I'm DJ Hirko (
[S2]Deejay), the lead programmer of Heroes of Newerth. I'm writing a post today to give you a look inside the nitty-gritty technical aspects of working on Heroes of Newerth.
One feature we've planned to add to HoN, and actually did have for a few hours, is persistent matchmaking groups. This would mean that after playing a matchmaking game with a group, you would still be in that group and wouldn't need to re-invite everyone next game. It's a very nice "quality of living" improvement for our loyal players.
The original matchmaking code was written to get good match-ups in a timely manner. It worked pretty well, but had scalability problems. These scalability problems laid dormant until the first attempt we made to add persistent matchmaking groups. Our stats showed the number of groups quadrupled, leading to very poor performance on the chat server. This was quickly pulled and has sat on the shelf ever since.
Now here's where it can get pretty technical. We've made huge changes on the chat server to improve its performance. Many O(N^2) algorithms were reduced to O(N) or even O(1) and we now use a separate process on the chat server to matchmake. After these changes, the chat server's peak frametime was lowered from 13000ms to 1200ms. This is a great improvement, but it's still higher than we're aiming for. In order to add support for persistent groups again, we need to further optimize the chat server, and that's where I/O completion ports come in.
Our profiling data shows that 41% of frametime (i.e. peaking at 480ms) on the chat server comes from polling sockets to see if there's data waiting, and if there is, receiving it. This time does not include processing the data - just polling and copying! Polling an individual socket is fast, but it's an O(N) problem - it grows linearly with the number of sockets (including clients and servers). The best solution to this problem that we've found is a Windows feature called I/O completion ports.
Windows supports I/O completion ports for a variety of asynchronous I/O functions - the pertinent one here being reading socket data. I/O completion ports are an OS level messaging system. When you call an asynchronous function that's hooked up with an I/O completion port, a message will be queued up when the function call is finished. Instead of processing the socket immediately, we instead associate the socket with a shared I/O completion port, call an asynchronous read, and then process the messages as they're created. This reduces the O(N) problem of polling socket data to an O(1) problem, since we no longer need to loop over all sockets - we just process the messages as they're posted to the single I/O completion port. This reduces our peak frametime from 1200ms to 760ms, leaving plenty of space for us to add a new feature like persistent matchmaking groups.
These changes will be going out soon and from there, you can expect to see persistent matchmaking groups being added in the near future.
I hope this was informative and thanks for reading!
Hey everyone! My name is AceJR and I’m the Community Manager for HoN.
In this blog series, I will be giving you guys updates on general events around the community and summaries about what’s been going on and different hot topics. Hopefully this will help you guys stay in touch with what has been going on in HoN and give you guys a chance to get involved with some of the awesome events that go on everyday in your community.
Past and Current Events
Serious Business Cup Season 11The Serious Business Cup Season 11 was held on Sunday, June 9th. 21 teams battled it out for a total prize pool of 13000 gold coins. Team YEYE (with NoVa ringing for them) won by defeating Justice League Online with a 2-1 victory in the epic bo3 finals. The third place match was played between FTGS Alpha and team excellent, with the latter coming out on top. At first, the event was streamed and casted with Beef and iNsania on twitch.tv/complexityhon with around 500 live viewers. The finals were covered by nfgDan and Mangy of teamstaygreen with around 1600 live viewers. Also a lottery took place for all of the participants and 6 of the lucky winners recieved 5$ (200 coin) packs.
The Serious Business Cup Seasons are hosted and ran by Klejf with various helpers! They are held almost weekly and are open to players/teams of all skill level. Look for sign-ups in the Competitive Discussion section of the Heroes of Newerth Forums.
FTGS 1v1 TournamentThe clan FTGS ran a 1v1 inhouse tournament last week, headed up by PyschoX aka Maddog. The tournament had 60 people participate in it and was casted on www.twitch.tv/maddoogg. FTGS’s very own Minimaggot casted the tournament along with PyschoX. The competition was steep with many heads clashing to prove themselves the best in the clan. After some well fought semi-finals and finals games, abyssion` took the title as 1v1 champion taking home 1000 GC. Other noticeable positions were acidp0is0n in 2nd, abu11fouad in 3rd, and pxa in 4th. Also, kill3rkro3t3 was randomly selected as the “lucky skin winner” and can now be found in Newerth sporting the sexy DJ Rap City skin.
