Developer’s Diary #16
Hello, tankers!
Today in our Developer’s Diary, we’ll be sharing with you some cool developer’s news. We’ll also be telling you about the technical details of our new server technology, and showing you some video material from the tanker’s meeting we held in Moscow last weekend.
The long-awaited West Prime map, designed on the basis of the well-known Barda map from Tanki Online, has been released. This new arena is the first step in uncovering the Tanki X storyline.
Very soon we’ll be adding a new section to our website, called “About the Game”. In it, you’ll find a brief description of the Tanki X world. You will also learn about the reasons behind the war between Antaeus and Frontier, the technology behind all the turrets and hulls, and also the importance of all the in-game arenas and the setting behind them.
We’ll also be adding more pieces of backstory with every implementation of major updates.
If you missed our Battle for West Prime video, you’ll be able to watch it by following the link at the end of this episode.
The battle of the corporations is in full swing — it’s time to pick a side!
Server upgrade
Now for some news on the new cluster and server side of the game. But before we do that, we strongly recommend you go back and watch the fifth episode of our Developer’s Diary, in order to get familiar with these terms and how they work. There’s a link in the description.
It’s been almost two months since the launch of the Open Beta Testing, and we’ve had enough time to evaluate the performance of the game and the cluster issues.
As a result of our analysis, we realized that the current in-game lags issue is not so much a game optimization problem. It is caused by the cluster technology we decided to use in the beginning.
Until recently, one server could hold a maximum of 200 players in battles. According to the initial plan we had for the OBT, we were expecting a better performance. To give you some context as to whether 200 players is a good number or not, such a server can hold up to five thousand players in Tanki Online. In order to keep a stable performance, we were constantly forced to add more physical servers.
We realized that a change was inevitable. On the 8th of October, our server programmers started working on a new build, and by the 25th of October, the build had been successfully tested internally and released for open testing right after that.
We conducted debug sessions for several days straight, fixing issues on the Live environment. The results of the newly developed technology were immediately noticeable, as one server started to handle up to 600 players in multiple battles.
Thanks to our team of server programmers, Tanki X is now more stable and working much more smoothly. For more details about our next steps towards game optimization, watch the upcoming episodes of Developer’s Diary.
Tankers meeting in Moscow
Last Sunday in Moscow we organized the very first tankers meeting with our developers team. There was a great atmosphere. Darya Stal and Vladimir Beletsky discussed with our players the development process of the game, and future plans.
This is the first such event in Moscow. We expect to have a lot of fun and a get huge boost for us to continue developing the game with a better understanding of who our players are.
We want to understand our players better, to find out what they like the most. Such events are very valuable because we can dedicate time to every tanker, and we believe that it is very important for them.
Vladimir talked about the creation of the Tanki X cinematic trailer, starting with one studio’s idea for a tank ballet choreography, and finishing with the concept arts and final version of the cinematic trailer. Players who attended the meeting also got an exclusive look at the Battle for West Prime video.
Tankers participated in the Tanki X quiz, and were proposing their ideas for future development. Of course, they also asked lots of questions. Some of them were related to the technical part — the Unity engine, servers performance, and also the future of the project. Vladimir and Darya shared lots of inside information and explained the difficulties that might come up with the implementation of certain proposed ideas.
I believe that our game will grow to a good level of cybersport, with big tournaments and offline LAN-finals. I think every player of Tanki X has this dream.
Besides having a great time, our tankers also took home some awesome souvenirs such as t-shirts and cool stickers. Additionally, “Find the base” quest participants were rewarded with X crystals.
I’m one of the helpers on Tanki X social networks. I’m happy to work with it because I think it’s a good experience for me. I wish all the players more X-crystals and good luck in battles.
I’ve been playing Tanki Online for a very long time… from 2009. One day I heard about the new game Tanki X, and I was very impressed with it’s cool graphics and amazing explosions. I think these are the top features of the game. I like this event very much. It’s a very positive meeting. I wish for Tanki X to have fewer cheaters and rule breakers.
I wish for Tanki X to successfully get through Open Beta and reach release day. We believe in a great future for Tanki X and want to share it with our players.
We believe that the meeting in Moscow was a success and all the attendees enjoyed it as much as we did. We hope to meet the rest of our tankers in other cities at a different event.
With this, we’re wrapping up today’s episode. Did you enjoy it? Don’t forget to like the video and stay tuned for the next episode.
Fire at Will!