So Dennis has stated that the hope is for alpha to be held within 2019, what month/when would you like to see the alpha released, assuming it'd be ready by said date?
When would you like alpha to be held?
- Thread starter Perotin
- Start date
Keyword "Hope" we would all like and hope that we can release alpha as soon as possible(just so you people don't get your hopes up).
December for sure. Dyescape would be the best Christmas gift, plus a lot of people will have a decently long break then to play.
I think we all learned our lesson on getting overhyped... Not trying to hype people up with this (maybe a little), but after a 2 year delay (will be from dec 2017), I think the release date for alpha should be optimized for everyone here.
Fully agree, the one thing to be careful with december though is students in America have midterms either in december or January for the most part (me included in december). December 18-20th is usually the start of winter break, so one of those days would be best. I'd argue not on Christmas itself, because well, that's also not the best day to release a server.
Yeah obviously not on exactly Christmas day but maybe the 20th would be good as that would be the "first weekend" of peoples' holiday, though obviously this entirely depends on its readiness. I'd hope for an earlier release if possible but from what Dennis has said this seems like a fairly possible thing.
Fully agree, the one thing to be careful with december though is students in America have midterms either in december or January for the most part (me included in december). December 18-20th is usually the start of winter break, so one of those days would be best. I'd argue not on Christmas itself, because well, that's also not the best day to release a server.
I would argue that it fundamentally does not matter that much when we release. Of course a certain period not straight up during the holidays (like during Christmas) would be nice, but it's not like alpha lasts 3 days and then shuts down again. Alpha is a continuous stage of testing where we test the very fundamental base of the system we've created and the content we've designed, applying patches on a frequent basis. We will constantly be improving and building new things as we go, until we think its ready to take things to the next stage (pre-alpha to alpha to beta to full release). If we launch and you happen to not be able to play (because of exams for example), then simply join the party a few weeks later.
Also keep in mind that it does make our (or mainly mine) life a lot easier if players join gracefully, instead of in one big tsunami; it is impossible for us to stress test our systems to know how much players it can handle. It is by all means safe to say that we will have to monitor the player to performance ratio to see how much it can handle, and potentially limit the amount of online players based on this. It is entirely possible that such a large amount of players instantly hopping on a system (which isn't stress tested) will not do very much good. It would thus be a smart idea (from a technical point of view, ensuring that systems stay online) to have players join in groups. For example, we could choose to split up all alpha participants in groups of 50 people and slowly (over the time frame of a few days max) see how much our systems can handle so we don't take things down and gracefully allow more players to join. We could also make the first group of participants donators only, and apply other groups to join several hours or few days later, depending on how much our systems can handle and how much hyper-care (almost 24-hour active monitoring) we can provide with our availability.
That's how I would like to handle a launch, since otherwise I consider it to be a fairly big risk if we just accept one large tsunami of players to hop on in one go. If we go from 0 to 200 players within 5 minutes, it does not tell us how much our systems can handle, and they could very well crash due to the load, which is bad experience for us and the players. If we first allow 25 players, then 50 an hour later, then 100 a few hours after that, and then keep this cycle going until we know how much it can handle, it will make a launch way smoother for us and the people that try to play. A bit off topic, but that just adds to my original statement of why I think a few days difference in a date should not matter.
Regardless of the timing, I think there will be a tsunami just given by the facts of how big the discord server is and that Dyescape is relatively well-known given it not being released.
I'd include some form of 'discord-active' members along with the donator group, just cause people like @KingAlterIV and others without ranks have been here for a while, and giving them a special priority would be a nice touch.
No theere isn't. If we let people join in waves (smaller groups), then it's flow is controlled and there is no tsunami. Kinda the entire point of what I mentioned earlier
Yeah of course if you manipulate, I was talking about without groups.No theere isn't. If we let people join in waves (smaller groups), then it's flow is controlled and there is no tsunami. Kinda the entire point of what I mentioned earlier
Bit late to the party here but I agree with Dienns about the stress testing
But...
I'm active
But...
I'm active
Bit late to the party here but I agree with Dienns about the stress testing
But...
I'm active