World Saving Part I: Cloud Backup

World Saving Part I

I've finally completed the first part of World Saving - getting a snapshot of game state and sending to a cloud storage (s3), and this is done automatically every 3 minutes. This means that in the event of server crash, the server would be able to load its previously saved state, and resume the game normally with all the previously built structures, mobs, and corpses in-tact. The second part of World Saving would involve allowing user to create accounts, so that they can return to their base whenever they resume their game, which I will work on soon. 

Next Update: Reducing Lag

The next update would be focused on performance (reducing lag). Right now, even when there are only a few players online (i.e 3-4), people are already experiencing lag. The server tick time would range from 30ms-150ms (needs to be below 50ms for lagless experience). Base on preliminary analysis, its a garbage collection problem, and its serious. I've seen a garbage collection take from 10ms to 300ms (unacceptable). When the server is doing garbage collection, it blocks other tasks from processing. Tasks such as processing user input, moving entities, checking collisions are blocked. 

Roadmap

Finally, in case you guys don't know yet, there's a public roadmap of the game which you can see here - https://trello.com/b/OaXieRKY/roadmap . This'll give you an idea of what I'm currently doing, and what the planned future updates are.