Archive for August 2012

The New SpyParty Character Art Style

Update: the second batch of five characters have been revealed. I am incredibly excited to introduce the new SpyParty character art style! I am also incredibly excited to introduce the new SpyParty character artist, John Cimino! Full disclosure:  John has actually been working full time on SpyParty since September of 2011, we’ve just kept it […]

That Yoda Quote About Opening Betas and the PAX West 2012 Guest Indie

My plan seemed like a good one at the time I made it:  get the lobby server backend scalable, use the remaining 12595 uninvited people1 to test that scalability, and then open up the beta, all before PAX West 2012.  Then, when people played SpyParty at little old booth #3002, instead of telling them they […]

Chat Room “Design”

I just posted this in the private Beta forums, but I figure folks not-yet-in-the-beta might have some thoughts. In preparation for opening the beta, I’m about to do chat rooms in the lobby. I’m going to do the simplest thing possible at first, and hope it gets us through the surge. Here is the current “design”, […]

Scalability and Asserts I’m Not Yet Fixing

I’ve been a bit quiet because I’ve been working on (hopefully) completely invisible stuff involving backend server scalability.  What does that mean, you ask?  In practical player-facing terms, it means I’m trying to get the lobby and registration system robust enough to first invite the rest of the waiting list in,1 and then to open […]