Catan Universe
Developer Update VII
In this is weekly development update VII we have some news to share on a backend update we just deployed on January 17th and how the next client update is progressing.
Last week, Jan 9th. - Jan. 15th
As we outlined, our QA team tested the changes made to the clients and backend in an internal test. Our focus of this update is reconnect-handling when one or more of the clients disconnect, as issues here can cause consequential errors. We saw significant improvements in this regard, but identified a related mobile caching issue that we need to tackle at the same time. Therefore, we need to build a new client update for internal testing first.
We also revisited account migration and tested a fix, which should help most of the remaining accounts to finally migrate to our new database properly. We furthermore added additional logging to this system to catch remaining issues.
On top of this, our team investigated and identified certain account status settings that affected matchmaking issues for Auto- and Custom-Matches. A backend fix for this was tested and released.
This week, Jan 16th- Jan. 22nd
We continued testing the backend update for account migration optimization and additional logging as well as matchmaking fixes on Monday. Feedback from our users confirmed our suspicion that the matchmaking issue in custom matches WAS related to player avatar customization. Thank you for your detailed feedback!
This backend updated was rolled out this Tuesday afternoon (CET), January 17th.
Focus for the rest of his week is to finalize the next internal version of the client update for internal testing. As soon as we can confirm it is all working as intended, we can schedule a release as soon as possible.
Developer Update VII
In this is weekly development update VII we have some news to share on a backend update we just deployed on January 17th and how the next client update is progressing.
Last week, Jan 9th. - Jan. 15th
As we outlined, our QA team tested the changes made to the clients and backend in an internal test. Our focus of this update is reconnect-handling when one or more of the clients disconnect, as issues here can cause consequential errors. We saw significant improvements in this regard, but identified a related mobile caching issue that we need to tackle at the same time. Therefore, we need to build a new client update for internal testing first.
We also revisited account migration and tested a fix, which should help most of the remaining accounts to finally migrate to our new database properly. We furthermore added additional logging to this system to catch remaining issues.
On top of this, our team investigated and identified certain account status settings that affected matchmaking issues for Auto- and Custom-Matches. A backend fix for this was tested and released.
This week, Jan 16th- Jan. 22nd
We continued testing the backend update for account migration optimization and additional logging as well as matchmaking fixes on Monday. Feedback from our users confirmed our suspicion that the matchmaking issue in custom matches WAS related to player avatar customization. Thank you for your detailed feedback!
This backend updated was rolled out this Tuesday afternoon (CET), January 17th.
Focus for the rest of his week is to finalize the next internal version of the client update for internal testing. As soon as we can confirm it is all working as intended, we can schedule a release as soon as possible.
Developer Update VI
in our Dev update VI we want to talk about how we are currently addressing the most reported issues.
Week Jan. 2nd - Jan. 8th
Our team did resolve a remaining issue with the database that involved game sessions to create a huge workload on the servers even after all clients closed that game session. We are seeing a steady and good performance of the servers since then.
Our team also started to work on client updates that will focus on reconnecting to games as well as how the game detects if a player is offline or online.
Week Jan 9th. - Jan. 15th
Our QA team is currently testing the changes made to the clients in an internal test. Our focus is to resolve issues with games not proceeding properly after one or more of the clients did disconnect. We are also focussing on improving how gracefully a client can reconnect to a game after a short disconnect.
We also took another look at our account migration and are currently testing a fix there which should help the remaining accounts to finally migrate to our new database. We will let you know once this fix has been added to the servers.
On top of this, our team is currently looking into a possible connection between certain accounts and matchmaking issues for Auto- and Custommatches. These investigations only started yesterday. That is why we can´t present any conclusions yet but we will be able to give more info on that in next week's Developer Update.
As you can see our team is currently tackling the biggest issues and we are looking forward to releasing a new client after we tested the changes successfully. Please keep in mind that testing changes on those important functions takes some time. Once testing is finished we will let you know when to expect the rollout of the update.
Developer Update V
After the holidays, we want to give you an update on what we are working
on this week and what will be the next steps we are taking to resolve known
issues with the game.
