MCGamer Lobby and Network upgrades!

[ChadTheDJ]

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Hello Tributes! As people can see, we recently had a makeover thanks to the amazing builders at Red Forest and Team Elite (and the other helpers not on those build teams on our internal Map Committee). This update was the first of many to help upgrade our core infrastructure due to the massive influx of new players we had in winter break (at this exact time posting this thread, 66,001 new unique player logins since the last 15 days, wow!). Because of this, our system has been operating at capacity (sometimes over capacity at peak) which is the reason why during certain peak times, lag spikes have been becoming more common for both client and server lag. This is also the main reason why Catching Fire (Quarter Quell) game type has been delayed until we get our upgrades done. Because most of this activity has been done behind the scenes, here is the check list we are working on now:

• Upgrade/Move EU Datacenter:
  • <geek talk>Our data center we use currently without CubedHost's and our knowledge "made our service worse" by cutting our throughput usage from 1Gbps to 300Mbps.</geek talk> This means at our current usage, people will be experiencing more lag spikes during Europe peak times because our servers use more than 300Mbps. We are temporally adding more servers this week to handle the load to be a "band-aid" fix until we move data-centers at the end of the month (first week of February maybe if everything goes well).
• Upgrade US Datacenter:
  • Because of the recent influx of new players, we have again on this network like EU are maxing our capacity for both our data connection and number of servers processing the connections. We have 2 more servers ordered and should be online next week at the latest. We are also upgrading other core network devices like for example switches and firewalls.
• Improve Hub/Lobby experience:
  • We realized our first attempt of our hub is prone to client lag due to how many players are in one area at once. We added the clock button to hide other players to help with this but it seems some new players are not figuring this feature out easily. This last week, we been rebuilding from the ground up the lobby/queue system getting rid of having 1 main hub with 1 overflow. Our system that we are testing in EU right now has approximately 10 lobbies that are load balancing the flood of players to lessen the amount of players you see at once (which has been the major complaint because of the client lag). This will also reducing the server lag for the volume of players that log into our system and exit out of other games.
• Better utilization of hardware and resources:
  • MCGamer currently rents about 35 physical dedicated servers to run this entire community. We plan to soon add better ways on utilizing our RAM usage and be able to create new servers instantly on higher peak times.
• International support like more languages:
  • We have translated the plugin and our lobby to about 4 different languages so far. We are hopefully releasing this finally in February.
• Plus more stability updates and improvements with 1.7 support!

As you can see, we have been busy working behind the scenes and these reasons have delayed things like the release of Catching Fire (Quarter Quell), syncing game types across global networks (MCSG, SG Classic, Quarter Quell, KitPVP and others), and finally completing other long promised game-types of ZedChase, MCTF2 & our version of Walls. We wish our pace is faster than what it is right now, but most of us have jobs and or school. Winter break helped us get a bulk of the work done, but we expect lots of changes coming in the near future addressing these development checklist. Hang tight, we are about to put this community into overdrive!

Edit: I forgot to post to our EU players. We saw some lower player counts today and was curious if you had any issues logging in today? We are thinking this was only an issue of our new lobbies not reporting the players to the server. Has anything changed for you? Are you still able to log into the servers/hub normally?

 

[Claps]

I FINALLY DID IT TIME TO READ

Edit: Sweet post

Edit 2: HI MOM!

Edit 3: How has nobody else posted yet? It's a front page post.

 

[CandyCranium]

Wow. I was so close.

 

[Claps]

Wow. I was so close.

No.

 

[Eskild]

Nice

 

[funnysticker]

.. c'mon

EDIT: OMG IM 5th

 

[Halo_0]

So MCSG has been lagging because so many people have joined? That is amazing...

 

[ChadTheDJ]

So MCSG has been lagging because so many people have joined? That is amazing...

It's a good problem to have, but making our games overall not as pleasant recently. Should have everything fixed by the end of the month based on our pace we are currently working at.

 

[RC_4777]

Looking forward to the improvements!

 

[ExtremeHazza]

Nice, I like it.

 

[selim2019]

YES! thanks for bringing back the old SG lobby

 

[Pixelatorx2]

Dont think this is possible but. *hem* more CA mods please (I know it depends on the people in CA, but maybe call a couple US mods to try at least?)