, but the insane grind-fest that is D4 does not allow for any real fun in that mode, so for now at least I'm playing on softcore.
jdreyer wrote on May 23, 2023, 20:33:
It's not to say that you couldn't replicate the functioning of a meat brain in silicon: you absolutely could. We're just not there yet, and not close to being there yet and won't be there until well past our lifetimes.