Dev notes·
Where online play is heading
Kenya and Nigeria first, a server hub in Johannesburg, guest profiles without sign-up, and bots that hand their seats to people. Here's the plan.
Skyscrap runs entirely in your browser today: you, up to eleven bots and a simulation that ticks sixty times a second on your own device. The next big step is playing against people. Here’s how we’re approaching it.
Built for the networks people actually use
Online play is being built first for players in Kenya and Nigeria, on the mobile networks they actually use. The first servers will sit in Johannesburg, the one site we found that is quick to reach from both: about 52 ms from Nairobi and 75 ms from Lagos, measured between data centres. Phones add some time on top, so the game is designed around it rather than hoping it away.
A fallback in Europe catches anyone whose route south is slow, and India gets its own servers once the first region is solid.
What the first online release includes
- Quick play against people, with bots filling empty seats so a match starts straight away. Bots hand their seat to the next person who joins, and they are always labelled.
- Guest profiles: still no sign-up. You get a callsign with a tag and a recovery code you can use to get your profile back.
- Reconnects, because signals drop.
- A server that decides every hit, so modded clients have nothing to change.
After that come private rooms you can share as a link, parties that stay together between rounds, Team Deathmatch and spectating.
How we’ll test it
Before a single public match, testers on each major network in Kenya and Nigeria will run a small probe from their phones to measure the real connection. Then comes a closed beta. If you’d like to be one of those testers, get in touch.