🎮 WISHLIST MY LIFE AS A SPY ON STEAM (free to play): https://store.steampowered.com/app/4823750/My_Life_as_a_Spy/ 💬 JOIN THE DISCORD: https://discord.gg/FCCtfpf9vv 🕵️ SIGN UP FOR THE PLAYTEST (I'll personally email your invite): https://salasgames.com/playtest
🔴 STREAMER SHOUTOUT: Huge thanks to Swedishberry for streaming our last playtest and putting the game in front of her chat. Go follow her → https://twitch.tv/swedishb3rry Streamers: every playtest has a cash prize contest and you get first entry when doors open. Sign up above and tag me.
We're 5 months into building an indie MMO. 17-person studio. 1,200+ playtest signups. 100+ streamers two playtests in a row. Discord up 5x in the last month, 3x the month before that. Just launched on Steam and getting wishlists every single day.
And I just canceled our next playtest.
In this devlog I break down exactly why. Short version: our game isn't scalable. Every playtest is chaos on the backend. The login server we've been running is basically me hosting from my computer with extra steps, and every time a wave of players hit the door at the same time, it kicked out the people already inside. The server was fine. The game was fine. The front door wasn't.
So I hired AAA developers and a AAA server architect, sat in a consulting session as a non-technical founder, and asked every dumb question I had until it clicked. Then I made the call: no playtest for six weeks. We're going under the hood, doing the surgery one time, and never touching it again.
WHAT'S IN THIS EPISODE:
- Why our old login system kicked players out every time a wave joined
- The new MMO architecture: login queue → version check → city rooms that spawn when full and consolidate when empty
- How many players a room actually holds (and the max our AAA guys say we can hit)
- Why we're using Epic Online Services + Epic Anti-Cheat, the same stack as Fortnite, for free
- The Mission Master: a system that scans every room, pulls agents from each agency, and sends them into a procedurally generated mission map that gets deleted when you're done
- Why the top agency on the Power Struggle gets a target on their back and last place gets power-ups and better spawns
- Why every function of the game (login, rooms, missions, database) now lives on its own machine
- Why we're rebuilding the map AGAIN, and this time with real standards: alleys, blocks, sidewalks, door widths, ceiling heights, fire escapes, rooftop ledges
- Sewers, grappling hooks, and zip lines: why you can't camp doors anymore
- Our procgen engine as a studio asset we'll plug into every future MLAAS game
- Why we're building the MMO FIRST and scaffolding down to smaller games, not the other way around
TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 – 5 months in and I'm canceling our playtest 1:16 – Quick catch-up: what is My Life As A Spy 1:37 – The real reason we're canceling 2:52 – How our new MMO servers actually work 4:58 – The Mission Master and procedurally generated mission rooms 7:02 – The moment MMO architecture finally clicked for me 8:25 – Playtests move from every 3 weeks to 6 weeks 9:25 – Rebuilding the map with real standards 10:13 – Sewers, fire escapes, grappling hooks, zip lines 11:38 – The procgen engine as a studio asset 12:21 – Scaffolding development in reverse 13:35 – How you can help
NEW HERE? We're remaking My Life As A Spy, a 2D online RPG from 2001. Earlier this year I bought the rights to the IP, built a team, and we're rebuilding the entire game in 3D as a free-to-play MMO. No publisher. No investors. I'm funding this with my own money and I'm not taking a salary for two years. Every devlog is one week of us building it in the open.
There's more coming in the MLAAS universe too: a turn-based tactics game, a base sim, and interactive novels. The MMO comes first, and everything we build for it gets reused in the rest.
🎵 THE MUSIC I personally produce every track you hear in this video and inside the game.
💬 COMMENT BELOW: Did I make the right call canceling the playtest with this much momentum, or should I have kept the door open and fixed it live? Right or wrong, tell me.
OG players from 2001: drop your code name in the comments.
Rather Clever Studios / Salas Games Devlog #22
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