Sep 292016
 

Today’s NEStalgia v1.73 update (notes) doubles the game client’s frame rate and also significantly improves the responsiveness of the movement controls. These upgrades make a huge difference in how smooth the the game both looks and plays, and they’ve been a long time coming.

In general most of the changes in v1.73 are internal upgrades ported over from the forthcoming Key of the Exiles content expansion. Though I don’t have a definitive release window for the expansion yet, updates like v1.73 are important milestones that will help ensure that the expansion is stable and ready to handle lots of players on day one. Though they didn’t quite make it in to this initial v1.73 release, built-in support for gamepads and the universal web client should also both see the light of day in the near future.

NEStalgia Soundtrack

In other news, in response to popular request the NEStalgia Original Soundtrack is now available to download for free for anyone who has purchased NEStalgia on Steam. The soundtrack includes 35 music tracks straight from the game in their original chiptune-esque style, plus 12 bonus instrumental renditions of selected tracks. You can access the soundtrack via the Steam music player – just make sure that your Steam client has actually downloaded the latest NEStalgia update. Note that you can also grab the soundtrack’s MP3 files by clicking the ‘SHOW IN SYSTEM’ link below the ‘PLAY ALBUM’ button in the Steam music player.

Apr 132016
 

Spring 2016I’ll spare you the long version and post the short version instead: I’ve been very busy (in a good way) with responsibilities outside of NEStalgia development for quite some time. However, as of several weeks ago my responsibilities were completely reshuffled (again, in a good way) and I’m finally back at my office every day doing the small-business owner thing full time. Especially considering the fact that this is a long term change, it should have a major impact on both the speed and regularity of NEStalgia development.

In addition to announcing today’s minor NEStalgia update, I also want to quickly go over where everything stands with development:

v1.72.3 Update

Today’s v1.72.3 release (notes) tackles some long-standing bugs that I’ve been meaning to fix for awhile now, including that annoying issue with non-functioning battle hotkeys on private servers. Though  my development efforts will remain focused on Key of the Exiles content, I’ll try to make a point of pushing out small updates more frequently as I make minor fixes/improvements that benefit the existing game.

NEStalgia Webclient (Mac/Linux compatibility, etc)

It’s been awhile since I initially announced plans to open up access to NEStalgia on a ton of new platforms via BYOND’s HTML 5 webclient. The problem is that the performance of the webclient and its compatibility with NEStalgia has been incredibly inconsistent. The hangup has typically been that whenever a new version of the webclient fixes all of the outstanding NEStalgia-specific compatibility issues, it simultaneously introduces a host of new bugs or performance problems. That’s not a knock against the BYOND devs; it’s just the nature of the beast.

It’s been awhile since I last checked in on the webclient, and I plan to do another round of testing with the latest version soon. Once I’m satisfied that the webclient is up to snuff I’ll be sure to post a release announcement with more details.

Compiler

Other Tidbits

NEStalgia has continued to sell well through the end of 2015 and the beginning of 2016.  Thank you and welcome to everyone who has purchased the game in the past several months!

I don’t have any new information to share about the Key of the Exiles content expansion at the moment, other than the fact that I’m finally back at my desk working on it regularly.

One last note: if you’ve sent an email to the team@silkgames.com email address and have not received a response then please send a new email. You can assume that any emails sent prior to today that did not receive a reply either didn’t make it to us or got lost in the pile somewhere.

Aug 212015
 

NEStalgia Podcast CoverLast week we received a great response when we asked players to submit questions for us to answer on a new episode of the NEStalgia podcast. Balzack and Spiff joined me on this week’s podcast as I answered many of those questions. We also discussed what we’ve been up to lately, and what our plans our for the KotE release. You can stream the podcast on this page or download the MP3:

We didn’t get to every question that was submitted, but I’m definitely open to doing another podcast again in the near future if there are burning questions that weren’t answered. If you have new questions then feel free to ask those in the comments as well; if there is interest in another podcast then we’ll make it happen. Enjoy!

