Letter from the Game Director - June 2010

Letter from the Game Director - June 2010

In last month’s letter one of the things we mentioned was that we would soon start the next integration of Dreamworld engine technology into the game. Quite a few of you have asked via email and on the forums exactly what that entails, so this month I wanted to take the opportunity to explain a little more about what that means for the game, and why we do it this way.



Developing a technology platform



As I mentioned last time, continuing to improve the performance of our underlying technology is something that is very important to us. We have a lot of great experience with the pros and cons of MMO development and we feel it would be wasteful to not build on that to give our games the chance to be even better in the future. This is where the Dreamworld integrations come in.



In many ways this is our commitment to the future. All too often in modern development the ‘here and now’ is prioritised above all else at the expense of developing a more stable (and more powerful and flexible) system for future development. It is an easy trap to fall into, you always want deep down to please the players now, but doing something like this requires taking a longer term view.



So in this case it means that once in a while we make this commitment to take a development cycle out of the normal schedule and dedicate it to improving the platform upon which we build our games. A content update is very tangible, you can see new items, new dungeons, new quests and all those things and gauge what you are getting, an integration update like this is a little more intangible for those outside, so I thought it worth using this month’s letter to take this topic and elaborate a little more.



What we Integrate



In general our Dreamworld technology integrations provide two or three things for us:

• 
  Improved performance (whether that is rendering, network latency, server CPU or memory usage or something else)
  
   
• 
  New tech features (which might tie to performance or might be purely new additions, like deferred lighting or other new rendering features)
  
   
• 
  Improved tools for the developers in the back-end (that in turn facilitate better and more efficient content production)

The integration that is currently being worked on includes planned updates in all of those areas.



So some of the areas will directly impact what you experience in the game, and some won’t be so visible. Some of those things provide things you should see the benefit of immediately (performance improvements, new graphics features), some that are behind the scenes in terms of performance (servers better able to handle high volumes) and some that are more to do with our development infrastructure, like new tools.



So while you may, for example, immediately spot the difference that the new deferred lighting options give us, because you can see the visual improvement…what you don’t see immediately is the content that will be produced with the new tools (as the integration being complete is when the team can really start using the new tools).



That means that sometimes the true benefit of these integration cycles comes in stuff you see down the line once the developers get to use their new tools. In this case for example, we will get expanded tools that allow us to do our cut-scenes easier and put more into them, which the team can then use in the future to give the key new encounters they create a little more of a cinematic feel.



So in many ways, as I said at the start, the deployment of the integrated version is in many ways also the start of the benefits that it gives us because it will allow us to create better content more efficiently. It isn’t an easy call to say that we take these few months out of the normal cycle to improve these things, there is always a pressure to give people ‘more stuff’ now! I firmly believe however that these updates can help us continue to improve the game and show a dedication to the long term success of the project.



Testing all important



Performance is always a primary concern so if any given new feature or update causes an issue or detracts from performance and it can't be resolved it will be cut. So that's why we don't mention all the specifics until we see the builds and know how things are coming together in terms of reality rather than the theory. If something has to be cut to ensure performance doesn’t suffer, that’s something we have to consider.



The main focus of the rendering improvements this time around is to ensure the performance of the engine with the new features (like the deferred lighting that should improve how indoor areas look).



So you will start to see more of those specifics once we get to deploy the builds onto the test server.



Moving forward…



As I mentioned last month strictly speaking it isn't linked to any specific content updates, so hopefully we will be able to also deliver some of the new content mentioned above while this integration is progressing. The content teams can continue to work on their new content while the technical folks make all the stuff mentioned above happen.



There will come a point in the late summer when we ‘lock down’ the new integrated version and it is then tested on the public test servers. This is really the only point when have to allow the time for that testing (i.e. we won’t throw lots of ‘new stuff’ into the mix for that period) but as above hopefully there will be some nice content additions in that version as well. The only real factor that affects our usual schedule in this respect is that obviously a highly complex code integration takes longer to test than an update that only contains new content. So once that version goes to the test server you can expect a slightly longer test cycle for it before it appears on the live servers.



The short term…



As I write this the 2.0.5 update is being finalised, so as you read this it is either about to be deployed, or just been deployed (the curse of having to write this text over a week in advance!). This update brings with it a lot of nice changes, and did grow a little from what we originally thought was just going to be another small post-expansion update. With around fifty new quests, a significant set of changes to the Shrines of Bori PVP feature, the Ranger class revamp, another positive adjustment of the token drops for faction armor and the new rez and staging areas for the instances, an awful lot of that content was all derived directly from your feedback. I am very proud of how reactive the team have been to the feedback from players and we will continue to work on the progression balance and find ways to ensure everyone is as happy as they can be with the directions heading forward.



As I said above in terms of the engine development, we are really looking forward to being able to continue developing the game, and push it forward, keep improving as much as we can and hopefully providing you all with entertainment not just in the coming months, but in the coming years.



Until next month!

__________________

Craig 'Silirrion' Morrison

Game Director