Game undergoes changes to deliver a better performance for all users. Hoplon’s CEO Tarqüínio Teles tells about the modifications that will be implemented in the game during an interview where he answers to players’ inquiries
Hoplon Infotainment is performing several modifications on the underlying structure of Taikodom. The goal is to fix the bugs that in some cases may harm both the game's dynamics and the players's experience.
The search for quality in Taikodom is a constant effort. Some structural corrections have already been ongoing for a few months, but the tendency is that these changes will be intensified and new software features will begin to be implemented.
These alterations will not interfere negatively or modify the current game. On the opposite, they will bring expressive gains as they are being introduced, like better playability and less response time. During the deploying period, the game will operate as usual. When necessary, players will be prompted to install an update. It is important to stress that "this change concerns mainly the underlying structure of the software", explains Hoplon's CEO Tarqüínio Teles in the interview below.
1 - Taikodom just had announced its international publication and already has received important prizes from websites outside its home country. And yet, Hoplon is remodeling the game. Is this remodeling opportune, now that the game is scheduled to be released in 31 countries?
Yes, it's opportune. Even though there are many players who don't realize it, an expressive number of users simply can't have an adequate game experience because of the bugs, and lag is the issue number one in our community. Our priority was always to guarantee the best experience for the user, which is mandatory for any successful MMOG.
2 - What can we expect from this remodeling?
It's a work in progress that reconsiders technological bets we've done, about how and when to develop proprietary solutions. We're reversing some decisions as a result of strategic changes in the company. The main difference will be in the distribution and persistence of data in Taikodom. As the current solutions to be put in practice are related to generation, transmission, dissemination and even storage of significant information in the game, we will have to modify these parts and, as we are already doing it, fix the other parts where the performance wasn't completely satisfactory. Unfortunately, by its scale, the change is complex and will demand a fair amount of time to be settled.
3 - You've said that the need for a remodeling had started even before the announcement of the international publication, but do you think it became more critical later?
It was already critical for us to attend Brazilian players. The international publication merely helped us to define a window of time to implement a definitive solution.
4 - Just so the player communities understand the impact in a practical way: how is the remodeling connected to the lags and bugs that a share of the players somewhat already experienced?
Often the cause of lag were problems in transmitting information, when you have bottlenecks or delays of dissemination into the entire chain - from withdrawing information stored in disk, passing through client delivery on the other end up, till finally displaying the information to the player. After we change our approach to it, lag tends to be strongly reduced. We want to remove any relation between the lag and the number of players in some situations, for example, when there's a lot of people logging in and logging out at the same time. The goal is to provide a better quality and faster response time, in any given situation and for any number of users, inside certain limits. When the amount of users near each other goes beyond a certain number, there's a tendency that even the game client, the player machine, starts to crawl. So, it doesn't help to fix all the bugs in the server if we don't also expand the game client capacity to the most. It's a change mainly in the software infrastructure. What will happen is that we'll be able to deliver the same satisfaction in playing Taikodom for an increasing number of players, in even better and varied conditions.
5 - During this period, will we have more maintenance?
Evidently, we will have maintenance intervals because, as we create solutions and guarantee that the goals were reached, we will make it available to users. They can expect a certain frequency of maintenances, but they will be made with the least impact in the quality of service.
6 - Will these corrections be incremental or it is more likely to have a big pack after some months?
It'll depend on the stage we will be on. At some points, we'll have incremental corrections and in others we'll deliver a bigger pack of changes. This is because only when we can deliver new working software solutions from beginning to end that we'll be able to replace an older solution. In these cases, there'll be quite a massive replacement. Our challenge is to eliminate latency variations and deliver a more consistent and better game experience. That's the challenge currently moving our technology department. The bright side is that we'll have conditions to go ahead with new and more advanced features, which would be difficult to implement with the former software infrastructure. That is, soon we'll be able to announce the new features coming in the first package. We assure that last months' work will pay off an even better Taikodom. It's worth waiting!
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