Much Different Interview: Man vs Machine

The world of multiplayer gaming is about to change and you are invited to be part of it! On January 29^th 2012, 16.00 CET, Swedish tech-company MuchDifferent is asking you to join in on a world record attempt. The goal: a once-in-a-lifetime event. One battlefield, One thousand players, in an in-browser FPS game.

Gamers and game developers will have a chance to face-off against each other in a massive carnage. Since there will only be 1000 players, secure your place by buying a ticket. These can be found on the Engineers Without Borders - Stockholm organization’s website (Here), so all the earnings will go straight to them.

Never before have so many players fought each other in an FPS, on one battlefield, in the browser. And never before has so much time been spent on a game only to be played once. Don’t miss it!

http://www.muchdifferent.com/1000PlayerFPS

 

Why?

Three years ago MuchDifferent was looking for a big technical challenge. Friends at CCP, Dice and other gaming companies told us that the hardest and most difficult challenge they were all facing was the scalability of virtual worlds. Not only did we solve the problem, but we also offered a solution that may revolutionize the way games are made, as well as have an influence on other consumer web areas.

How?

MuchDifferent has created a dynamic traffic router/load balancer, PikkoServer, that divides the battlefield between the game servers and glues the result together for the clients, multiple times per second. Although Man vs Machine is based on the Unity Engine, any modern game engine could easily be retrofitted with the technology to create something similar in a few months time.

During the development of this technology, MuchDifferent has created a range of related tools, the UnityPark Suite, that provide a full backend solution for Unity developers, released for the public on January 2^nd 2012.

“I’m really impressed with the product suite that MuchDifferent is offering. It’s an incredible piece of technology that I’ve seen running. The amount of time and money developers can save from using this software is immense and it kinda makes me wish I was developing on their technology.”

(Minh Le, creator of Counterstrike)

Who?

MuchDifferent is a non-profit organization that not only develops tools that change the way online games are made, but is also a leading technology provider within the field of signal processing. The organization has its headquarters in Uppsala, Sweden with a team of 24 people. However, they are also present in South Korea, Belgium and Iceland.