The Road to Launch - Beta Journal 2

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Dungeon Fighter Online Beta Journal 2 - Smoothing the Path

Greetings Dungeon Fighters!

Lady Arad here. Thanks for all your great responses to the first Dungeon Fighter Online Beta Journal. We're tremendously excited as we work toward our launch this summer. 

Eastward Ho!

Much of what we're doing to get the game ready for launch is done behind the scenes and is pretty technical, which means that it often isn't visible to you the player. Take for example, the problem of latency. This is our number one "must fix" issue before launch. As I mentioned in the last Beta Journal, bringing Dungeon Fighter Online to North America isn't as simple as just translating Korean text into English. There's a whole technical infrastructure we're dealing with to get the game's code to run well in a part if the world where the geographic distances are much larger and the Internet architecture more primitive than in Korea. Also, DFO works on a peer to peer system, which means that when you play with other people you are connecting to them directly rather than all players connecting to one central server. Though this allows for more flexibility, it also presents its own set of problems, especially when the connection between you and other players is weak.

Step One in combating the latency issue was to set up a user connectivity meter in the game. This allows you to see how strong your connection is with other players in your party or in your Arena room. You can read more about this meter by going to our FAQ page and scrolling down to the qustion "Why do I experience lag when I'm playing with other players?"

Step Two was to split the channels into "West" and "East" channels. So if you are nearer the west coast, you will most likely connect better with people in the "West" channel. And if you are nearer the east coast, you will most likely connect better with people in the "East" channel.

Step 3 is the eventual introduction of an actual DFO server on the East Coast of North America. This will improve things enormously just by reducing the physical distance information needs to travel. The thing is, you don't just "open up a server." There are a lot of considerations that go into that decision. What company will house your server? Where on the east coast should it be? What are the system requirements necessary for the new server?

All this takes time to work through, but we understand that from your perspective, it may seem sometimes that nothing has changed. However, rest assured that we are fully committed to reducing latency dramatically by the time we launch in June.

Internal and External Code

These connectivity issue isn't the only thing that can cause latency. We've also been combing through the code to find blockages and working them out so you enjoy a more fluid gaming experience. Each time we do that though, we need to test it internally to make sure we haven't created as many problems as we've solved. We can't compromise player security or the game's integrity just for a faster response time, so we're constantly testing new builds of the game that you never see because they're not stable enough. We're making tremendous progress in this area as well.

A Quick Trip to GDC

Finally, I wanted to quickly mention the just completed Game Developer's Conference. If you aren't familiar with this event, it's an annual conference where the best and brightest in the industry get together to discuss the state of the industry, network and share tips and tricks that help us to make the gaming industry better all around. This year's GDC was very important to our team. We were able to show the game to the press and other developers, and we were delighted at the extremely positive reception DFO received.

GDC was also a reminder of why I wanted to put these beta journals out. It's always important to never get so caught up in the day-to-day of game development that you forget to communicate with others – especially the most important people in the process...our players. We want you to know what's happening as we move toward launch. Even when you don't see something new and improved in the game every day, you'll know we're continuing to make progress toward launch!