Respawn Entertainment has posted up some notes on how last weekend's multiplayer tech test for its upcoming sci-fi shooter Titanfall 2 held up on the server and backend side.
In a blog post, Respawn talked about how they ran the thousands of dedicated servers during the tech test:
We made sure to have a lot of datacenters for Titanfall 2, to give us the ability to scale very rapidly as well as to move games to another datacenter if we hit issues. We actually tested datacenters going offline completely and we learned how quickly we could move 100% of users from one datacenter into another datacenter. We weathered network attacks as well using this same system. After having done it a few times, it gives us a process to follow so that we can move players around even faster in the future. And for launch, we'll have even more datacenters available!
The blog also talked about how the tech test was used to try out the other backend services for the game, such as the new matchmaking system and the Networks player group feature:
We had some times where we were fixing issues with the brand new Invite Network functionality, and we could actually see the impact of those in the player counts in real-time! We saw a huge amount of players who ONLY joined games using the Invite Network popup in lobbies. With the Network Invites, Happy Hour, clan tags, and Inbox functionality, it seems like people really embraced our new Networks system. This was a huge success for us, and they were something that was hardest to verify before this weekend. Networks were created for real humans to use, and no simulation can prove that it would be successful like real people can.
Xbox One and PlayStation 4 owners will be able to check out a portion of Titanfall 2 once again this weekend with the second of Respawn's two tech tests, from August 26-28. The full version of the game is due for release on October 28.
