Seamless Server Transitions, Increased Performance in PVP, and Return of Alpha 2 Keys
With a very tech heavy development livestream, we got a glimpse under-the-hood at the architecture Ashes of Creation will be served upon
June (in July) Development Livestream
The entire development livestream is almost an hour and a half long, so for the full context, be sure to check it out here.
For those that just want the barebones “what is it and how will it affect me?” for the average gamer, we got you covered with the cliffnotes below.
Not having layering/sharding (aka “channels”) is a primary pillar of Ashes of Creation. Avoiding the scenarios where players cannot interact with each other on the same server due to being in different channels is a foundational tenant.
Intrepid Net
Fully custom built server architecture, built and maintained completely in-house at Intrepid Studios. This is made of:
Server Meshing
The simulation of the game world is divided over several game servers within one “server” (a Realm)
Allows a single servers compute power to be used for a smaller section of the entire realm, increasing performance for each user
Inter-Server Replication
Each server (within a realm) having a direct connection to their adjacent servers, and each server is responsible for it’s own replication
Elminates potential bottleneck that could limit the number of players Intrepid can support within the realm
Alpha 1 testing revealed there’s a limit to how many servers one replicator can be responsible for, so IntrepidNet removed the Single Replicator solution, and instead implemented it’s own, much more intricate solution
Microservices
Establishes a “global state” in entire realm, managing services such as “Guilds” and “Artisanship” for all players, conveying the single-truth data necessary for players across the realm, but located in different servers, to manage the exact same information
Dynamic Gridding
Real-time server grid adjustment allowing for spinning up servers for high-concentration locations
Detects when a server is overwhelmed, and splits one server into multiple servers without players realizing they are changing servers
Large PvP Battles, heavily trafficked city nodes, and large-scale events supporting hundreds of players without server lag dynamically in the open-world
Encourages high-player density locations to be supported dynamically, without layering/sharding and scaling up and down as needed
Replication Graph
Unreal Engines own single-threaded Replication Graph implementation is meant to scale with large numbers of players and replicated Actors. However, in games like Fortnite, the maximum amount of players is only 100.
By creating a multithreaded implementation of the replication graph in Unreal Engine, IntrepidNet has created a custom solution that no other MMO has implemented, allowing for a 94% reduction in replication time in large battles of upwards of 400 players
Server Meshing
By modifying Unreal Engine, Intrepid has made it possible to have many servers on a on a realm. This required going deep into the Unreal tech stack in order to make real the Ashes of Creation vision of seamless, large-scale gameplay.
By utlizing a “proxy” representation of a player on a neighbouring server, players can interact with each other in a seamless way, allowing for larger magnitudes of players to concurrently exist within the same area while being located on separate servers (within a realm).
Through utilizing “cross-server events”, players can interact through the proxy and keep latency/interactions between servers seamless.
Inter-Server Replication
Replication is the process of synchronizing the state of the actors on the server between the game clients. This is essentially translating the actions you see on your client have been verified by the server. Hackers/cheaters can abuse poor replication and verification to modify their own client and trick the server into verifying their action and synchronizing to all other game clients.
Shol’s Eye
Shol’s eye is a microservice tracker that tracks the location, name, type, and other data of all entities in a realm. This allows IntrepidNet to ensure NPC Spawns, resource spawns, and events all work seamlessly across the server mesh
Dynamic Gridding and Per-Server Scalability
As players congregate to a single location, more servers can be spun up to support these areas. However, in cases where many players keep congregating, such as Tutorial areas, or around a major streamer (any game Asmongold plays), these areas can become extremely resource intensive to keep splitting up into multiple smaller servers.
This replication can become really expensive, increasing server latency. This is when each server can be scaled up, allowing for more players within each server, limiting the highly expensive server replication, and allowing for these temporary high-load areas.
Multithreaded Replication Graph
Due to Unreal Engine being single-threaded, and replications are very single-threaded, IntrepidNet implemented the never-before-seen Multithreaded Replication Graph, increasing replication performance by 2.4 times and reducing replication time by a total 94%
This improves performance in all scenarios, even the worst-case scenario of a large-scale 400 person PvP battle, where each player needs to constantly update where each other player is, their events, and convey their actions to the replication graph for all other players, every tick.
This was all due to the great work by the Intrepid Studio team that was responsible for this:
Alpha 2 Keys Returning
Alpha 2 keys (in a different form) will be returning to the Ashes of Creation Shop in the near future. The exact price and contents is still to be determined, but it will be comparable to the previously available packs.
If you don’t already have an Ashes of Creation account, you can sign up using our referral link here to support Ashes Moments!
Note: There will not be a rotating cosmetic pack associated with these future shop offerings.
Pre-Alpha 2 Spot Testing Invites
Alpha 1 testers will start getting invited to do Spot Testing in the coming weeks. This will be done by inviting the top 500 Testers from Alpha 1 in terms of player time, forum activity, etc., as well as an extra 500 Alpha 1 Testers randomly selected. Keep an eye out on your emails if you have Alpha 1 access for more details throughout this month and next
Alpha 2 Roadmap
We also learned that the Alpha 2 date will be announced in the July Bard Preview Livestream, along with a partial roadmap. We will announce the date along with a trailer as soon as its revealed, so subscribe to stay updated!
Q&A
Some interesting answers from the question and answer section:
Open-Sea dungeons/Points-of-Interests will be open-pvp contested
Raids will have many tools for shotcallers, such as Marks, Pings, etc.
Mobs will spawn dynamically based on several modifiers, including player activity and current mob count
Exclusive Phoenix Initiative Interviews
We also released an exclusive interview with two Phoenix Initiative testers on their time during the Node Wars stream, so be sure to check it out to hear their thoughts on the game so far!
Don’t forget to bookmark the website to get ready to submit your amazing plays, bugs, and moments, and be featured on our Youtube Channel once Alpha 2 launches!