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Stockfighter is live

stockfighter.io

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Re: Stockfighter is live

#131

Post by cube00 »

iso8859-1 wrote: post #130

> Our servers are under continuing heavy load due to having launched recently and the site being on the front page of HN. This is causing poor performance and undefined behavior. How is that possible? As I understand, undefined behaviour is either there when you compile, or it isn't (it is a function of the source code). So if the undefined behaviour is a function of traffic intensity, I assume you compile different…

It could be around the high load causing errors that are causing unexpected flow on effects. For example, an earlier thread talked about how you're locked to a specific server in the pool and if your server goes down, you can't continue because no other server in the pool will talk to you until the lock expires. Having said that I'm getting around 4 different errors randomly so it could be a number of things playing out in undefined ways.

Re: Stockfighter is live

#132

Post by omash »

iso8859-1 wrote: post #130

> Our servers are under continuing heavy load due to having launched recently and the site being on the front page of HN. This is causing poor performance and undefined behavior. How is that possible? As I understand, undefined behaviour is either there when you compile, or it isn't (it is a function of the source code). So if the undefined behaviour is a function of traffic intensity, I assume you compile different…

I think he means unexpected behaviour, due to bugs, probably race conditions and not handling errors well enough.

Re: Stockfighter is live

#134

Post by SyneRyder »

gknoy wrote: post #122
kasey_junk wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't underestimate how valuable "meh" post mortems are. I for one, would love to see your usual writing ability applied to one. Weeks from now when this is all a funny anecdote of course...

I confess that I would love to see Patrick's usual writing style and ability applied to almost anything. I'm not sure why, but he just seems to be really ... genuine? Personable? It's like I'm listening to a friend talk -- a friend who happens to either be an expert, or have really interesting things to say. I want to say that it's bizarre, but I think it's mainly that he writes very well.

I wondered if Patrick wrote "The StarFighter Handshake", the friendly guidelines that take the place of Terms And Conditions when you signup. It made the usual legalese (ie don't DDOS our site, don't hack into personal user data) feel like shared values of a club you were about to join. That had a hugely positive reaction on me when I saw & read it, and I'm not even entirely sure why I was so impressed. [Kudos, whoever wrote it.]

Re: Stockfighter is live

#135

Post by thenomad »

Congratulations on having the same sort of initial launch problems that other very successful games have!

Seriously. There's nothing worse than preparing for scale and then discovering you don't need it because there's not enough interest. Wheras I'm sure you'll get these initial load problems sorted soon enough!

Re: Stockfighter is live

#137

Post by eterm »

thenomad wrote: post #135

Congratulations on having the same sort of initial launch problems that other very successful games have! Seriously. There's nothing worse than preparing for scale and then discovering you don't need it because there's not enough interest. Wheras I'm sure you'll get these initial load problems sorted soon enough!

While you are correct that it's not good to over-engineer without knowing what is needed, reading this mornings' update shows that while you shouldn't over-prepare for scale and have it unused, this isn't mega-scale:

https://discuss.starfighters.io/t/state-of-the-game-last-upd...

tldr: It took ~3000 game instances from < 5000 sign-ups (and therefore I assume << 5000 concurrent players) to bring the game down.

Re: Stockfighter is live

#138

Post by will_pseudonym »

patio11 wrote: post #109
incepted wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rails is holding up admirably. ... except that you have to spin up more boxes. I think you have a different definition of "admirably" than most of us :-) Follow Twitter's lead and switch to a JVM-based solution when you get a chance, you'll be shocked.

We have one Rails box w/ ~2 gigs of RAM which has been sitting pretty since the golang process also on the box stopped hogging 100% of the available file descriptors. Our scaling issue is with ruby processes, of which we have several thousand active at the moment. Each process runs one wee little universe, filled with wee little traders trading wee little stocks, for the benefit of a single player playing a single le…

Curious--is this something with which JRuby could help?

Re: Stockfighter is live

#139

Post by chenster »

So much reading about what it does. Don't assume people already know how to play a programming game. Most of us don't. Is there an intro video that at least we can watch while you address the server issues?
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