The servers are not being dismantled. It was too much work and too expensive to throw away. Instead they will go into hibernation in their little climate controlled room in town. The computer hosting my web and email servers will remain online.
That will cut my expenses by more than $2000 per month. It also eliminates a lot of stress from my world.
The code is structured such that little effort is needed to keep the server code alive. I’ll do that as long as it’s easy.
Each worker server only loads the portion of the universe assigned to it. No server loads all of the data in the universe; it’s too big. This makes access to some data complicated to acquire, by a worker, the server your client spends most of its time talking with.
Conversely the solo game loads the entire universe. All data is instantly accessible in the computer’s memory throughout the game. The temptation to cheat will be difficult to resist, especially when it comes to storyline. That will break the MMO but it would not preclude a single-server hosted network game.
I like the idea of keeping network playability. The game cries out for it. The feature would require a fair bit of coding and testing.
Then cold hard reality sets in.
Hazeron Starship is currently configured to sell for $9.99 on Steam. Considering the million plus dollars I’ve already put into this project, it might have to sell quite a few copies before I get interested in investing much more. 100 copies? Nah; I carry that much in my pocket for spending money. 1000 copies? Ho hum. 10,000 copies? Now I’m interested. I do not know what to expect. Many games were kind of rough in version one, sold a lot of copies, then got a major facelift in version two.
That will cut my expenses by more than $2000 per month. It also eliminates a lot of stress from my world.
The code is structured such that little effort is needed to keep the server code alive. I’ll do that as long as it’s easy.
Each worker server only loads the portion of the universe assigned to it. No server loads all of the data in the universe; it’s too big. This makes access to some data complicated to acquire, by a worker, the server your client spends most of its time talking with.
Conversely the solo game loads the entire universe. All data is instantly accessible in the computer’s memory throughout the game. The temptation to cheat will be difficult to resist, especially when it comes to storyline. That will break the MMO but it would not preclude a single-server hosted network game.
I like the idea of keeping network playability. The game cries out for it. The feature would require a fair bit of coding and testing.
Then cold hard reality sets in.
Hazeron Starship is currently configured to sell for $9.99 on Steam. Considering the million plus dollars I’ve already put into this project, it might have to sell quite a few copies before I get interested in investing much more. 100 copies? Nah; I carry that much in my pocket for spending money. 1000 copies? Ho hum. 10,000 copies? Now I’m interested. I do not know what to expect. Many games were kind of rough in version one, sold a lot of copies, then got a major facelift in version two.