Aug 132015
 

Getting v1.70 up and running turned out to be a bit of a struggle, but the server is back online and all of the major bugs have been squashed. However, there are still several things that need to be addressed in v1.70 before I can turn my focus back over to the expansion:

  1. Players with massive savefiles are sometimes causing short server lag spikes when they log in and out of the game. We’ve had problems with this in the past on servers that had lots of “old” savefiles, so it’s not surprising that the issue has popped up again now that all the savefiles are on one server. The good news is that I’ve been working on a fix for awhile now, and although it didn’t make it into the initial releases of v1.70, it should be ready very soon.
  2. Due to a small bug, I took the second server instance offline earlier this week. This should be fixed soon as well, which means that players will once again be able to use the Savefile Management Tool on the Midgard (2) instance.
  3. The Marketplace is currently closed; I didn’t want to push my luck and introduce all of the cross-server stuff at once. It may be another week or two before the Marketplace is opened up again.
  4. The NEStalgia web client that will allow Mac/Linux/mobile device users to play the game is ready to go live. The web client will be available as soon as I can get the second server instance back online.

Though it may not seem like it on your end, this was a major transition and it’s a huge relief to have most of it wrapped up. I’m also very excited to be out of the savefile management business, as players can now manually perform savefile merges and key changes using the new tool. All of this stuff is going to free up a ton of my time in the coming months.

NEStalgia Savefile Management

Please see this forum topic for an overview of the Savefile Management Tool.

 

What’s Next?

Once I get the remaining v1.70 issues dealt with, I’ll switch back to focusing all of my development efforts on the Key of the Exiles expansion. I’m going to continue with the weekly blog updates as well.

It’s been a long time since we did a NEStalgia podcast, so recording a new episode is on the agenda for next week’s update. If you have any questions about the recent v1.70 update, the expansion, or anything else NEStalgia related, please post your questions in the comments and we may use them for a Q & A session during the podcast. We’ll be recording early next week, so get your questions in by the end of the weekend!

Jul 232015
 

KotE ArcticAs most of you are aware, the v1.70 update has been “on the verge of release” for several weeks now. Quoting myself from last month:

The biggest concern is dealing with players who still have savefiles on multiple servers, mostly in regards to merging files and/or dealing with excess characters that can’t be merged. There’s no perfect solution to that issue and it’s probably going to eat up a ton of time, so bear with me as I get it sorted out.

…unfortunately I was right, in that figuring out a solution to that problem gobbled up a *ton* of time. There were several occasions when I told players that I just needed another day or two at most to finish things up, only to find myself slogging through a bunch of additional unexpected development work. Though that’s the nature of software development, it never gets any easier to cope with (or in my case, predict).

The good news is that v1.70 will now include a bunch of bug fixes (courtesy of Spiff), and even more back-end optimizations than I had originally planned. Also, the solutions that I’ve come up with to handle the aforementioned extra savefiles will put users in direct control of handling their excess characters without any outside help. That means that after v1.70 I’ll be able to take myself out of the equation for savefile transfer and merging operations, which will be a huge relief moving forward.

My goal is to get v1.70 out this weekend, and then to run a little Steam promotion next week alongside the beta release of the new universal webclient. Granted, that’s been my goal for the past few weeks, so keep that in mind when placing your bets!

Key of the Exiles News

Working on v1.70 has left me pretty drained. Every time that I’ve sat down this month to write a KotE-centric blog post, I’ve ended up starting at a blank page for 20 minutes before giving up and returning to the development grind on v1.70. I know that many of you are hungry for more KotE news, and I’m going to try my best to prepare something cool for next week’s update.

I was planning to wait until we were closer to release before showing this image, but because I feel bad about flaking out on this month’s weekly updates I feel like I need to give you something related to KotE today:

NEStalgia: Key of the Exiles

Lo and behold, the title artwork for Key of the Exiles, along with a slightly redesigned NEStalgia logo. After KotE is released, players will see this title screen once they hit the new content. You’ll be seeing more images like this (and the new logo) once I’m ready to start promoting the expansion.

I’ll be back next Thursday with another weekly update.

Jun 252015
 

NEStalgia BoulderHey everyone! Today I’m trying to cram in as many hours as possible working on the v1.70.0 update so that I can finally get it released. Therefore, this week’s post is going to be short and sweet.

Waaaaay back when NEStalgia was just a jumble of notes in a Google Doc, I decided to avoid creating any sort of damage-dealing terrain in the overworld. My main goal was just to avoid having dead players exist in the overworld in general (as ghosts in the party or what have you), which is also why Poison can’t kill in the overworld and characters always revive with 1 HP at the end of battle.

While I still don’t want to have dead players being dragged around by their party leader, I do think that it’s about time the overworld became a bit more treacherous. In Key of the Exiles you won’t just encounter the familiar JRPG “marsh” or “barrier” type terrain, you’ll also need to be on the lookout for new types of obstacles that could send you and your party straight to the dreaded death cutscene.

