Six months ago, I posted a status announcement with what we were working on and where I saw things headed. Obviously, this meant that it was pre determined to be a regular occurrence. Going forward, I intend to share these "little" update announcements with you every 3 months on the 12th.
This month's announcement is going to mostly be a reflection on the last announcement, but it will include some commentary on the future.
Reflections
New Launcher
In the last announcement, I announced that our plans at the time for a launcher upgrade were paused. A couple of months later we announced, and then released, an updated version of our launcher that brought with it stability improvements and Linux/MacOS support.
This new launcher has so far proven its worth. There have been relatively few issues with the launcher itself, and what has surfaced has been low in severity. We are happy with this launcher and plan to keep this launcher version as our primary launcher going forward, providing occasional feature and stability updates as needed.
SWF Conversion Tool
There is good news! This tool is in its final stages of development. The majority of features are complete, and the only thing left to do is thoroughly test it and create documentation and examples for the rest of the team.
To provide this thorough testing, this tool is being used to remake one of the earliest 2D Minigames added to the Alpha. We will follow up when this remake is closer to completion.
Player Models
This is still an ongoing process, and unfortunately, I do not have much additional information to share at this time.
Network Code
With the release of 2024.4.1-Alpha, the first phase of the netcode rewrite was released for Alpha testing. This allowed us to get some real experience with how the infrastructure code we wrote for the network would perform in a deployed environment.
We quickly discovered that phase 1 had (and still has) a fundamental bug with the volume of data we were sending. Phase 2, released in 2024.8.1-Alpha, helped alleviate this problem, but ended up causing other bugs.
This will continue to be an ongoing evolutionary process to get the stability we desire. However, most of this work is under the hood, meaning other developers will not be impacted much or blocked by these ongoing improvements.
Future Outlook
With the successes we have achieved, albeit at a slower pace than desired, we feel confident in the direction we are headed and what the future may look like. Here is an outlook on what we are working on and where we see it going:
Network Code Phase 3
The 10th Anniversary Sunset event gave us a lot of insight into ongoing performance issues with Phase 2. From the data we gathered at this event, we will be optimizing and improving the network code infrastructure wherever possible.
Phase 3's release timeline is unknown, as we will be starting work on this around the start of May. We will provide more information as it becomes relevant.
New Architects
We have reached the point in the majority of our reworks where bringing on additional help would not slow the work down, but be a major benefit. There will be a separate announcement discussing what we are looking for and where to sign up, so keep your eyes peeled for that.
Character System Improvements
Part of what is holding the updated character models back from being released are the systems that players will interact with to control said models. These systems will be our primary focus for the foreseeable future. The previously mentioned new architects will be helping out in this area.
Final Thoughts
We have plenty of work ahead of us, but we are excited to really put the pedal to the metal on this.
April 12, 2024 by Wald Deliglide