Humor: When your game's launch isn't as smooth as you'd like

June 3, 2013
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In this reprint from the May 2013 issue of Game Developer magazine, developers release a new online game into the wild -- and descend into revision note hell.

07-16 20:09:20 Revision: 12412

  • fixed localization text-wrap bug (nice try, Jeff)

  • locking repo for final launch deploy!!!

07-16 22:01:01 Revision: 12413

  • fixed polling ping-time bug in matching players across regions that might have caused small delays before game launches. There might have been a hiccup on launch day if we hadn't caught that… good job, QA

  • finally the work we've been doing for the last three years is gonna pay off!

  • relocking repo for final, final, final deploy

  • come at me, bros!!

07-17 00:17:24 Revision: 12414

  • emergency fix to address "Unable to Join" error

07-17 05:20:49 Revision: 12415

okay, this should address most of the launch volume issues that players have been experiencing:

  • more error checking added to "Region Unavailable" crashes

  • another fix for "Unable to Join" error seen by players in Pacific time zone due to a floating-point error reporting that the game doesn't actually unlock for 277 years (Jeff, I am looking at you very sternly right now)

  • dynamically switch a region's hosted server if the ping is too long

  • set available servers to the actual number of servers we have available (whoops, that's mine, haha)

07-17 07:52:41 Revision: 12416

rolling back change #2416

07-17 11:30:10 Revision: 12417

  • removed rendering of all citizens' pants to decrease server sync load

07-17 11:33:55 Revision: 12418

  • re-added pants. something about ESRB? whatever

  • removed rendering trees instead

07-17 14:11:12 Revision: 12419

  • disable high-level spells that use too many server-side particles (can't believe I just used the phrase "server-side particles"...JEFF!!!!)

  • boost power of low-level spells to take the place of the spells we just removed

  • add free spells for players so they aren't mad that we took away the high-level spells

  • I did something else with spells that I forgot

  • I would really like to go home

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