The current version of Weewar is still not quite running fast enough. We have compensated by throwing more hardware at it but in order to move forward we need to get the server efficiency under control. We have worked on an optimized version and expect to start testing it publicly early next week. If you are interested in helping testing it you can already request an invite here: http://test.weewar.com/requestInvite (please note the "test" in the url)

This will also address a number of smallish issues (we will provide more details when we'll start). Thanks for helping out!  

Done!

Yep, I'm in.

Ok, invites are sent! Please look out for anything that is different or behaves differently then the current Weewar. There shouldn't be anything as this is all about getting Weewar to run more efficiently.

Have you guys considered some sort of lockout or maximum user model?  By this I mean, do something like (1) Allow only the N most recently active players, or (2) allow only the top N players by games played, or (3) have a cap on the number of players logged in at any given time.  (In all these limits, you of course would include pro users without restrictions.)

What I'm getting at is that enacting some sort of strategy like this would allow you to focus on fixing stability (and, heck, even adding feature requests), rather than trying to scale.

It's just my humble 0.0198 USD that getting the bugs fixed is more important than speed

I didn't get my invite

Bug report:

Game - http://testbattle1.weewar.com/game/36#nowhere

When the game finished, in the chat, it said:

New Score for spadequack:1516 (+16) [centered]

New Score for cmdrvaughn:1484 (-16) [centered]

null [as if someone said it (the left color was black)]

null [centered]

Also, it's worth noting that when you destroy the last unit of an opponent, it pops up saying you won the game before the battle report of the battle that won the game. Shouldn't the win message pop up afterwards? (This happens in the normal servers too, to my knowledge)

another minor bug: when I have two games where it's my turn in my HQ, the title of the browser says: "1 - Your turn ..." instead of "2 - Your turn ..."

Pluto beat me to it

This is excellent stuff (and tricky to spot). Thanks a lot!

I just noticed two things:

1)  What Pluto said

2)  I'm not getting email notifications from test.
 

I can confirm that I am getting email notifications from test... same game as mattgrande. If that helps with the troubleshooting at all.

I just started getting emails again.  No one else seems to be having that problem.  I'm blaming gmail.

I'm just getting back into my Weewar ninja suit after a short hiatus so forgive my if this is now common play. Here's my situation: I attacked an HA (10) with my HA (10). I was standing next to my base, while my opponent was sitting on his base. My opponent lost 9 (good), and I lost 8 (bad).

Is this normal?
 

This just in ... weird refresh issue.

Things seem to be just fine now ...
 

ratioswitch said: "My opponent lost 9 (good), and I lost 8 (bad).Is this normal?"

yes, this looks normal. there is a random chance factor to every attack
 

new minor issue:  all the stuff in my HQ is now all double spaced

My HQ is double spaced as well, as is the left hand column during game play - and a different font in the chat box ingame, but only for system notes like accepted invitations and offering peace.  And there's a small black box in the top left corner of the ingame chat.

can you try refreshing your CSS - if the problems persist would you mind posting a screenshot here or send it via email to support@weewar.com?

Here it is:

I refreshed my CSS too. (Ctrl-F5 in firefox, right?)

And also on game pages.

Seems you have an extra break or so after each user name/profile link before the rating.
 

same here, also after cache clear-age.  another thing to notice is that player names are underlined in the chat windows, and the game actions (like when players accept the invitation or offer peace, etc.) are a smaller font

woohoo, I've got the strongest army!

ahem, yeah, I'm getting the double spacing too, but only from the HQ

thanks a lot.. we'll be rolling out a fix for that today (onto test)

Another bug:

When you're on the new game page and click preview map for a map, you get a page with a number on it.

http://testbattle1.weewar.com/map/thermopylae2 gives number 16

http://testbattle1.weewar.com/map/rockyride gives number 20

etc.

When you create a new game, before the game is started, in the chat box, there's a little black square in the top-left corner.

I never got an invite to test even though I signed up twice - d r b a b c o c k at gmail dot com

I'm still seeing the CSS problems that Spadequack posted about.

Alright, so I guess we can assume that scaling is a higher priority than stability or bug fixes or feature requests or increasing vectors for community contribution (map editor).

