Feb 17, 2023

Shakes and Fidget - DarkwingDang Playa Games

The topic we will be talking about today may be surprising. We are going to increase our pricing for the first time within the 13 years long Shakes & Fidget history, except of adjustments due to currency fluctuations.

Before you rage out about price increasements during inflation, please read the whole producer’s note to understand our motivation and why this does not mean that purchases will be more expensive per se.

Which Prices Will Be Increased and Why?

We are going to increase prices in the mobile apps (Android & iOS) as well as in Steam. In the past, all three platforms had different price points, those will now be aligned.

Price increasements are necessary as the company structure has changed. From a small developer team of only seven people the team size increased to 35 employees within the last two years to ensure the operation of Shakes & Fidget as well as guaranteeing the future of the game. Additionally, this allows us to work on new products to diversify the company’s portfolio. Due to that the personnel cost increased significantly.

And What’s the Good News?

Although prices will be increased this does not necessarily mean that you need to pay more than before. With the introduction of the WebShop (https://home.sfgame.net) we found a way to maintain our pricing but provide a possibility to you to purchase items outside of the game.

Together with the WebShop we are going to establish a Community Portal. This should be the place to go for the community in the future to find interesting information all around the game and a convenient option to purchase mushrooms and special packs, and last but not least special sales will be offered as well from time to time.

Find out more about the WebShop and the Community Portal here: https://home.sfgame.net/.

Feb 15, 2023

Weekend Events and Hellevator

Shakes and Fidget - Leander Playa Games

Hello heroes!

Get ready for the following WEEKEND EVENTS from Friday to Sunday: Valentine's Blessing, Glorious Gold Galore, Witches' Dance, Epic Shopping Spree Extravaganza, Assembly of Awesome Animals & Days of Doomed Souls.

Moreover, the HELLEVATOR will open its hellish elevator doors as early as next week on Thursday, February 23 (on S31.de already on February 22). But before you can go to hell again next week, we are celebrating Valentine's week up to and including this Sunday!

All love-hungry among you that have not been able to complete the seductive Valentine's set yet will have another increased chance to find parts of the set in the assortment of the magic and weapon shop next weekend! Rumor has it that the two merchants are more likely to hand over these epics if you wink and blow them a kiss or recite a romantic love poem...

Feb 10, 2023

Happy Valentine's Week!

Shakes and Fidget - Juuri Playa Games

HAPPY VALENTINE'S WEEK!

Whether you're newly in love or happily single, you can get Valentine's blessing from Monday (February 13) to Sunday (February 19)! With it, you can find his tailor-made amorous Valentine's set (new epics, further details in the tavern from Monday). Every single seam has been sewn by him with love and every metal forged with hot passion. Makes hearts beat faster and is guaranteed to turn your opponents' heads. Broken necks guaranteed!

Have a nice weekend! :)

Feb 2, 2023

Producer’s Note #9

Shakes and Fidget - DarkwingDang Playa Games

With the introduction of the new backend we have experienced some unexpected problems with the game stability and performance. We have been asked how we do address such issues and how we deal with those to provide a flawless gaming experience to you. Let’s shed some light into it.

Since the introduction of the new backend we are using a different architecture than before. We do now work with real databases to be able to store data in a better way instead of using a simple CSV file. In addition, there are other new technologies that enable cool features in the game, but also affect performance. Now, we have a very modern server but it works completely different than with the old backend.

We undertook countless measures since the new backend release to improve server stability. Unfortunately, it is not enough to simply write code that is easy to understand. Our developers also have to make sure that the CPU can handle the code, that the internal as well as the external network traffic is not burdened by it, that it is not written too much into the memory, and that the hard disks are not being disabled with too many accesses. Thanks to our sysadmins, we have access to a very good monitoring which displays data in a telemetry tool. This enables us to detect anomalies relatively easy.

In addition to the telemetry tool, we use another tool which analyzes the source code from the server and breaks down understandably which classes and functions are called in which order - and how these affect the various hardware components. In a simplified way we can see which incoming requests take a long time, or are called too often - and where optimizations can be done. Unfortunately, the tool itself has not been in use that long, but it has already proven its worthiness and is now included in the quality assurance process.

With the help of this tool, we are currently revising each request in all constellations to check which ones may take too long. Those will be investigated further to see what can be improved. We do this step by step and the resulting performance optimizations will be deployed in several updates.

We have to admit that the old architecture was much faster and decently more stable because it relied on protocols that we cannot and do not want to use in the new game server anymore. The disadvantage was that we had a lot of servers in the old system and it had its technical limitations which for example did not allow us to implement specific new features. PHP also has its limits, but we know workarounds and – vice versa – how to get more out of it.

We have already achieved a lot of stability and performance improvements with the last updates, but we also see that we can still optimize in various areas and we will do so.