Orange Mushroom's Blog

As mentioned in the Destiny Live Talk, Nexon has released a new website called Maple Us, where MapleStory employees (mostly programmers at the moment) have written various posts about what they work on and the processes they go through. The articles are genuinely really interesting and I was surprised at how in-depth they went! The site also works as a recruitment site where it lists out some of the benefits employees get, what jobs they’re currently hiring for, and how you can get in touch.

I’m definitely not going be translating these as the articles are pretty long and I’m way too lazy but if you’re interested in things like how features in-game get implemented from start to finish, or how their backend DBs work, things like that, it’s definitely worth a look (using Google Translate should be enough). However, since they just released it, I’ll just list out some of the things that popped out to me in each of the current articles.

1. MapleStory’s Monitoring System

This article talks about MapleStory’s various monitoring systems and what kinds of things they need to keep an eye on to detect abnormal activity. For example, when monitoring mesos, they looked at the graph on the left that shows the amount of mesos acquired from selling to NPC shops (the green line). Near the end, it goes up irregularly and they mentioned there was no content or event that would lead to that, so they investigated it further and found abuse for accounts selling various exploited items.

Another example was their server monitoring where they found a memory leak. They saw that the VM count and memory-related metrics were increasing continuously, then they looked at the Object Counter graph on the right where they saw that the amount of NPC objects allocated (gray line) was going up similarly. They investigated the recently added NPCs and found that one was allocating a new NPC object every time a user did the quest then never released that memory.

2. MapleStory’s Ever-Evolving 2D Dot Graphics

This article was talking about how MapleStory has been in service for a very long time, so they need to go through a long process whenever they want to introduce new features and systems such as adding on to the existing graphics technology that they use. They are always looking to improve while keeping MapleStory’s unique look and charm.

They mentioned they are currently looking at using more computer graphics pixel shaders (for lighting) and developing an GPU-based particle systems engine.

3. Defending MapleStory Against Unauthorized Programs

This one’s quite a detailed look into how they detect unauthorized programs or activity, program ways to combat them, and update them as needed when the hackers try to circumvent their methods. They even showed off the highest level of Violetta, the in-game bot detection system haha.

4. As MapleStory Programmers Say, Content Development from A to Z

In this one, they talked about the overall process of how content is added into the game and the overall process of implementing them. They specifically used the example of Guardian Angel Slime, and how they had to improve/add on to MapleStory’s existing physics system, which was obviously lacking compared to modern engines as its so old.

5. MapleStory’s Journey to Introduce the 64-Bit Client

This article is the most technical, as the programmers who wrote it talked about a bunch of the actual errors they had when changing to 64-Bit and how they fixed them. They also talked about investigating the lag problem after the client was changed, and how it was an issue with pointer reference counts in C++.

6. The People in Charge of MapleStory’s Vast Data, The Story of Maple DBAs

This article talked about MapleStory, a game that has been running over 19 years with over 24 million domestic members, has an insane amount of data. The DBAs talked about various tricks they use and the challenges they face when doing things such as world merges. There’s also some advice to aspiring DBAs.

Finally, they added a video with existing employees talking about their jobs and the stories and memories they have made over the years. The site is also a recruitment site, where you can see the jobs they are currently hiring for and the benefits they provide. Nexon employees get 30k NX every month! Extremely worth.