Earlier today I recorded an animated gif to show one of these traps in action. It’s about 3MB, so instead of embedding it I’ll instead have you click this link to view it: Pyramid Boulder Trap!

Takes me right back to 1989...

Takes me right back to 1989…

A couple of answers to inevitable questions:

  • When one party member is killed by either an overworld trap or damage-dealing terrain, all other party members will die instantly as well.
  • Although I mentioned it above, the way Poison works in the overworld has not changed. It will still take an afflicted character down to 1 HP without killing him/her.
  • I’m very aware that players may have concerns over lag spikes etc. making these traps frustrating to deal with. My hope is that these traps will be fun to encounter, and I’m not going to make them reliant on super precise movements and timing.

That’s it for now. I’ll be back with another blog post once v1.70.0 and the Webclient beta go live.

Jun 182015
 

nes_webclient1If you’ve ever wanted to play NEStalgia on other platforms, your wait is almost over. Thanks to the hard work of the folks at BYOND (creators of the tools used to develop NEStalgia), we now have a working HTML5 client for the game that is playable in most major web browsers. That includes Mac, Linux, Chrome OS, and even mobile platforms.

This “NEStalgia Webclient” employs the same account system and can access the same NEStalgia servers as the desktop client, meaning that you can basically switch back and forth from any platform at will. Opening the NEStalgia Webclient is as simple as clicking or navigating to the URL for a server and then logging in.

The Webclient is very exciting news, though it does come with a few caveats:

  • The Webclient can’t yet be used to host or play single player games. You must join a server being hosted by someone else, such as our official servers or any public/private server.
  • This new client can indeed be accessed by browsers on tablets (etc.), though the controls and the interface have not yet been adapted to make intuitive use of touch screens. In other words, tablet/smartphone compatibility is neat, but I don’t think that playing the game on a tablet would be much fun yet.
  • Though it’s stable and works well, the Webclient is still very much in beta. You will almost certainly encounter aesthetic glitches, and your experience may vary (for better or worse) when using different web browsers.

You’ll be able to give the Webclient a spin after v1.70.0 is released (which should be sometime this weekend). [Edit: I didn’t quite get v1.70.0 finished for the weekend; my goal now is this Thursday the 25th]  I’ll post an announcement when both the v1.70.0 update and Webclient access are live. In the meantime, here are a few screenshots that I took while playing NEStalgia on various devices earlier today:

NEStalgia on Chrome OS

NEStalgia on Chrome OS

NEStalgia on an iPhone 6s

NEStalgia on an iPhone 6s

NEStalgia on a Mac

NEStalgia on a Mac

Jun 112015
 

Wouldn’t it be great if you could play NEStalgia on much larger servers? If population surges didn’t mean lots of new servers and inevitable server merges?

This week’s update probably isn’t a super fun read, but it heralds a major change that should significantly improve the NEStalgia experience. Hopefully when the Key of the Exiles expansion goes live, instead of worrying about which official server you and your friends are playing on, you’ll instead be able to focus on saving up gold to purchase some sweet ship upgrades.

Before I get started, I’ll just quickly note that NEStalgia is currently available at a huge discount as part of the Steam Summer Sale. Check it out!

The Indie MMO Problem

I apparently missed the memo about not developing an MMO style game unless you have access to MMO style resources.

The core of NEStalgia’s server system is the common “island server” design where each named server is basically a separate instance of the game running off of its own savefile database. That’s why your characters tied to the Malice server can’t be used on Midgard unless someone manually transfers your savefile. It’s also why each server has separate guild registries and market place listings. This would all be fine and good if the game didn’t have so many players; when I was originally developing NEStalgia I didn’t expect that the game would find such a large audience. It’s a good problem to have, but a problem nonetheless.

Right now a single NEStalgia server can accommodate 50 or so players online at once before lag starts to become an issue; usually each server caps at about 70 players online. This active player limit isn’t a glaring deficit in and of itself, and is actually pretty high compared to most indie games. The difference is that most other multiplayer indie games aren’t MORPGs, and thus they aren’t as reliant on maintaining balanced population equilibrium between servers, nor do they have to be 24/7 persistent worlds. For example, you usually play games like Terraria on small private servers with friends. In games like DayZ you play on larger public servers, but because each play session of the game is generally self contained, switching to a different server and starting over isn’t all that painful.

