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Release 9

December 17th, 2020

Highlights ​

  • If players exercise their "right to be forgotten" and are deleted, but you then have to roll back your player database to an old backup, we now have a system in place to ensure that these players remain forgotten - keeping you GDPR compliant.
  • Metaplay backend has been upgraded to use .NET 5.0, resulting in approximately 5% better performance (in terms of CCU/core). Performance is also more consistent across operations, resulting in better tail latency behavior. This also opens the door to use new C# 9.0 and .NET 5 features in the future to make Metaplay even better.
  • The Getting Started with In-App Purchases documentation and the Idler reference project implementation have been updated to be more complete.
  • Many usability improvements have been made to LiveOps Dashboard, for example:

    • Latest player incident reports are now sorted based on the time when they were received on the server, to avoid client clocks in the future always ending on top of the list.

    • Player login history size has been increased to 20 by default.

    • A longer list of recent player incident reports is available on the Environment page.

    • Player incident report UI iteration with static links that can be easily shared, more readable incident lists, and deep links for easier navigation between reports and players.

      ![](images/r9-player-incident-reports.png)

    • There is now a global link to Grafana metrics dashboard on the Overview page (only enabled if there's a Grafana configured for the environment).

      ![](images/r9-grafana-link.png)

    • There is now a link to the Grafana Loki logs for each player session on the Player page (only enabled if there's a Grafana configured for the environment).

      ![](images/r9-grafana-loki.png)

    • All 'X ago' times in the dashboard now show the exact full time in both local time zone and UTC when hovered over.

      ![](images/r9-display-time.png)

    • A nicer 404 page to handle typos in URLs. Not that it ever happens, right? 🧐

      ![](images/r9-nicer-404.png)

    • Current environment (local, production, ...) is now visible in the sidebar

      ![](images/r9-current-environment.png)

Breaking Changes ​

  • The SocialAuthenticateResult class now contains the full player state (MetaSerialized<IPlayerModelBase>) instead of the old ConflictingPlayerInfo. With the new approach, all of the conflicting player's state is available for visualization on the client without extra steps.
    • We have communicated separately if this still requires actions in your game.
  • Metaplay now requires MetaplaySDKBehavior MonoBehavior in the scene at all times. You should place the MetaplaySDK Prefab into a suitable place, or set MetaplaySDKConfig.AutoCreateMetaplaySDKBehavior = true in SDK init. If you choose the latter, a GameObject with the behavior is created automatically at runtime. This should be considered a temporary workaround and we recommend using the included Prefab.
    • The Release 9 PR contains an example integration of this using either of the above approaches. You should check if the added MetaplaySDKBehavior is properly placed in the scene or if runtime GameObject creation is needed.
  • Serialization of byte arrays (byte[]) has been fixed to write the correct tag WireDataType.Bytes instead of WireDataType.ValueCollection. While compatibility is mostly retained between old and new clients and servers, there are possible scenarios where an old client won't work with a new server if byte[] is (transitively) contained within something that uses checksumming, such as PlayerModel (or other models).
    • If you plan to update the server with this Release 9 without forcing the clients to update to a new version, you should test that the old client still works with the new server.
  • On client, JSON support is no longer assumed or provided automatically. Internal Newtonsoft.Json library for GameConfigBuilder now only available on Editor platform. To use Metaplay.Core.Json on client, an Unity compatible Json.Net API-compatible Json library needs to be present and METAPLAY_ENABLE_JSON define symbol must be set in the project settings.
    • The Release 9 PR contains an example configuration where METAPLAY_ENABLE_JSON is set if the Metaplay.Core.Json features are used. You should check this matches your expectation.
  • The infra-modules v0.1.1 release requires Terraform 0.14.3 or later.
    • If you plan to update to v0.1.1, please make sure that you are using the latest Terraform version. The modules are configured to require at minimum Terraform 0.14.3. It is advisable, especially if your infrastructure repo contains other terraforming beside the Metaplay modules, to test out the update in a development or staging environment prior to going into production.
  • Removed slack_*, pagerduty_*, and opsgenie_* parameters from environments/aws-region and components/services in infra-modules v0.1.1 and replaced them with maps slack_targets and pager_targets. This allows passing multiple targets and configuring them granularly with different alert severity levels.
  • Game servers deployed with Hem metaplay-gameserver 0.1.3 or later will require by default a service account named gameserver to be provisioned in the game server's namespace and requires infra-modules v0.1.1. This functionality is required for IRSA-based access to game server S3 buckets.
    • If you plan on using metaplay-gameserver 0.1.3 but do not want to rely on IRSA, you can opt-out by setting rbac.serviceAccount.enabled to false in your Helm values.

