The whole process needs to “use around 16 cloud setups for the event, for multiple hours.” Aside from tournament play, Lee and the team also go out of their way to provide other side-events for the Marvel community from amateur tournaments to simple practice setups, allowing players to emulate the Tampa Never Sleeps tourney play if they don’t have their own cloud server. Of course with consistent growth comes larger tournaments. Suddenly, players could have serious matches with no frame drops, allowing for the return of actual Marvel 3 competition. With this new development, continued support from the community, and through their constant push to raise the quality of Marvel 3 content, creators and tournament organizers like Tampa Never Sleeps have brought about a Marvel revival that no one expected amid the fighting game community’s Pandemic Era. “Luckily, with Jason on the team, we were able to overcome any technical issue that came our way.” “In the beginning, we were definitely struggling with the cloud servers providing consistent performance as well as the speed at which we were able to launch multiple setups for a tournament,” Lee added. However, things weren’t always as smooth as they are now. With this new fusion of tech, and Lu’s, continuous guidance, Lee and his team over at Tampa Never Sleeps began pushing out what many consider to be the “weekly major tournament,” due to the fact that so many amazing players regularly sign up.
The plan also required a powerful virtual machine hosted in a digital cloud, dubbed a “cloud server.” This server is a tool available to rent from Amazon, Google, or Paperspace that gives players the ability to somewhat simulate offline matches of fighting games online.
That idea involved Parsec: a free desktop application that allows players to compete together through video streaming of the host’s desktop, while allowing them to input commands using their controller of choice.
This goes double for netcode, the online infrastructure that determines the quality of multiplayer games over the internet. You see, not all fighting games are created equal. And sadly, unlike other competitive video games, going online usually isn’t the best option for serious fighting game events meaning all major tournaments and local events on hold. For a group of players so reliant on in-person interaction for the highest possible quality for both viewers and those involved, having something completely throw that to the wayside like a global pandemic puts an understandable damper on things.
2020 and COVID-19 brought about an unthinkable time in the fighting game community.