Community Commander Dev Diaries #1: New Year, New Team, New Approach

[p]It’s a new year and with it comes a new team and a new approach. The Community Commanders (previously the Community Consultants) are now hard at work on some significant updates to Planetary Annihilation: Titans. You may already be aware of the server migration that is currently ongoing, but the team has a lot more in store and is eager to share it with you! You’ll notice this Dev Diary is #1. [/p][p][/p][p]These community dev diaries will aim to fill you in on what we are working on to provide some transparency on what your community team is working on and who the hardworking members of the community are. We want to keep you all informed on goings-on from here on out and will use these to sprinkle juicy sneak peaks at their work in progress on its way to release later this year.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]The team behind these upcoming updates and these diaries is a number of passionate players who have been at the heart of Planetary Annihilation for years, in some cases all the way back in pre-launch and Alpha. They know the game inside and out and have a mix of skills and talents from art (modelling, texturing, animation, FX), level and UI design to the AI experience and the backend skills necessary to make all the wheels turn. There’s no better team to be shepherding Planetary Annihilation: Titans. They are always in active conversation with the rest of the community, keeping their fingers on the pulse of the game. You should definitely drop by and say hello in the community discord. You'll learn more about the individuals and their work in this Dev Diaries series. [/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]PA:T is celebrating its 12th birthday this year, a huge achievement for any game, especially if it is still receiving updates after such a stretch of time.  We’re already in the process of modernising the servers to ensure the game can live for another 12 years, but what else is in store? [/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]
Tune in to Dev Diary #2 for a closer look at what’s coming up! [/p][p][/p][p]Thank you for joining us for this first Dev Diary, now come and annihilate some planets with us![/p][p][/p][hr][/hr][p][/p][p][/p][p]As you may know, recently Planetary Annihilation's server capacity has been reduced. Eventually, Planetary Annihilation will be decoupled from AWS as these servers have been growing increasingly unsustainable to maintain. AWS servers have underpinned signing in, finding a ranked match, watching replays and more. [/p][p][/p][p]Our goal now is to rebuild what we call PA_NET and migrate it one part at a time, introducing improvements that will automatically optimize connections in-game. This should reduce common connection issues and make it much easier to join friends, set up custom matches, and get into games without frustration. [/p][p][/p][p]However, in the short term we will have to turn off the ability to host AI games on the official game servers. This will allow us to redirect those resources to ranked games, which cannot be self-hosted. In the future, I’ll talk more about relay servers and the work we’re doing to solve UPnP issues. [/p][p][/p][p]In the meantime, community members have kindly offered to host servers for players with stricter ISPs that prevent them from self-hosting games. We want to thank You, the community, for your continued support, and your patience and understanding while this crucial work is completed. [/p][p][/p][p]Further news will be shared in upcoming dev-diary posts and on Discord.[/p]