Today we are releasing another important release version. While it again contains polish and fixes, the major purpose of it is to link you, our players, with our new cloud server. We’ll talk about this in more depth below, but for now, let’s check what else is new:
- Framework: Implemented full integration with the Belleal Games cloud server. This includes authentication, registration, storing of player statistics, and more
- Gameplay: Added in-game option to switch between light (marble) and dark (velcro) play surface. This is preserved between saves as well
- Interface: Added functionality to display game hints in the main menu (was only possible to do so in-game)
- Interface: Added optional email field to bug reporting GUI in case player wants to be contacted for the issue reported
- Bugfix: Fixed a bug that was causing some puzzle tile links not to be counted in the stats. Keep in mind that links are counted only for free-standing tiles and not for tiles placed on the mat
- Bugfix: Fixed issues with the inspection lens glass shader which was making the magnified image look clouded and lighter
- Bugfix: Fixed a bug that caused face down puzzle tiles that were found outside the game board to be returned under the table. This was essentially making these tiles disappear from the game board
- Bugfix: Fixed a bug with the puzzle tile containers that prevented them from boing spawned on the game board
As always, you can find the full release notes on our website here.
New Belleal Games Server
When we started 3 years ago on this journey, we’ve found a good cloud service that provided a server backend for games of all sorts. They offered a free tier service that was ideal for indie studios like ours since we could not afford to invest in infrastructure and custom servers. That service was PlayFab.
While PlayFab is still there and pretty much intact, they were purchased by Microsoft, and recently they decided to change their pricing policy. Right now the free tier is still available, but it’s no longer useful for anything besides development and planning purposes. The lowest-paid tier offered is by far insufficient for our goals with Masters of Puzzle, so we’ve decided to move from PlayFab to our own cloud server located in Google Cloud. This will allow us to control our costs and develop server-dependent features that would otherwise be impossible.
We are happy to announce that we’ve been successful and our new game server is now up and running. In fact, this release version is fully integrated with it and you are now able to create player profiles in our system.
Player Profiles
We’ve planned a lot of new and exciting features for Masters of Puzzle. Some of these features require server-side logic and a database to be made a reality. Luckily with our new game server, this is now possible. All such features will require the player to create a simple profile in our system, which we’ll use to personalize their experience with our game. You don’t need to go outside the game to do that. For your convenience, once you use the authentication for the first time, you will be asked to enter and submit a display name and email (optional). Upon success, your profile will be created and you can authenticate automatically in the future if you so wish.
Of course, you are not required to create a player profile, but without one all server-based features of the game will be unavailable to you. Since the profile does not ask you for or will ever contain any personal information, it is highly recommended to create one and enjoy the full game experience.
Alright, that’s it for today. Thank you so much for being our fans and playing our game! We’ll see you soon in our next update. Stay safe and stay home!