yesterday I had a epiphany I wanted to share with people who why browser games might be the way they are. I’m talking about the ones where you have some kind of game currency that limits your actions. And they want you to pay real money to get more whatever so you can keep playing else you have to wait a while to continue playing. I used to think those type games were just all about trying to get people to pay money to maximize profits. But I realized there are factors that need to be taken into consideration that people might not realize, that only I just realized having finally finished making a little similar browser game myself.
yesterday morning I woke up to me actually not being able to reach the Agent Trainer game on my browser when I refreshed the page due to a database error. Turns out the site had almost crashed a that moment. I got a automated e-mail telling me the sever for SVP had to kill the process that was managing all the database stuff briefly to prevent a site crash due to low memory.
So it got me thinking about how other online games like these work on other sites with much more users playing. and communicating back and fourth between the server and the game. The server for the site has only 4gigs of ram. I could update to a 8 gigs, or even 16 gigs, that would most likely help. but what happens when I have more games and potentially more people on the site playing them? is the answer just get better and more and more servers? maybe, but no because that is not cost efficient and would tank anyone or company big or small. I’m talking if millions of people were playing, I can’t get a new sever for every 16 or so people. That was when I realized the solution, or at least a solution that I see most commonly, is that annoying ass limitation on certain actions seen in most games. The limits are things like a certain number of times you can refresh some kind of enemy player list, refresh the list of items you can buy, etc. You are basically being limited on things that require a database call. This prevent you collectively from DDoS’ing the site from playing the game normally.
as for the single player limits. I am still of the belief that is it purely for profit. But basically there is more of incentive than just profit get setting you to either stop playing for a bit or to pay money to keep playing right now.
so later on I will need to update the agent trainer multiplayer game a bit. right now i same sending multiple variables, but I will just send the save code which counts as one variable to a database and sever but when applied to the game holds different data. I will also need to put a cool-down on the pvp but you will be able to train against ai also. you will still only get rank from fighting real people but it will vary based on how much rank you have vs the rank of the person you beat. all the wont begin will I finish the savor the moment quest stuff for patreon next month. But I just wanted to let people what what I plan to do and why.
feel free to leave thoughts
upcoming changes:
you will get stats and a lot of resources for winning vs a persons character.
pvp cooldowns to help with sever stress.
you can train multiple agents and save them
you can train vs ai
you will get matched with people in your rank range.
special agent outfit
2 sex images per character
a few more items
more stuff you can’t unlock from buying.
The game just started if you add more stuff more people is gonna play it and slowly more sites is gonna publish it like game review.
If you have plans to update this game more and more and add more stuff to support you in patreon, Yeah you must upgrade your ram to make the servers run smoothly in your system so you can work in other products.
So far i never had any problem with the game like lags and etc (gg)
I cant wait for the update ♥
I have been looking at better servers and a update to a better one is something I plan to do down the road. However I don’t think the server is the main issue. a better sever is good for any game yes, however imo it fundamentally boils down to how I code the game how the game sends data and how often.
I hope you will find a better way about the coding stuff. You did great with UMCH btw
Question everything is gonna be wipe after the updates or anytime in the future ?
I haven’t thought about it so i can’t say until I look at it. a reset is just as possible as not having one since this just a test. But in testing I noticed thing I want to change. The way the game handles data that I mentioned in the post is on thing. But also I wanted to adjust the way the game scales. as a character gets stronger I wanted to have the price to upgrade them increase. especially for combat. atm at like 1K+ rank there is no way to even survive a attack without shield since combat gets a little crazy. if you have like 10k combat and mlaws you are dishing out 100k HP most people are not is really going to have 100k HP. combat as it is now it not really working as I intended. I wanted the battle to go back and fourth a few turns. maybe like 3 attacks per character before a winner is decided. and testing a new scaling system is hard if everybody is already scaled from old system. feel free to post thoughts.
HP is really useless i tried to upgrade mine for like 65k+ and still my life goes down like crazy with 20k combat enemy. Nerfing the combat dps or changing the price for the HP upgrade i think is the best.
Sometimes i dont really understand how i lost or how i won, the animations are pretty fast, making the battles more balanced and last longer is better to understand and make “counter builds” for each color buff, also have the ability to change the buff color before the enemy reset because if we gonna fight people with the same rank we need some strategy.
How about a p2p where the user can use his computer to make his server as a domain? The only limit would be the user that creates the server. Think Kaillera servers. Only problem is that code is old very very old, I’m talking windows 08 old. It connects to a match for fighting games even others games using emulators. It uses the old ping system that shows how far away you are from each other. There is also GGPO but that is use more for fighting games. It is more flexible than the K servers. Keep in mind they are limit but they are not the only service that have a p2p servers. I’ll say the users are not as big World of Warcraft. But I understand your concern when your site grows. Just throwing food for thought.
http://www.kaillera.com/
Thanks I’ll have to look into it later. it work with flash? seems unlikely. also having it on a sever helps to prevent cheating. not fool proof but removes some ways to do it.
That sounds amazing.
If possible could you tell us will the progress be saved and in which way?
a) we save all our progress, items, etc
b) we save a part of our progress (just weapons or resources, or khalei)
c) we start anew
P.S. absolutely adore the outfit designs, just unlocked pajamas, they look sweet
not sure on this yet. I haven’t thought about it at all. But I’d say any of these options are very possible.