Comments on: My SF IGDA Talk on SpyParty Networking Infrastructure http://www.spyparty.com/2011/07/14/my-sf-igda-talk-on-spyparty-networking-infrastructure/ Chris Hecker's new espionage game about subtle behavior, performance, perception, and deception. Wed, 09 Apr 2014 01:56:53 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.8.2 By: Gaber http://www.spyparty.com/2011/07/14/my-sf-igda-talk-on-spyparty-networking-infrastructure/comment-page-1/#comment-18923 Sun, 24 Jul 2011 18:41:22 +0000 http://www.spyparty.com/?p=1856#comment-18923 You are pretty brilliant Mr. Hecker, I hope you’re planning on supporting Macs as I’m totally willing to beta test your game! That was an excellent point you made about “why not just get steam or XBLA to do it?” keep up the good work

]]> By: checker http://www.spyparty.com/2011/07/14/my-sf-igda-talk-on-spyparty-networking-infrastructure/comment-page-1/#comment-18789 Tue, 19 Jul 2011 07:13:53 +0000 http://www.spyparty.com/?p=1856#comment-18789 I have an ugly front end for SpyParty, so there is that.  :)

I guess I’m a little worried about people losing interest, but the entire goal of the game is to be a deep player-skill competitive multiplayer game like C-S or SC, so if I can’t keep people around, then that’s a problem I’m going to need to fix.

Hmm, that sucks about IE9.  I guess I will have to install it.  I’ve stayed on IE8 since I figured that was more important to test with for now.  I do run a modified lightbox, so that’s probably the issue.  Weird, and thanks for the bug report.

]]> By: chequers http://www.spyparty.com/2011/07/14/my-sf-igda-talk-on-spyparty-networking-infrastructure/comment-page-1/#comment-18788 Tue, 19 Jul 2011 07:09:33 +0000 http://www.spyparty.com/?p=1856#comment-18788 Thanks for the replies.
On the audio, I’d love to get bigger files that sound better if that’s possible in future. Sure the content is still there, but you could make the same argument about having an ugly frontend for Spyparty :P
I have been thinking this week about Frozen Synapse. I was one of the rather-early beta players for that game, and by the time of release (a year later) I had long played it to death and went back for only 15 minutes. Is this something you need to be worried about from a marketing perspective: that your most enthusiastic fans might be over the game by launch if you have a long beta?
PS, bug report. Clicking anywhere on this blog in IE9 toggles a pagewide dimming of everything (you know when people have the lightbox javascript image preview thing? Dimming like that.)

]]> By: checker http://www.spyparty.com/2011/07/14/my-sf-igda-talk-on-spyparty-networking-infrastructure/comment-page-1/#comment-18682 Fri, 15 Jul 2011 18:40:16 +0000 http://www.spyparty.com/?p=1856#comment-18682 > Why not balance after launch?

Do you mean game balance, or load balance?  I’ll assume you mean game balance.  And then, do you mean after launch of the final version, or of the beta?  I am waiting to do more balancing until I get the beta out. I’ve done a bunch of balancing to get to this point, but I’m heads-down on the server stuff right now, so any more game features, balance, and tuning will wait until it’s live, at least for the first batch of people.  Balancing a player-skill game like this is a long term project, and it’s the most important task if you care about having a healthy competitive online community.

> How much experience did you have doing this backend stuff before SpyParty?

Basically none.  As I say in the talk, I’ve learned most of this stuff since PAX East.  I’ve run my own webserver for a while, and used things like varnish for caching, and done some simple server side stuff, but nothing like I’m doing now.

> All your talk recordings are done at like 22kHz and sound like a telephone call. Is this your fault?

Mostly.  First, they’re recorded by my laptop mic, so they’re not great to start with.  Then, MyPlick downsamples them for size, and I also downsample the mp3 to make it smaller.  I figure if you can hear the words, that’s the most important thing for these lectures.  It’s not like I’m singing an aria.  :)

]]> By: chequers http://www.spyparty.com/2011/07/14/my-sf-igda-talk-on-spyparty-networking-infrastructure/comment-page-1/#comment-18678 Fri, 15 Jul 2011 11:31:50 +0000 http://www.spyparty.com/?p=1856#comment-18678 Nice talk! A few questions:

Why not balance after launch? Is the problem that “balance” is more than just tweaking numbers until you get near the end of the process?

How much experience did you have doing this backend stuff before SpyParty?

All your talk recordings are done at like 22kHz and sound like a telephone call. Is this your fault?

]]> By: Alex http://www.spyparty.com/2011/07/14/my-sf-igda-talk-on-spyparty-networking-infrastructure/comment-page-1/#comment-18671 Fri, 15 Jul 2011 00:26:14 +0000 http://www.spyparty.com/?p=1856#comment-18671 Great talk, glad I got to see it. Also glad I wont have to rent a server and enter ip addresses like I do in Minecraft.

]]> By: checker http://www.spyparty.com/2011/07/14/my-sf-igda-talk-on-spyparty-networking-infrastructure/comment-page-1/#comment-18670 Fri, 15 Jul 2011 00:03:44 +0000 http://www.spyparty.com/?p=1856#comment-18670 Since I don’t even know what “XYZ server” is, I don’t think it will be!

]]> By: Gible Fog http://www.spyparty.com/2011/07/14/my-sf-igda-talk-on-spyparty-networking-infrastructure/comment-page-1/#comment-18669 Thu, 14 Jul 2011 23:59:52 +0000 http://www.spyparty.com/?p=1856#comment-18669 I’m not going to claim I understand everything you said about the security, but I very much hope it (the final product at least) will not be dependent on XYZ server to play.

]]> By: jordy http://www.spyparty.com/2011/07/14/my-sf-igda-talk-on-spyparty-networking-infrastructure/comment-page-1/#comment-18666 Thu, 14 Jul 2011 21:41:17 +0000 http://www.spyparty.com/?p=1856#comment-18666 Nice speech, although the million dollar question remains.. When is BETA!!!

I’m suiting up to press F5 all day tomorrow… don’t let me down!

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