How We’ve Been Coping

Whenever NEStalgia has received a large influx of new or returning players, we’ve opened up new official servers to accommodate the population load, and then merged those servers into each other as the populations recedes. It’s hard to time these merges so that every single server maintains a satisfactory active population level, and it can also lead to players being isolated from their friends on a more popular server.

All of those factors are why server management has easily been the biggest source of frustration both for players and the dev team. As a player it’s not fun to see your server go into decline after a population surge, and as a developer it’s a huge time suck trying to stay on top of server expansions, merges and transfers. On several occasions we’ve had to open 16+ official servers at once just to accommodate demand… but even the smaller population surges tend to tangle us up in server and savefile management nightmares that bring actual NEStalgia development to a grinding halt.

From here I could  probably write a few more paragraphs about the challenges involved in finding a solution that is a good fit for NEStalgia. However, I’m fairly certain that most of you don’t care about the drawbacks of client side saving or headaches with online shared savefile databases, so let’s skip right to what I’ve actually come up with…

Server Cluster Diagram

The New Solution

The v1.70.0 update should keep NEStalgia’s core “island server” design intact while still allowing us to accommodate many more players on what is technically a single server. Instead of having every single instance of a server store its own savefile database, official servers will now operate in clusters of server instances that share savefiles. Each of the servers in these server clusters will operate under the same server name, but can have additional instances opened to accommodate demand. Ex: There might be a Midgard Cluster, with open server instances Midgard (1), Midgard (2), Midgard (3), and so on.

Like the current named servers, each server instance is its own separate world. You won’t see or directly interact with players logged in to other server instances, though you can come and go as you please between instances. For example, if the first server instance the Midgard Cluster – Midgard (1) – fills up, you can simply log off and join the second instance Midgard (2) to pick up right where you left off. The same things goes if your friends are playing on Midgard (3) and you’re currently logged into Midgard (1) – you just need to join Midgard (3) in order to play with them.

The different server instances in each cluster share the same guild registry and marketplace database. That means that if  you make a change to your guild cape or recruit a new member on Midgard (1), the change will automatically be registered on Midgard (2) and Midgard (3). The marketplace communicates between server instances as well – every instance of the server sees the same market listings, and purchasing an item on one instance will instantly take it off the market on all other server instances.

Don’t be concerned if all this talk of “clusters” and “instances” has your head spinning. All that you need to know is that you’re going to be able to play the game the same way as before, minus concerns about over/underpopulated servers. In practice all of this should be fairly intuitive even to first time players.

Making the Transition

If all goes well, I hope to get v1.70.0 and the server clusters up and running in the next week or so. The biggest concern is dealing with players who still have savefiles on multiple servers, mostly in regards to merging files and/or dealing with excess characters that can’t be merged. There’s no perfect solution to that issue and it’s probably going to eat up a ton of time, so bear with me as I get it sorted out.

Between all four of the current named servers we’re talking about 30,000 savefiles – and that’s after previously setting aside 50,000+ “legacy” savefiles back in December. Because of the sheer number of savefiles we’ll probably end up with two different server clusters, but I can’t say for sure yet. If that’s the case then we’ll only need one server instance per cluster at the moment, so you probably won’t need to even think about instancing for awhile.

I’m sure that some of you have questions, so feel free to ask away. Thanks for reading!

Jun 042015
 

NEStalgia Custom ShipFirst off, thank you so much for all of the responses to last week’s blog post! There were a ton of great questions, and the comments made in support of both the game and the new weekly blog posts were much appreciated. Receiving feedback from players on these weekly updates will be super helpful to the process, so keep the comments coming!

In this week’s update I’ll be providing a brief outline of what player owned ships are like and how they work. What follows is meant as a primer for this topic, as I’m sure that you’ll be hearing much more about player owned ships in future previews. I’m going to avoid significant story and gameplay spoilers here, but if you are completely adverse to any type of spoilers for the expansion then now would be a good time to stop reading.

How Owning A Ship Works

You’ll be boarding your future ship within minutes of starting Key of the Exiles (KotE), though it won’t be under your command just yet. After meeting some new key characters, you, your companions and Krasus will set sail for the western continent. Your primary objective is still to find all of the Luanan Runes and prevent Mardeck from obtaining their power. Thankfully, after having spent a bunch of time in Mardeck’s library, Krasus has a pretty good idea of where the remaining three runes are located.

123

Just hanging out on the deck of the ship in the middle of the ocean.