Week Dec 26th - Jan 1st: Our QA team (quality assurance team) went
through your feedback and based on that intensified further testing on the
servers, also by playing games with the community. We were able to retrace
reported issues and forwarded them to our development team. The main issues we saw mostly related to handing over turns, both to other clients and/or with the AI not properly replacing other users.
That is causing further consequential errors you are experiencing.
We also tracked other issues in online games, especially in the setup
phase of games. All these are being addressed with the highest
priority by the dev team.
Week Jan 2nd - Jan 8th: The dev team is back at full strength to keep on
working on the above-mentioned issues. It is our highest priority to make
online games as enjoyable to you as they have been. The team knows what systems
they will work on to resolve these issues thanks to the work of the QA team and
your continued feedback.
Another reported issue (especially by iOS users, who had to log in again
after switching between apps) is one symptom of online games not restarting as
intended when a player is shortly disconnecting from the servers. This is due
to ported “old” code not working as intended and expected on the new infrastructure.
We will continue to adapt or rewrite existing code for fixing this and
other issues. We are confident that once these core issues are
resolved, we will see significant progress in improving of the online gaming
service.
We are personally very disappointed that despite all of our efforts in
the last months, we were and are facing unforeseen issues with components that
are not performing as expected on the new platform. Regrettably, these were not
foreseeable and/or we were not able to replicate them on the test systems, as
they are limited to the live environment.
We are committed to working on resolving these issues as soon as
possible and ask for your understanding that the core team is absolutely
focused on this and we will limit most interaction via social media on identifying
and resolving bugs for the time being.
As always, we want to thank you for your patience and constructive feedback.
We also want to encourage those of you who might be missing in-app purchases
after the migration to reach out to our support team (support@catanuniverse.com). We will find solutions for these sorts of issues together!
Developer Update IV
in this week's Developer Update we want to give you some insights on the impact of the changes we introduced last week and we will provide you with an overview of what to expect in the coming weeks.
Please note that due to the holiday season we won´t be able to post a developer update next week. But we will be back on Jan 3rd with more info regarding our next moves to resolve known issues with the game.
Week Dec. 12th - 18th
This week we focused on releasing the client update alongside backend updates which heavily focussed on matchmaking and increasing the overall performance of our database. The client update also included a fix for display issues on macOS devices. MacOS users now can load the game scene again. We also saw the number of games being played on our platform increase.
Our metrics show an improvement in the database CPU usage after we released a backend update on Dec 13th.
This massive drop now gives us the breathing room we need to have a much more stable system overall. Based on your feedback we saw that these changes did lead to a noticeable improvement on your end as well. We are happy to hear that. Of course, we are aware that there are still issues and we will address those. We stand by that and won´t stop until the game works as you expect it.
Weeks Dec 18th - Jan 1st
Our team is analyzing your feedback and logs after the latest changes we introduced.
We are aware of issues with placing board pieces and of users dropping out of games. We are also aware of desynced games and of custom-match lobbies not always working as intended. We also got feedback that a certain number of users are still having issues with matchmaking and that the replacement AI is not working as intended.
Our team is working on fixes for these issues.
Now that we have the computing capacity available due to last week's changes we focus on working out these issues while knowing those aren´t caused by a generally poor-performing database.
Our team will keep monitoring your feedback also in the week after Christmas and we are available to resolve immanent issues with the servers or database. But we won´t be able to introduce code fixes to the backend or client between Dec. 23rd and Jan 2nd.
We want to thank you for your patience and ongoing feedback. It helps us a lot.
CATAN Universe 2.2.11
The Steam version will now continue to run when you switch to another window/desktop
The macOS Version will now properly load the in-game scene
The iOS version won´t display an error message about missing push notification support on launch
For further info about our ongoing efforts to resolve issues with the game please see our weekly developer updates
What´s New: 2.2.11
Developer Update 3
in this week's developer update we want to talk about the progress we made last week and what you can expect this week.