Under-the-Hood Highlights ​

  • New API MetaplaySDK.OnApplicationAboutToBePaused(Reason, TimeSpan) has been added for hinting the Metaplay that the game is about to be paused and the expected duration of the pause. During this pause, Metaplay attempts to keep the session alive even if it would exceed normal liveliness limits. This is useful for example when showing an Ad or opening a website in an external browser, which both may temporarily pause the game.
  • If the client cannot connect or the connection is lost, Metaplay will automatically create an incident report and upload it on the next successful connection.
  • Links to Grafana Loki have been added to the Player page in LiveOps Dashboard for each entry in the Login History. The links automatically populate the search fields and time window (15 minutes from login, in the correct time zone) to make it more convenient to browse player logs. The link is only enabled for environments with Grafana installed, mainly dedicated production and staging environments.
  • Game code no longer needs to call MetaplayConnection.OnApplicationPaused() when the application goes and resumes from the background. This is tracked automatically.
  • Player incident tracking is now handled automatically in MetaplaySDK and no longer requires manual configuring. The logs in the reports now also contain events from all threads, instead of just the main thread.
  • Accessing the game data S3 bucket is now be done based on the machine's role instead of explicit service account secrets (using IRSA). This avoids the possibility of the credentials leaking outside of the machines.
    • This requires an update to v0.1.1 of infrastructure and using metaplay-gameserver Helm chart v0.1.3 or later.
  • The server docker builds no longer fetch Cypress, making them a minute or two faster.
  • Experimental: BotClient can now be run for a specified amount of time and exit on any log errors or exceptions, to be more useful in CI test jobs.

    • For example, the bots can be run for 3 minutes and exit on errors with the following:

      `BotClient>dotnet run -MaxBotClients=20 -ExitAfterSeconds=180 -ExitOnLogError=true`

    • The feature is still very rough around the edges, please give us feedback if you find this useful.

  • Experimental: Firebase credentials can now be fetched directly from AWS SecretsManager by specifying FirebaseCredentialsPath as aws-sm://path/to/secret. The intention is to expand this to other sensitive configuration data in the future.
  • Experimental: Infrastructure Terraform modules now have experimental support for AWS China deployments. If you are interested in testing them out, please contact us.

Migrations ​

  • Metaplay server has been upgraded to use .NET 5.0.
    • No actions is required, all projects have been migrated.

Change Log ​

Added ​

  • SDK: New ApplicationRuntimeConfig variable ExitAfterSeconds, which can be used to run the BotClients (or the server) only for a specific period of time.
  • SDK: New ApplicationRuntimeConfig flag ExitOnLogError which can be used to exit the process in case an error happens. Intended for testing only.
  • SDK: Support using external AWS credentials for S3-based GameConfigStorage. Enables more secure IRSA-based authentication in the cloud.
  • SDK: Support fetching Firebase credentials from AWS secrets manager by specifying the FirebaseCredentialsPath as 'aws-sm://path/to/secret'.
  • SDK: Player re-deletion allows players to be re-deleted after a database rollback.
  • SDK: New client-side MetaplayConnection error state, InternalWatchdogDeadlineExceeded, for case where connection was terminated due to connection thread becoming unresponsive.
  • SDK: Added MetaplaySDK.OnApplicationAboutToBePaused(reason, expectedDuration) method for hinting SDK to keep session alive even if application gets paused. Useful when showing Ads or opening external applications.
  • Dashboard: Show exact times in local time and UTC as tooltip for all 'x ago' timestamps.
  • Dashboard: Lots of new UI to accommodate guilds.
  • Dashboard: Major iteration on incident reports UX. Reports now have static links that can be easily shared!
  • Dashboard: Raw data printouts in dev mode now neatly show null values for better legibility.
  • Dashboard: Link to Grafana on Overview page (requires Grafana to be enabled for environment).
  • Dashboard: Link to Grafana/Loki logs for each player login event (requires Grafana to be enabled for environment).
  • Dashboard: Added the current environment's name to the sidebar.
  • Dashboard: Added a 404 page not found route for cleaner bad URL handling.