To find out more information about the FTGS clan contact anyone mentioned in this forum post or pop in on the stream, www.twitch.tv/maddoogg
BeastyBird 5v5The 5v5 tournament was a great hit! There was a total of 34 teams participating in the tournament ranging from brand new teams to some of the more experience ones containing popular players such as Nova and megabever! Although there were some minor issues towards the end of the tournament these were quickly resolved with all players still on good terms. The teams battled hard with the team Four and a half men (led by captain Imba) meeting team Tempteam (led by captain Megabever) in the winners bracket final. Tempteam took the win and moved on to the grand finals to play the winner of the loser bracket finals, Norge (led by captain Loiz). Tempteam, again, ended up on top and took home the winnings of 5000 GC.
Congrats to everyone who participated and look for more BeastyBird tournaments on the General Discussion and Competitive Discussion sections of the forums.
Excellent TournamentThe first Excellent Tournament was played last week and it was, indeed, a great event!
We had 22 teams viciously vying for the grand prize of 5000 gold coins! The winners of the event were DCx aka Justice League but it was no walk in the park to victory. They had a hard grand finals vs “The best of five” but they took the series 2 games to 1. The finals were everything that we had hoped them to be. We saw some different, more diverse hero picks such as devourer, Valkyrie and gauntlet and one of the games came down to an epic conclusion at the 80th minute. The tournament ran well with no major hiccups, games were played on-time in an orderly fashion.
In conclusion, DCx took home the 5000 dollars, Best of five took home 3000 gold coins, and at a respectable 3rd/4th place were 4 and a half men and waveya taking home 1500 coins each.After the grandfinals we also had 2 Tempest avatar giveaways which allot of people were pumped to win! We had teamstaygreen with dan and mangy casting everything until the finals they sat around 1000+ viewers. The other day I casted the epic finals on my stream with around 500+ viewers !
For more information about Excellent Tournaments, please contact Pew or go to the website http://excellent.tourney.cc/ to get the full details about when the next one will be. As of now it is planned for June 20th, so sign up and maybe you will be the next team to take home 5000 GC!
Aluna Art ContestS2’s own Nidhogg decided to throw an Aluna Art Contest in honor of the arrival of Stardust Aluna to Newerth. This art contest was to showcase Stardust Aluna and the current heroes of Newerth in a meeting - scenery and composition totally up to the artist. The twist was that it had to be done in MSpaint. We had 42 entries and of those, 3 reign as first place winners!
Look forward to more community events thrown by [S2]Nidhogg by checking the General Discussion section of the forums.
Lucky Monday!Over the past four Mondays, the community’s very own EnconHun has been running the event called Lucky Monday in the General Discussion section of the forums. It has been a wonderful way for community members to earn Silver and Gold coins through simple, fun games of chance. This week the community was asked to guess some of EnconHun’s favorites in HoN for a chance to win 50 SC for each correct guess.
For your chance to win, head to the General Discussion forums on Monday and check out the latest Lucky Monday by EnconHun.
Pebbles 2v2 TournamentCommunity event “2v2 Pebbles Midwars” by dmal is taking action in Newerth on June 14th at 8pm CEST. A sticky in the General Discussion of the HoN forums is where you can view what time this event is held in your timezone as well as the single elimination bracket link to see who is signed up. There are specific rules in place that each team must abide by which are also viewable on the forums, such as “Codex is strictly restricted” and stat enabled game mode. Come check out this sweet event and sign-up.
DreamHack Summer 2013
DreamHack Summer 2013 is right around the corner! Honcast has some special tricks up their sleeves as far as entertainment goes while there is sure to be a plethora of great games played. Check out the Competitive Discussion section of the forums for further details on DreamHack Summer and tune into Honcast from June 15th to June 18th to catch all the action.
Jaru the Corrupted Disciple and I ducked and scurried toward an outcropping of volcanic rock to avoid being trampled by the Rampage-like Hunter and Rift Arachna as they tore at each other.