Last week Dec 5th - Dec 11th
Our team focussed on implementing and testing the client update, which concentrates on matchmaking. The clients will get more time to process matchmaking requests and therefore they should be more reliable. We tested the changes on all the platforms we offer Catan Universe on. We also added multiple fixes to the backend that are also focused on matchmaking itself.
Our team also started to work on improvements for the matches themselves. We saw them being slow, unresponsive, and overall lacking performance causing to often display a “reconnecting” message.
This week Dec 12th - Dec 18th
The builds for the clients have been submitted to the stores but unfortunately, the GooglePlay Store hasn´t approved the version yet.
In our effort to make a noticeable change for all of our Catanians, we will have to wait until the CU client was approved by Google before moving forward with the release. We will let you know once the clients are ready to download.
Our team on the other hand finished their work on the backend improvements for the matches we mentioned above. These changes will be published today on Dec13th. We will monitor the changes closely throughout the rest of the week.
Please note that when we publish these backend changes your running match might restart.
Developer Update II
here is the most recent developer update on the tasks we tackled last week and what we are doing this week.
Nov 28th to Dec 4th
Last week we focussed on providing further fixes to the cloud code in preparation for the client update we are working on this week.
We focused on the matchmaking as well as schedulers for the online games. We resolved an issue which caused the matchmaker to completely fail after it encountered an issue. It will now restart if it should encounter an issue. We also moved some part of the matchmaking systems into the cloud code and out of the clients to make them run more efficiently in the future. This change will come into full effect once we released the client update next week. Our team had been able to finish it work on the client last week allowing us to test it this week.
You might have noticed that the map error pop up disappeared. This was the matchmaking failing and not recovering properly.
We also investigated the MacOS graphical issues. So far we haven´t been able to pinpoint down what it causing it but we will keep on working on it.
Our team also worked on resolving rarely occurring migration issues. We have been able to introduce 2 more fixes for those.
If you haven´t been able to migrate yet, please try again now.
Dec 5th to Dec 11th
This week we are focussing on 3 main tasks.
Testing the Client update, further optimizing the cloud code where it is possible and resolving the Mac OS graphical issue.
As mentioned above, the client update will focus on making the matchmaking much more robust. The changes we will introduce to the client, will result in longer waiting times for you. But we are confident, that our Catanians rather wait a little longer in a loading screen than not being able to play multiplayer at all.
Yesterday we introduced multiple smaller updates to the cloud code with extensive logging to narrow down further areas for improving our queries.
It is our goal to make the game enjoyable again for you with the client updates on Dec 13th. But this won´t be the end of the journey. We are fully committed to improve on Catan Universe beyond that and we do have plans for that already.
Important Information about the ongoing Multiplayer Issues
We want to inform you about some changes in the way we will communicate with you about what we are working on. We saw that our daily updates on Discord did not have the intended effect of you feeling well-informed. Presenting you with smaller pieces of info and letting you know about every fix (as little as it might have been) did lead to more frustration than it did any good.
We will now try our best to paint a bigger picture in our announcements and let you know on a weekly bases, what we are working on and how last week's changes affect this week's work, and the situation in the multiplayer. This will allow you to get all the info you need in just one weekly post.
We will post every Tuesday.
Last Week 21st - 27th Nov:
We worked on further changes to our cloud code to make it more stable. Our team has thoroughly analyzed the release from last Thursday to plan this week's tasks.
Unfortunately, we saw issues with the introduced changes which subsequently did lead to a roll-back on Friday. We fixed those issues in the last days and prepared a release for this week.
This Week 28th Nov - 4th Dec :
Our team will update the servers again with the fixed changes from last week. We have one release on the servers planned for Tuesday 29th and another one for Wednesday the 30th. Both of those changes are in preparation for a client update we started to work on. All these changes are focussing on the matchmaking process which is still causing most of the issues in the game.
We will also tackle the known graphical issue with Macs using M1 (or newer chips).
We are planning to release this client update in the week of Dec 12th. More on that in next week's announcement.
Our team is committed to improving the current situation with online multiplayer. We thank you very much for your patience.