I can only speak for myself, but I'd rather have limited, throttled, time-delayed or otherwise restricted access to a game that was stable and solid and feature-packed -- instead of trying to play on a game system that could scale to high heavens, but was [significantly] buggy, unstable, feature-lacking and restrictive on the community.

Anyway, I'll try not to bother everyone any more with my mumblings... but it's hard because I think this game has potential, potential which is not really being aimed for.

If I was feeling cynical I'd suggest that this may be because scaling allows more people to play the game, and assuming x percent of people buy a pro account, having more people brings in more money.

Not that making money is a bad thing of course... 

Well, we can't make any judgements about the developers beyond an examination of their actions and non-actions.   At least not without some sort of official public statement.  For the time being, I'm assuming they're not just greedy for money by way of increasing membership by whatever means they can.  I'm hoping they're more purist than that, and prioritize releasing quality workmanship over making money.

Same. Hence the "If I was feeling cynical" 

From seeing them around the place on Tangler, the image I'm getting is far from greedy for money. 

I'm no MBA, but I can't really see how they could be making a lot of moola off this site.  The pro subscription is pretty cheap and I don't even think that many players have pro accounts... I'd be surprised if they made more than $5-10K when they first offered paid pro accounts.  And at the current rate they let in new players, I'd put the tops on per month income at $1-2K... then keep in mind that after operating costs, this is split in two.  That's poverty for alex and bert if this is their full time gig.  Of course I'm just speculating and pulling all of this out of my ass.

So I'm all about keeping weewar solvent and profitable.  But don't worry, eventually the free market will take over.  If the devs only focus on making a quick buck, then the community will die and weewar's potential (and their profits) will be stifled.  But if they keep adding new cool features and build up a great community, then that is the way to maximize their profits.  Hopefully they'll follow they latter route, but time will tell.

 

I have said what we are doing and in what order we are doing it before, at various times, in various places, and often enough in response to Pisto's "mumblings". There is no need to assume anything here: Getting the load problems under control is our single highest priority as we can not move forward as is. We have compensated for the performance shortcomings with additional servers and now we NEED to find a better solution.

There is no secret agenda and greed has certainly not been the motivation behind Weewar - nor will it ever be. We spend our time, our money and our skills to the best of our ability and I would hope it shows in Weewar.

I'm noticing the "on" beside certain players now.  I assume this is for players online?  It seems to be breaking the formatting in my HQ (Note that I noticed this yesterday, and it could be fixed by now)

the breaking of the player layout has been fixed but the fix has not been rolled out to test yet (we want to include some other changes, too)

online / offline status seems to be inconsistent - we are monitoring this. Thanks for sharing!

Alex: Well, like I said, a nice easy [temporary] way to ensure good performance, is to recognize some threshold of X users at which the system slows down, then not letting more than X users login to the system at any given time.  It shouldn't be too hard to brain up a fair system which lets people have their share of weewar fix in any given period of time, such as N logins per week, or take the modulo of the player id to divide into 5 groups, and then assign those groups to be able to login only on some given weekday, or something.

Cap the users -- end of load problems [for the time being].  That's what I would do.

Anyway, I've said my peace, and I don't want to be a thorn in any dev's side with repetitive nagging.  I'll see what Weewar is up to in a couple months.  My hopes are tempered.

I'm not expecting or demanding you run the ship the ways I'm suggesting.  At the same time, I think it's become clear that we have differing ideas on captaincy.

I have a bug report that may not be specific to the test server.  In this game: http://testbattle2.weewar.com/game/35 the attack bonus seemed to build up across multiple turns on a unit of a player who was not playing any more.  In one turn, I attacked a light inf with my light inf and it showed an attack bonus of +5 even though that was the only time I attacked that unit in that turn.

I also seem to remember seeing this in games on the regular server, but it's such a rare occurrence and you aren't necessarily expecting it.

Is the normal?  The specs page seems to indicate that attack bonuses should only accrue on a per-turn basis and not across multiple turns.

 

quite right - attack bonus should be limited to attacks during a single turn only. I have not seen this before (or  reports of it). We'll look into it. Thanks a lot for pointing it out!