My eye was drawn once again to the blackness of the Great Rift, which seemed to have grown in the brief time since Jaru brought me there. At first I thought the shape emerging from the darkness was another tentacle, but it was white and, when I squinted to gain detail, braided. It lashed into Newerth and disappeared back into the Rift.
Then the tip of a steel sword sliced across the black veil. A jagged red blade that seemed to be made of bone met and stopped it, and both weapons retreated into the Rift. Jaru saw it as well. His orb began to glow brighter and spin faster. I made sure I was not between him and whatever might issue forth.
One of the giant purple tentacles uncoiled from the Rift and loomed above us. The end spread and dipped, its viscous fluid quivering. Our reflections in it appeared quite concerned, even terrified. The tentacle jerked once, twice, and fell into the dust and ash, where it rolled and whipped in a frenzy. Its severed base flopped through the Rift spewing purple blood that glowed upon the stones.
A warrior burst through the Rift and landed next to it. The white braid trailed behind him from a golden mask adorned with a fringe of white hair and a single giant green eye in the center. He carried two swords, wicked cleaver-like blades with rolling eyes embedded near the base. I shuddered, imagining what sort of creatures this Hunter had subdued in order to forge these weapons.
He gazed at us with the burning green eye for a moment, then swiftly drove both blades into the tentacle. It gave a final twitch and moved no more. The fluid which would have become a stalagmite spilled from its mouth and formed an opaque pool in a crevice. The Hunter pulled his blades free and turned to join the fight against the Rift Arachna. He had taken two steps when a glowing red streak burst from the Great Rift and slammed into him, knocking the Hunter off his feet into a graceless tumble across the harsh landscape.
He recovered and rose into a half-crouch to face the Riftspawn. This monster seemed to welcome the confrontation, as if it had finally cornered its elusive prey. It possessed the massive lance-like claws of red bone I had seen moments earlier. They grew from its forearms, leaving the hands and their hooked claws free to slash and pierce. Jagged bony armor ran down its back to a tail bristling with bulbous red tendrils that matched the two at the end of the whip-like antennae sprouting from its head.
Hello ladies and gentlemen of Newerth! Sell here, with a quick rundown of what’s brewing behind the scenes. We wanted to keep you all in the loop of both upcoming content and a few things under development as well. Hopefully you enjoy the first of my posts in our new blog.
League and Leveling Systems
We have been working on methods of rewarding players for their dedication and consistent play on their accounts. One of these methods in development is the League System. The current plan is to have Seasonal Leagues and League Ranks to differentiate players of varying skill levels and provide those seeking with continuous challenge and reward.
Also, the current Leveling System will be reworked with one more focused on rewarding dedication to your account. Players will be rewarded with more silver per game the higher their account level. You will not by any means lose your current level of investment in your account as that will all transfer into the new leveling system. The rewards for your first game each day will also be much more significant. These changes are still in the development stages and are looking awesome thus far!
Matchmaking
In response to community inquiry we are taking a closer look at the Matchmaking System and evaluating areas we can improve upon. This is quite an involved process and it is currently in development alongside the new League System!
Mid Wars
Mid Wars is the go to favorite of many of our players and we have been monitoring feedback closely. We are currently exploring options to encourage a bit more active play in Mid Wars and to prevent the games where there can be too much passive play. Right now we are experimenting with changes to Runes, Experience, Gold, and other elements in order to accomplish this. These changes are currently in different stages of testing and iteration.
Balance
We are continuing the trend of balancing and improving our hero pool. This ensures that we address any current hero concerns over focusing on hero release deadlines. The current feeling is that our players will enjoy a higher level of quality control to our current game, and more focused and polished new hero releases.
Currently we have been working on hero Asymmetry, which means that we are making sure that heroes do not overlap significantly in play style to provide players with more interesting options when selecting a hero. While the heroes are being looked at, new Staff of the Master effects are also being considered. More information on this can be found in Buro’s last blog post.
I hope you are all as excited about the new upcoming content as I am, and that you enjoyed the peek behind the curtain. Expect use of the new blog regularly and enjoy the upcoming posts!
-Sell