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Ruins of Silan - Deployment Progression Page

by Xavier Antoviaque — Creation Date : Friday,09 June , 2006

The Ruins of Silan, a major update of the Ryzom new player experience, is currently being patched on the live servers. As part of this update, we're also deploying a new server architecture, which paths the way for the upcoming Ryzom expansion, the Ryzom Ring. This is an important change, and we are thus closing the Ryzom shards for 4 days to complete it. While we are doing this, we have setup this special page to let you know where we are at, and what remains to be done.

The steps described there are actually taken from our internal planning document; when everything is completed here, we will reopen the shards.

If you want to discuss this during the downtime, you can use the comments below; the Klients chat system is also at your disposal to contact the CS team or discuss with fellow players.

Legend

Not done

Being worked on

Completed

Current step

Test

Phase 1 - Technical Upgrade

Here, technicians work on the servers to make the necessary modifications to upgrade the architecture.

Shards shutdown. To start working on the servers, we need to make sure everyone is logged out and stop the shards.

Character saves backup. To ensure the integrity of your electronical selves, we make a safety backup of your character saves before performing any changes to the architecture.

Configuration of the servers. Each shard is made of several physical servers. With the new architecture, they need to be reconfigured to take the changes into account. The updated version of the server software is put in place.

Centralized characters database build. The new architecture makes each of the shards aware of the others, to let individual characters from all shards meet on the same Ring scenarios. A central database, containing information about all characters, has thus to be built.

Character saves transfer. The existing character saves need to be moved to new places among the server architecture; since it involves the transfer of large amounts of data, this can take time.

Client patch preparation. Ryzom servers aren't the only part which needs to be updated for the new architecture; Ryzom clients will also have to download a big two parts patch. At this step, we are preparing the necessary files to be downloaded.

Patch system reopening. Since this will be a huge patch to download, we will try to reopen the patch system before actually reopening the shards; this way, you would be able to patch your client ahead of time, and be ready to enter the game as soon as we reopen the gates. :)

Phase 2 - Tests

Before releasing anything, we need to test, test again, and once it is tested, test once again. Before planning the release, numerous tests have been performed on the version to be installed - but we can never test enough, especially with a MMO.

Release notes check. We go through the patch release notes, to check that everything listed in there is present and works as intended.

Non-regression test. In a MMO, a butterfly flapping its wings in Tokyo can cause a hurricane in New York - we thus check the existing features to ensure they haven't been broken by the patch.

Ruins of Silan test. The major addition of the patch coming with the architecture change, which needs its own test phase.

Outposts test. Outposts are a big piece, and contain persistant information (which Outpost belongs to who, etc.) which needs to be checked.

NPC sellers test. NPC sellers keep your items for sale; here we make sure they haven't lost anything during the patch.

Guilds/characters test. During this test, we ensure the integrity of the guilds and characters saves.

Miscellaneous tests. Extra integrity tests.

Customer support tools test. If anything wrong happens to you after the patch, you will need to be able to reach the CS staff; here, we make sure the corresponding tools work as expected.

New Free Trial offer tests. With the Ruins of Silan, we start a new free trial offer for newcomers, which needs to be tested. You will get more details on this by the end of the week.

Phase 3 - Reopening of the shards

Reopening of the shards. This will only happen when everything else is completed.

Patch

Posted by thlau at Monday,12 June , 2006 at 18:39 UTC

Will there be a patched fullinstaller and a torrent for it too?

RE:

Posted by ajsuk at Monday,12 June , 2006 at 19:02 UTC

"Will there be a patched fullinstaller and a torrent for it too?" The client is the only thing you should have to download, all of the following patches are down by the login console.

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Posted by kaetemi at Monday,12 June , 2006 at 21:18 UTC

i think some of the npe island data already is in the 02-2006 installer, actually :) but really, i don't think a new player would like a 300MB patch after downloading a 1.5GB game :p

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Posted by henriet1 at Monday,12 June , 2006 at 21:30 UTC

what does it matter if u downloaded 1500mb, then 300 aint that much and most people recieve it in like 10-20mins

Re:

Posted by xenofur at Tuesday,13 June , 2006 at 12:32 UTC

unless you are on dial-up or isdn and got the installer form somewhere else(friend, magazine disc)...

<_<

Posted by ichigono at Wednesday,14 June , 2006 at 18:54 UTC

Or shudder spent 4 full days downloading the main installer over dialup....

Updated installer

Posted by antoviaque at Tuesday,13 June , 2006 at 14:28 UTC

Yes, there will be an updated installer; I'm still not sure when, since it will need to be tested before we can release it, but there is some work done here already.

Re: Updated installer

Posted by thlau at Tuesday,13 June , 2006 at 22:03 UTC

I think especially a torrent feed of the new installer could be an alternative to patching the client. If many people download the new client via bittorrent the impact on your network infrastructure should be much less and the overall download speed could be much higher than patching every client. I'm looking forward what you will accomplish, and wish that you will be successful.

Bittorrent download

Posted by antoviaque at Wednesday,14 June , 2006 at 10:20 UTC

Yup, agreed; we usually setup a bittorrent feed for the installers we publish; for example, the current installer (prior to the Ruins of Silan patch) is available through Bittorrent - just have a look at the Game Download page under the Newcomer's Inn section.

Patch Updates(With Auto-Refresh)

Posted by ajsuk at Tuesday,13 June , 2006 at 21:34 UTC

http://www.reapersofthedark.com/patch/

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