Just wanted to drop you guys this impromptu posting, since these days we don't
communicate THAT much here on the Forums, even though things are in motion!

Last week, we failed with one of our bigger projects...and anytime you fail
something that's been in the works for quite long, it's a major
disappointment.

We had for long been investigating different avenues through which we could
provide you, our loyal playerbase, more ways to connect/play, especially with
our graphical game client (Batclient). This included being able to play BatMUD
on your iPad, television, any other pads etc. Basically anything that could
run HTML5 and has a form of Internet connectivity.

For this, we had thought of multiple options..such as:

1) Enabling playing from your Browser, which equals converting the existing
game client to Javascript or HTML5 as compliant otherwise (a costly option)
2) Running the client persistently from BatMUD's own servers, while saving
your session and configurations on BatMUD itself (those of you familiar with
UNIX screen -command hopefully get the idea)
3) Running/streaming the game client from a Cloud service

It's 2017 and Cloud is the Solution? Right, let's do this.

Having already explored Amazon's AppStream -service two years ago (we had a
running test client, but during this time, the service wasn't up to par in
terms of having to install a separate application from your local appstore and
it was somewhat limited from the inputs). After having witnessed AWS AppStream
2.0 streaming some serious CAD software on an iPad over a simple web address
(https:// ..) with actual designers working on just their pads in AWS
Re:Invent 2016, we gave this one another go.

Fast forward>>> to the point where we have a sweetly customized Batclient
version deployed on AWS utilizing S3 for your configurations, secure enough
not jeopardize your character or privacy, automatically scaling up and down
the game client instances per your demand. We had managed to achieve a
semi-tolerable monthly cost per instance or playing hour (utilizing the
smallest instances possible w/o any quality issues) thinking that this could
actually be offered to players. Nice.

But then...where did we fail?

With the very first invoice.

Oh, we actually had read the price book. But, in addition to the hourly
running costs; instead of billing us only for the (actual and active) added
users, AWS actually billed us a CAL user cost ($4+) per each unique web
address (URL) we had spawned out. This is related to a Microsoft CAL licensing
scheme (yes, AppStream runs only Windows instances yet Today). And, of course,
within our internal testing only, we had already spawned and run a hefty
amount of URLs.

For the future, we might get AWS to provide Linux-based instances on this
service as feedback is being sent to the product owner. Hopefully your day was
a bit better.


Best Regards,
Amarth Shadowstring