TaleSpire Dev Log 304

Hey folks!

Well, that's been an eventful few days. Let's start with the problems and then get to the good news.

Server issues

Over the last few days, ExitGames has had serious issues with their realtime-networking service Photon. We use this service for all our real-time data, such as creature movement, dice sync, etc.

This obviously made TaleSpire sporadically unplayable, so we as a community have had to wait it out while the folks over at ExitGames got things patched up. From their updates over at https://www.photonengine.com/status it seems that the issues were DDoS related.

Closer to home, the issue caused flurries of logs to expose a bug in the logging library we using in our erlang code. Luckily there are newer versions with bug fixes that seem relevant, so we will schedule some downtime in the near future to perform an upgrade.

HeroForge

Right! Now to the fun stuff. HeroForge is progressing very well. The last time we spoke, I was going on about how we could not rely on the data for assets being accessible as early as TaleSpire needed them. This meant we'd either have to make the game wait (which feels sucky) or rewrite a bunch of code so that we code handle everything asynchronously (which is harder but feels good). Naturally, we went for the latter.

After a few days, that work is bearing fruit, so it's time for a very boring looking video. It's so seemingly uneventful that I need to set it up:

Before recording the clip, I linked a HeroForge mini to a campaign, spawned it, detached it, and totally disconnected my HeroForge account. I then restarted TaleSpire. This meant that when I rejoined the board, TaleSpire wanted to spawn the creature but couldn't because all of the information it needed was missing.

You then see me reattach my HeroForge account, relink the asset, and immediately TaleSpire downloads, converts, and loads the mini.

Scintillating no?.. no :) Anyhoo this is important as one way or another, players will eventually make mistakes and disconnect something by accident. These changes mean we can provide the behavior you would want in that situation, namely, the least painful way to undo the mistake.

As I've had to work on a lot of creature code, I took the opportunity to start incorporating my old polymorph experiments. This means that the creature code is ready to support multiple morphs using a mix of HeroForge minis, TaleSpire assets, and eventually your mods too.

Change of focus for me

I've felt very self-conscious about how long it has been since I focused on bugs. As the HeroForge/Polymorph features are crystalizing, I've decided to switch onto bugs again. This will mean that features take a bit longer to ship, but it's essential that people feel like the bugs they have reported are important to us (and they really are!).

So expect more random stuff from me in the next week or so.

Group Movement Experiments

I also had to show off something Ree was experimenting with, as it is super exciting.

This is a very early prototype looking into group movement and physics. No more news on this today, but you'll be seeing this feature again.

That'll do for today

Ok folks, that's all I'm up for writing about today.

Seeya soon with more!