Changed ​

  • SDK: Added some utilities for testing client-side IAP management.
  • SDK: SocialAuthenticateResult now contains the whole conflicting PlayerModel (as MetaSerialized<IPlayerModelBase>) instead of game-specific individual members.
  • SDK: Upgraded to .NET 5.0 and C# 9.0 on server.
  • SDK: Upgrade Akka.NET to v1.4.11.
  • SDK: Optimize Util.IsBase64Encoded() to use pre-compiled regex.
  • SDK: Removed Util.GetTimestamp(). Use Util.GetUtcUnixTimeSeconds() instead.
  • SDK: Skip installation of Cypress in Dockerfile.server to speed up server builds.
  • SDK: MetaplaySDKBehavior script must be present in the scene at all times the SDK is used.
  • SDK: MetaplayConnection.OnApplicationPause() no longer needs to be called. It is managed automatically.
  • SDK: NetworkDiagnosticsManager is moved into MetaplaySDK and it's lifetime is managed automatically.
  • SDK: Game IncidentTracker is moved into MetaplaySDK, and it is managed automatically.
  • SDK: Connection.Update() has been replaced with MetaplaySDK.Update().
  • SDK: UpdateResult.TooManyTicks has been removed. Too long suspends are now reported via AppTooLongSuspended connection Error. The timeout control is moved from PlayerClientContext.MaxSimulateTicks to MetaplayConnection.Config.MaxSessionRetainingPauseDuration and MaxSessionRetainingFrameDuration, with optional hinting with MetaplaySDK.OnApplicationAboutToBePaused.
  • SDK: Incident reports now contain log messages from all threads, not just main thread.
  • SDK: Internal Newtonsoft.Json dependency for GameConfigCuilder is no longer included into device builds.
  • SDK: Using Metaplay.Core.Json on Client requires specifying METAPLAY_ENABLE_JSON define symbol.
  • Reference project: Improved IAPManager and related client-side IAP management utilities.
  • Dashboard: Bundled a default avatar for when the authentication is off to avoid making an external web request.
  • Dashboard: Environment page now has more incident reports than the overview page to keep the overview page clean.

Fixed ​

  • SDK: Fix some situations where GameConfigArchive version could change after restoring from S3 (or local emulation of S3).
  • SDK: Perform GameConfig fetching on main thread in Unity, to ensure that it also works when reading from StreamingAssets/ on Android, which uses UnityWebRequest for reading from within a .jar file.
  • SDK: Parse all integers (int and long) with CultureInfo.InvariantCulture to make sure they behave the same regardless of system culture settings.
  • SDK: Parse fixed-point values from JSON with CultureInfo.InvariantCulture to make sure they behave the same regardless of system culture settings.
  • SDK: Fix one extra login counted for each created player.
  • SDK: Fix some situations where GameConfigArchive version could change after restoring from S3 (or local emulation of S3).
  • SDK: Fix propagation of GlobalState sometimes failing between GlobalStateManager and GlobalStateProxy in multi-node configurations.
  • SDK: Fix some missing calls to Dispose()s in outgoing HTTP requests.
  • SDK: Serialization of byte[] now writes the correct tag WireDataType.Bytes instead of WireDataType.ValueCollection.
  • Dashboard: Better Auth0 error message for the most typical case of "no connections enabled".
  • Dashboard: Fixed hard to read player list tables on very narrow screens by hiding some of the fields.
  • Dashboard: Fixed mobile layout for GDPR export action.
  • Dashboard: Fixed mobile layout for account reconnecting action.
  • Dashboard: Fixed mobile layout for player overview card.
  • Dashboard: Fixed player details background stripe rendering on wide screens.
  • Dashboard: Fixed misaligned UI elements in notification campaign details on small screens.
  • Dashboard: Fixed poorly formatting MySQL database details in the environments page on small screens.
  • Dashboard: Fixed bad use of screen estate in the notification campaign details page on mobile.
  • Dashboard: Usability fixes to player incident reports: PlayerId is now shown, copy-pasting of logs produces correct whitespace.
  • Dashboard: Global player incident list on Overview page is ordered by time when received on server, not when reported by client, to avoid issues from clock skew.