Posts Tagged ‘record’

If you had read the earlier article I posted, you would have know that last Sunday, the 29th, there was an online record attempt to have the most players online in a first person shooter. I myself was sick and woke up only few minutes too late to join in, but I think I would have had to been ready to click the button to join for hours as MuchDifferent filled all their slots fairly quickly, only shy of 1000 players during the duration, but well past the amount needed for a record. The CEO Christian Lönnholm had this to say, “It was amazing. We did not imagine the amount of interest that this game would generate, so the system went down shortly after we had reached the peak of 999 players. Within minutes we were able to adjust it, and the battle continued for about two hours more. Almost until the end we were averaging around 980 players at any given moment. It was a blast! Obviously, this would not have been possible without the players, so I’d like to send a special warm and loving ‘thank you’ to them! Thank you for bringing such creativity to both the battlefield and to the chat. You had me laughing, giggling and spilling coffee throughout the event!” It just goes to show that I missed out on a great event, but I look forward to seeing who picks up and uses their server technology in future games. They say it can be used in any game engine, but I wonder if any console developers would ever plan to use it. Here’s hoping!

On Sunday January 29th at 7am Central time, I will be on my computer patiently waiting at MuchDifferent’s website trying to get into their world record attempt. First announced last year, the developer has finally said that it is time to participate in a record breaking event. The attempt takes a direct stab at record holding games such as MAG, which allows a max of 256 PlayStation 3 players online, and also Planetside, which can allow 399 players to be in the same zone at once. Now, they haven’t created a PS3 or PC game exactly, the match will take place via web browser only utilizing the newer Unity player with their simple game entitled Man vs Machine.

You might ask, “How is a 1000 players possible?”, and the answer is almost simple.  Well just a few years back, MuchDifferent was looking to solve technical challenges brought up by their friends at CCP and DICE, and came up with a way to scale virtual worlds. Their solution is the new PikoServer, a dynamic traffic router and load balancer that divides the battlefield between game servers and then stitches the results back together for the users. In fact, the world record attempt of 1000 players is only going to be spread across 8 servers all together.

Now here is something that I haven’t mentioned yet about Man vs Machine. The players will be split between gamers and developers. The gamers take on the side of  Man and will have a projectile that explodes with splash damage. Developers will play as machine, firing lasers that require precision aiming. Not only is this a once in a lifetime chance to help set a world record (there is no sequel planned), but also a chance to take devs down a notch or two.  Check out the trailer below and if you’re interested, be sure to be HERE when the timer runs out. Also, the game is free, but if you think this is going to be wildly popular and hard to get into, you can also purchase a ticket for $200 that guarantees you access as long as you are there when the timer runs down. The $200 goes directly to Engineers without Borders and is available on that site here. Hope to see you there!