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Subject: How did Bungie.net get into it with Ideal Science?
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SPOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!

I knew when this thread had the golden septagon attached, it would be informative. Interesting. Your not the only engineer around anymore right Achronos? I mean, we have Sawnose and Running Turtle running portions of this site now, so I guess that takes some of the burden off of you.

I know you'll never answer this, but I'll ask it for posterity's sake anyway. If you do implement a new hottness2.0, would you still use this software because its already modified to your specs, or will you have another bidding war?

[Edited on 12/20/2006]

  • 12.20.2006 11:49 AM PDT
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Posted by: Achronos
Specifically, we are the largest installation of their software in existence. Hence, a case study saying "look how it supports them, so we can probably support you" is beneficial for them.

As for our business relationship, that started during the planning for the conversion from the old perl based bungie.net to one to support Halo 2. After a few experiments, I had decided that we should simply start over, and build on the much more robust .NET framework. Unfortunately, at the time, we only had one web dev (me), and there was simply no way we could finish everything in time. You may remember that we actually didn't port the groups over until a few months after the rest of the site became part of the new hotness. Anyway, we decided that high-capacity forum software is a solved problem that other companies are very good at, so we started soliciting quotes from various companies (Ideal Science included) for software that would meet our needs. In our case, those needs were full source code, many multiple forums, highly scalable, high performance, and use SQL Server and ASP.NET as its core technology.

As we evaluated products, we found that not many met this standard. ASP.NET being required meant we couldn't use many of the existing packages, which is why Ideal Science's quote was interesting. Their ASP board was great, but unusable by us. However, the offered very attractive terms and a seat at the development and design table for their new ASP.NET software. That pretty much beat out everyone else, because we could direct the development to making the best forum for our needs without having to fit our needs into someone else's design. It also helped that they were very professional and the relationship worked really well.

The result was this forum software, which I have subsequently heavily modified for various reasons. They then took the code and built out their stand alone forum product and sell it. The resulting software is not for the faint at heart - it is designed to be really powerful and is not for people who aren't software engineers. But if you are, you'll really like how you can pretty much change everything about it if you need to (that was the point).

Posted by: Recon Number 54
If you don't mind, allow me to spin your observation.

They are following the growth and experiences of this site in order to document how their product performs in a real-world environment. We're an excellent subject for a case study due to the fact that this site's traffic and growth are significant, well documented, and since Bungie is a Microsoft subsidiary, infrastructure can be scaled to meet that growth with very little lag between "growth in traffic" and "infrastructure expands to respond".

This hardware and network flexibility will allow the ongoing data collection to show how the software performs with very little skewing due to other considerations or factors.

You're not being used, you are part of the future!


May I ask, why not just use some Dilithium Crystals? They solve all problems in my experience.

  • 12.20.2006 11:57 AM PDT

Tom Achronos
Bungie.net Overlord
twitter: http://twitter.com/Achronos

"I have no words that would do justice to the atrocities you commit to the English language, as well as your continued assaults on the concepts of basic literacy and logical reasoning."

Sawnose does all the behind the scenes Halo stat collection (the stuff that records every game of Halo you play - we're talking terabytes). He's also got some neat stuff getting ready for Halo 3. He's also technically my boss, being the engineering lead for bungie.net, effectively. But he's not full time on the web site, he does a lot of other game-related stuff.

Running Turtle is the other web dev full time on the site. He brought you the search, the bookmarks, and is currently doing a lot of work to prepare the site to deal with Halo 3 stats. This leaves me to work on the base infrastructure of bungie.net's code, and a few other related projects that you'll see sometime next year. Bungie.net has basically become so integral to the experience of Halo (due to the stats), it is really getting a lot of dev time compared to before (the stats section for Halo 2 was essentially developed in about 3-4 weeks, we have a bunch more time for planning and development for Halo 3).

And to sort of answer your question, this forum software core is not going anywhere anytime soon, no matter how the site evolves in the future.

Posted by: evilcam
I knew when this thread had the golden septagon attached, it would be informative. Interesting. Your not the only engineer around anymore right Achronos? I mean, we have Sawnose and Running Turtle running portions of this site now, so I guess that takes some of the burden off of you.

I know you'll never answer this, but I'll ask it for posterity's sake anyway. If you do implement a new hottness2.0, would you still use this software because its already modified to your specs, or will you have another bidding war?

  • 12.20.2006 12:18 PM PDT

Tom Achronos
Bungie.net Overlord
twitter: http://twitter.com/Achronos

"I have no words that would do justice to the atrocities you commit to the English language, as well as your continued assaults on the concepts of basic literacy and logical reasoning."

Who says we aren't?

Posted by: JAY132
May I ask, why not just use some Dilithium Crystals? They solve all problems in my experience.

  • 12.20.2006 12:20 PM PDT
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SPOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!

Poor Sawnose. Terabytes eh? I don't envy him at all.

That post made it seem like more extras are actually coming. I have to acknowledge my renewed interest in all the New New hawttness speculation. I'm sure everyone will jump on that bandwagon as we get ever closer to H3's release (if they already haven't).

Thank you for defying my prediction and answering my post. I actually know a little more about the hierarchy, feature delegations, and general goings on related to this site. Which is a good thing, being I spend so much time here. You eventually get curious.

  • 12.20.2006 1:02 PM PDT

I'm not that active, but never dead.

Posted by: evilcam
That post made it seem like more extras are actually coming. I have to acknowledge my renewed interest in all the New New hawttness speculation.


Wait a second. THIS is the new hotness. What you are using right now. If more hotness is coming, then it's like, New, New, hotness. Or something.

Crazy Bungie.

-Alex :S

[Edited on 12/20/2006]

  • 12.20.2006 1:04 PM PDT
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Their most exspensive forum is nearly $25,000!!

...Who needs that?

  • 12.21.2006 1:08 PM PDT
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Become the hunter.

Posted by: Decrompriser
Their most exspensive forum is nearly $25,000!!

...Who needs that?
I don't.

  • 12.21.2006 1:48 PM PDT
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Posted by: Recon Number 54
Posted by: Achronos
Who says we aren't?

Posted by: JAY132
May I ask, why not just use some Dilithium Crystals? They solve all problems in my experience.

Anyone have footage of Frankie shouting (with the accent) "The forums Capn', she canna' take much more!"?


ROFL.

  • 12.21.2006 2:44 PM PDT
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So does Bungie.net share profits with Ideal for every customer that buys the forum version Bungie designed?

  • 12.21.2006 3:04 PM PDT

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