I've just sent out the invitation to the first load-test of Traces of Illumination. For the purpose of this load-test, I've created a special "load-test client" which immediately logs in to the server. The user only needs to join a team, and then wait until a real player hits "play" - the load-test client basically simulates a user with the simple AI that's also used in single player mode. The full invitation:

Hi there,

tomorrow (Sunday, September 28th), at 16:00 (4pm) CEST, we're doing the first multiplayer load-test of:

Traces of Illumination
(short: TOI, was previously called "JC's Unity Multiplayer TRaceON" ;-) ).

What is a load-test? It's a test where as many players as possible are simulated (or actually playing) to see how the game server behaves when many players are simultanuously online and playing.

How can you help? In the time between 16:00 and 17:00 CEST, I will be starting as many clients as I can (2x4 on my two Windows notebooks, 1x8 on my Mac Pro). I'll be monitoring the game server closely to see how it behaves under load. It would be great if you could also log in to the game during that time. You could either just play Traces of Illumination in multiplayer mode - or you could start a couple of the special multiplayer load-test clients on your computer. Since there will likely be some action on the server during that time, it's also a good time to see what Traces of Illumination is like when playing multiplayer - even though it's likely that many of the "other players" will be AI-controlled ;-)

The more clients you can add during that time, the better - each single client will be appreciated. If you're planning to add a lot of clients (more than 4), please contact me between 3pm and 4pm CEST (one hour before the actual load-test), so we can coordinate when exactly you will add your clients. You can contact me via e-mail (simply reply to this message), through Skype (preferred) with jashanchittesh, or with the in-game chat (I'll be online in the game tomorrow, starting 3pm CEST).

What is 16:00 CEST? That's "4pm Central European Summer Time". One way to find out when this will be in your local time would be checking out Current local time in Berlin  - which shows the current time in CEST. CEST is UTC/GMT +2 hours.

I'll be sending out another message with details on how to download the special load-test clients tomorrow at 2pm CEST (so that will be 2 hours before the actual load-test starts). I'm hoping to see many of you online - we might keep on playing for a little while after the actual load-test ;-)

Sunny regards,
Jashan