Heyyy, look. I’m the first dev to write in this thing!

So where do I begin? We already introduced you to the whole team here. But, how about I introduce you to the development team in more detail, zapping quickly over the rest of the DOFUS team!

Basically, the group of people who get involved in this kind of project is diverse. You have the game designers, who make the game content and dialogues etc., then there’s the graphic designers who make the pictures… There are musicians/noisemakers, translators, Support, the web team who take care of the websites and the marketing people... Oh yeah, and some bunch called the Community Managers.

And you have the Devs. Being a developer is the most thankless job ever. When it doesn’t work it has to be our fault and when it does, it’s thanks to somebody else… On the other hand it is we who wield the tru Powahhh… we can smack down the game designers if they get a bit too enthusiastic (impossible to code), or decide on the basic order of the game’s evolution. Well, as much as the bosses let us anyway.
The development team is split into three main groups:

- The server devs, that’s me and some other folk “quelquonque”, code the majority of new material. Like mounts, paddocks, Soul Stones, or just the classic effects like class spell bonuses or sets. You could say we work on optimizing the game, too, as extensions bring new content to DOFUS.

- The client devs, mainly Nimaoh and Simsoft, see that the game interfaces are as intuitive as possible and add new interfaces and functionalities to make sure that you, the player can make the most of the content.

- Lastly, the “hardware and database” devs, with their guru Rogers at the stern, install machines, clean up the database, optimise game performances and help me with the server maintenance every Thursday… or crashes them on other days.

Okay, let’s get to the good stuff, the things that are going on at the moment that will appear in game in the next few months:

I’m gonna take you through the problems with data we had a few weeks ago. It’s a bit like last year during the infamous blackout in December when we had big problems with disappearing items. When the server is in operation and the players are playing, data is not saved in real time in the database. I know that with some games, this is the case, but these games, the most famous has three letter (well, two, the first and the last are the same) do not have as many items or possible interactions between players. The data on DOFUS is extremely volatile, and changes within it are sometimes considerable, too large to be saved in real time. So, characters are saved when they disconnect and also every X minutes in-game but not every time they move an item in their inventory. The problem with this is that if all data is regularly saved, it is saved in an asynchronous way. In other words, there is a discrepancy between the saving of different parts of the game.

When there is a crash, whether it be on the game or the data server, and the server is restarted, there are discrepancies. The only perfect saves are those that are done on Tuesdays when the servers are switched off, since there is no longer a single player to exchange, move or fight.

We are trying to introduce this kind of save on a more frequent basis because when there is a crash, we won’t have to worry about disappearing items anymore, but servers will be inaccessible for a few minutes every once in a while if we decide to take this approach… Since it’s a bit tricky in principle, we’re trying to find a way to make it as transparent to you as possible. And considering the amount of data there is to be saved, we’re trying to make something that’ll go clean and quick. That takes time.

There are also the hoster charges to worry about which have been a little high for a while now. For two years, we’ve known that we’ll have to find a better hoster. For one year we’ve been looking around, but we can’t always make the same level of investment as bigger companies can. On top of that, we’re not really experts on the world of hosters, so it’s not as if we can be sure of securing certain guarantees.

Sooo, some good news, since the beginning of last summer, we have found a new future hoster, who’s far better than the last one and with an infrastructure pretty much all over the world. As well as that, they’ve already hosted MMO so they’ll understand how to deal with our requirements and expectations. It’s just the changeover that takes time, the terrain must be prepared, all sorts of things have to be tested to be sure it’s working right. All going well, we’ll be on the new hoster by the beginning of 2008. I hope that’ll brighten up the New Year for all of you! We expect accessing the game to improve and also a gross improvement in the detection/anticipation of malfunctions. So, everything should go smoothly. We’ll just have to stick it out till then.

At the same time, we’re working on a new type of server which should be ready by the end of the year. The beta is almost ready, we’re just a little worried about the new downloading system but it shouldn’t be long now. We’re hoping that everyone who was there for the first few months of DOFUS will recognise the style and that all new players will find a new way to enjoy the game
We’ve also worked on a huge migration of our database. 4 million accounts or so (don’t confuse this with 4 million subscribers… if only), that’s a lot of data. On top of that, you’ve got the 20 game servers plus access through sites. We’ve had to make some changes to improve the performance of all the servers.

We’re trying to improve lags (latency) in the game… It’s not as if changing the server will change everything. The servers are still far from being full, the CPU apace is, even during the evening, available, a lot of memory is free too. The big worry at the moment is network bundles. During peak time (evenings) we are at about 80% of bandwidth capacity. The problem is that DOFUS generates a lot of information bundles each of a very small size. So if not a lot of data is transferred, the network is still heavily used. We’re doing what’s necessary to change that, but there’s no doubt that we’re going to gain ground when we move to the new hoster with its new architecture. New state of the art servers, a top of the range network with redundancy and load-balancing of all material. We should be ok for a few years at least!

We have a few new additions to the game in the pipeline, but I think Lichen is the man to speak to about that. I’ll pass the word to him then.