123

Krasus spends his time in the ship’s cabin reading books and giving advice.

Before long you’ll be in command of the ship, and Krasus and the other NPCs on board will stick around to help guide you. Most of the new content in the expansion is non-linear, meaning that you get to choose where you go and in what order you go there. Your ship will act as a hub for most of your activity in KotE; when you board the ship from the overworld you’ll actually go to the main deck. From there you can explore your ship and talk to NPCs, or take the helm to cruise around the overworld.

Each player’s ship is essentially a unique instance. When a group of players boards a ship, everyone will be transported to the party leader’s ship. That means that you’ll probably be hopping on and off lots of different ships during your travels, and last week jozeppi asked a good question about ship relocation:

Q) I would like to know: if one teleports via recall or a hearthstone, will the ship come along as well like in DW3, or will it be left where it was disembarked?

A) Yes. As in most of the Dragon Warrior games and other JRPGs of the era, using a Recall ability will also teleport your ship to a location nearby your destination in the overworld.

Customizing Your Ship

Because you’ll be spending so much time aboard your ship, you’ll almost certainly be interested in purchasing some upgrades to make it feel more like home…

This is the barebones interior of your ship's hull when you first obtain it. It won't stay this way forever though...

This is the barebones interior of your ship’s hull when you first obtain it.

This upgraded interior features a Companion Ranch and a Merchant to buy/sell goods from.

This upgraded interior features a Companion Ranch and a Merchant to buy/sell goods from.

There are currently five major upgrades that you can purchase that will change the actual structure of your vessel. These upgrades can be purchased in any order. Ex: you can purchase the Inn upgrade before the Companion Ranch upgrade, or vice-versa.

In addition to the functional upgrades, there are also many ways to customize the look of your ship. You’ll notice in a couple of the shots below that the ship can have different color schemes, and you can proudly display your guild’s emblem on the main sail as well. Assuming that you have enough gold banked to purchase these customizations, you’ll be cruising around the ocean in style in no time:

Walking out of a town that I just "Recalled" to, about to board my ship.

Walking out of a town that I just “Recalled” to, about to board my ship.

A ship rocking a guild emblem and custom colors.

A player ship rocking a guild emblem and custom colors.

Sailing near a big hole in the ground in the arctic north...

Sailing near a big hole in the ground in the arctic north…

Another set of custom colors on a ship exploring the world.

Another set of custom colors on a ship exploring the world.

That’s all that I have for today! Feel free to fire away with questions if you have them, and check back next Thursday for another NEStalgia weekly update.

** Note that any information presented in Key of the Exiles previews is subject to change, though I generally won’t cover a topic unless the design is fleshed out and/or it’s already implemented. **

May 302015
 

Pyramid OverworldOne of my big struggles this past year has been in communicating my development progress (and for many months last summer/fall, the lack thereof). Especially when it comes to the Key of the Exiles content expansion, I’ve felt self conscious posting previews etc. in the face of so many delays. My reasoning has been that long time players probably don’t want to preview what’s in the works; they just want to play it already.

The feedback that I’ve been receiving, however, runs contrary to that. Even in the absence of a clear release date, many oldbies are curious about the expansion and want to know more about it. NEStalgia also continues to sell really well on Steam, meaning that there are lots of new players discovering the game every month who want to see more signs of progress from the dev team.

All in all, I think that most players want to hear from me on a regular basis – even if I don’t have much to report. Therefore, my plan this summer is to drop the “only show up when you have something to say” approach and trying something new.

From here on out I’ll be posting weekly development blog updates every Thursday. I can’t promise that the weekly posts will always be full of exciting new information, but players will at least have the opportunity to see what I’m working on and ask questions. The question that I have for all of you is this: What do you want me to show and/or write about?

I’m wary of spoilers when it comes to the expansion, but I’d like to show screenshots of the new areas and at least general descriptions of what’s going on in them. I also have some back-end updates in the works that could drastically increase the size of servers. If you have something else that you’d like me to address (no matter how big or how small), leave a comment on this post or future weekly update posts, and I’ll try to cover all requests.

The first weekly update will be posted this coming Thursday. In the meantime, here are several new screenshots from the expansion for you to digest:

Caption Testing 123

The first line of the “Back to Balzack” cutscene where your journey picks up.

Out to Sea

Sailing out to never before seen lands! This is the deck of your new ship.

Test

The Pyramid of Higaza is home to many dangerous traps…

Test

The main door that you’ll need the “Key of the Exiles” for.