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[capnjosh]

Ping times in the Asia-Oceania were really bad, characterized by very wide ranges and being well above what other regions saw.  So, after the survey indicated people would be willing to try out splitting the region into 2 regions, we did it.  Here are the average ping time results:

 

 

The Asia-Oceania region was the orange line at the top of the chart.  Now, the Asia region is the blue line, and the Oceania region is the purple line.  As we all would have expected, there are improvements all around.  Now, the population of each region obviously becomes the concern people will bring up, and that's understandable.  The main goal here is to see if there is a tangible net improvement.  As I had mentioned before, the best solution will be when we have the MatchMaker consider ping times to the various gameserver hosts.  By the way, notice how Europe has the lowest average ping?  That's because all the servers are in one city.  If we did the same thing in North America, the same thing would happen.  I'd like to try putting all servers in Dallas, with some private server hosts on the East and West Coasts.  We'll put up a poll about that next week to get some real-world preferences.

 

The change to the different gameserver management system seems to have had a positive impact on server performance.  Generally speaking we've seen more stable tick rate metrics.  We'll still be watching metrics for any changes though, since this is important.

 

Tiggs had a great time at MarkeeFest in Florida.  She met up with a bunch of live streamers and other supporters.  She's got some great stories to share too, so maybe if you submit a support ticket and ask really nicely, she might post some.

 

We tried swapping in the Bruiser Complete Pack during the week; we'll try more of that sort of thing in the future.

 

We got some more work done on some deep Unreal engine tasks.  The results won't really show up for a number of months, but when it does you'll be pleased.

 

We're *this* close to having a few key positions filled.  Unfortunately, I think this will be a topic where I can be the recipient of some valid rants about underestimating how long it would take to hire up the right team.  Tiggs was right.  It *always* takes longer than you think.  In short, pick how long you think it'll take, then add in a safety factor.  Then increase it by 20%.  But, it's moving along, and we *will* have a great dev team on Hawken.  It's just a matter "when", not "if".

 

With that, I bid you adieu.  See you on the battlefield.... No really, you do actually see me.  I'm just playing stealth accounts all the time.

 

-capnjosh