Titanfall to have seamless server updates with minimal to zero player interruption.

Vapor

Well-Known Member
Sep 11, 2013
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I had posted over at the Respawn forums asking about how they will handle title updates with the Xbox Live Cloud (Azure) service and a Respawn dev responded with some great info!

http://www.respawn.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3736&p=65517#p65517


Slothy
Respawn
During our small Closed Alpha, we rolled out 3 new server builds and completely moved players from one build to the next without interrupting gameplay. Players never noticed a difference (other than some bugs went away).

We will definitely be rolling out new server builds to fix issues that we find. Not every issue can be patched entirely on the server, and so some fixes will require a client patch. But new server builds are definitely something we will be doing.

Seamless updates are due to the stuff we've written. The fact that we can somewhat-easily deploy new builds on Azure is due to the Xbox Live Compute team's hard work. This is an area that we've been working on with them for some time now. We originally told them that no-cert, fast server updates were a requirement for us, and they made that happen.


 

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Anything that minimizes game interruption is great news.

That and anything that doesn't require a release of a client-side update is great too! I hope one day the releasing of title updates to the client will diminish completely and everything will be a server-side issue in regards to updating the game.

I still to this day don't understand why Valve didn't update Team Fortress 2 on Xbox 360's Orange Box...only thing I can think of is that Valve didn't want to pay for updates to the game.
 
It's nice to see devs using this "cloud" service this early in the gen. I hope to hear more about it.
 
Key take-away:

"We originally told them that no-cert, fast server updates were a requirement for us, and they made that happen."

That's HUGE! I would love to see that with ALL games.
 
Key take-away:

"We originally told them that no-cert, fast server updates were a requirement for us, and they made that happen."

That's HUGE! I would love to see that with ALL games.

Yea. The fact that this game is being built from the ground up with Azure in mind means it really has the potential to bring something new to the table. Seamless server side updates without interruption and fast patching is exactly what an always online needs.
 
Yea. The fact that this game is being built from the ground up with Azure in mind means it really has the potential to bring something new to the table. Seamless server side updates without interruption and fast patching is exactly what an always online needs.

Definitely...the next Battlefield game...or hell, the Star Wars Battlefront game should utilize this.

I have a feeling that post-Titanfall, any game that's having an online component that doesn't use the cloud service the way Titanfall is, is going to be lackluster.

I'm guessing the MSFT published titles, i.e., the next Halo and Gears of War, are going to use the cloud service this way?

I'm so tired of waiting for updates to games because of the certification process, anything that will cut the middle man out and get the updates to our games faster I'm all for! This is what defines next-gen to me. We're finally heading in that direction.
 
That and anything that doesn't require a release of a client-side update is great too! I hope one day the releasing of title updates to the client will diminish completely and everything will be a server-side issue in regards to updating the game.

I still to this day don't understand why Valve didn't update Team Fortress 2 on Xbox 360's Orange Box...only thing I can think of is that Valve didn't want to pay for updates to the game.

Which method is the one that negatively impacts hit detection, Client side, or server side ?
 
130521140537-xbox-one-cloud-620xb.png
 
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Definitely...the next Battlefield game...or hell, the Star Wars Battlefront game should utilize this.

I have a feeling that post-Titanfall, any game that's having an online component that doesn't use the cloud service the way Titanfall is, is going to be lackluster.

I'm guessing the MSFT published titles, i.e., the next Halo and Gears of War, are going to use the cloud service this way?

I'm so tired of waiting for updates to games because of the certification process, anything that will cut the middle man out and get the updates to our games faster I'm all for! This is what defines next-gen to me. We're finally heading in that direction.

You'd imagine that MS would be pushing their much hyped cloud service on developers alright.

The big thing now is that Titanfall actual - works -

If we start seeing connectivity issues, or even a fraction of the crap that BF4 suffered, it'll be a blow to Microsoft. There are bound to teething problems but if they are minor and disappear easily enough, I don't think players will mind too much.
 
Which method is the one that negatively impacts hit detection, Client side, or server side ?

I think it depends. If your connection is slow, it;s client side. if your connection is slow and the game as lag comp, it's server side.
 
I think it depends. If your connection is slow, it;s client side. if your connection is slow and the game as lag comp, it's server side.

So if the game doesn't have lag comp then server side is best ?
 
Which method is the one that negatively impacts hit detection, Client side, or server side ?

That's a good question to ask Respawn, they would probably know better than me. I think hit detection is a client-side thing.

If it's a dedicated server:

Client shoots, goes to server, server relays back to client.

I know in Quake Live, if I'm playing against someone who is pinging over 100 and I'm pinging 25, they look like they're skipping to me, but my shots are actually coming out fast.

Other way around, if I'm pinging 100 and the other person is 25, my shots are severely delayed and I can tell by shooting the wall with the lighting gun and seeing the burn trail lag behind my shot, it doesn't lag when I'm pinging 25.
 
I think it depends. If your connection is slow, it;s client side. if your connection is slow and the game as lag comp, it's server side.

It would be like having a 50MB down connection here in the states, and then playing in a German server and experiencing lag. It's not the server's fault, it's the fact that you're pinging extremely high at that distance.

Which is why I'll never understand why Europeans want to play in US servers and vice versa. Hell, I never want to play in a server outside of my state if I have the chance to.
 
Thats good to know. Hope this is shape of things to come in other games as well.
 
Sounds good to me. No player interruption is good player interruption.
 
I think it depends. If your connection is slow, it;s client side. if your connection is slow and the game as lag comp, it's server side.

its not even close to being that simple. I have a presentation somewhere on the mechanics of hit detection in FPS that was given by an engineer from Epic. if I can find it, i'll upload some of it.
 
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its not even close to being that simple. I have a presentation somewhere on the mechanics of hit detection in FPS that was given by an engineer from Epic. if I can find it, i'll upload some of it.


Ruh Roh, D-vant has gone insane. Arguing his own points and uploading a presentation to himself. Is this how the world ends ? :crazy:
 
No beers . An 11 hour day of problems.

That's a lot of problems. Maybe a re-think of No beers is in order. As the Irish saying (Pretty sure I just made it up) goes, " A case of beers a day, washes your problems away"
 
That's a lot of problems. Maybe a re-think of No beers is in order. As the Irish saying (Pretty sure I just made it up) goes, " A case of beers a day, washes your problems away"

Two more days to fix it then I'm done for 9 days. After Friday I no longer give a s***
 
Two more days to fix it then I'm done for 9 days. After Friday I no longer give a s***

As they say, Keep a positive attitude and always strive for your best, eventually you will overcome your problems and will be ready for greater challenges.

Or

As a gamer would say, Screw it...I'm just gunna go stab some Roman auxiliary in the face.
 
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Titanfall is in good hands with Respawn. With the power of the cloud the sky's the limit for the greatness this game will achieve.