Highlights

• New feature: LiveOps Events are a new way to define in-game events that can be scheduled and configured directly from the LiveOps Dashboard. Compared to the existing Config-driven Events, this is an alternative way to implement events, designed to be more conveniently live-operable. See Introduction to Game Events for an overview of the two event features, or jump right into Implementing LiveOps Events.

• Prebuilt LiveOps Dashboard The Metaplay SDK now ships with a prebuilt default dashboard that is used by server builds both locally and in the cloud when a custom dashboard project hasn't been initialized. Additionally, it is now possible to check in a built version of the game-specific dashboard into Backend/PrebuiltDashboard that will be used by local runs and docker image builds when present.
• Server Image Optimizations The game server docker image contents have been optimized for smaller size and increased security. This change should be transparent for game projects and the improvements will automatically kick on your next game update! An implication of the streamlined server image is that it no longer contains tools for debugging and profiling, not even a login shell. For updated instructions on how to troubleshoot servers using a debug container see Troubleshooting Servers.
• Handling of Deleted Players Logging into deleted player accounts is now prevented. This might have been possible earlier if the player deletion operation failed to clear all associated authentication records, resulting in a confusing user experience for the player. Additionally deleted player states now remember information about the cause of deletion for troubleshooting purposes.
• Unity Game Config Build GUI The Unity SDK now contains a Unity editor window for building and publishing Game Configs that automatically generates the UI for populating build sources and game-specific build parameters.

Version Compatibility

SDK

• This release requires a synchronized upgrade of the client and the server due to backward-incompatible changes in the networking protocol.
  • Action required: Bump your game's MetaplayCoreOptions.supportedLogicVersions to force a synchronized update of your game client and server.
• Support for .NET 7 in the server-side projects is now dropped as it is no longer supported by Microsoft. .NET 8 is the only supported framework.
  • Action required: Update your server projects to .NET 8 before upgrading to this release!
• Dashboard builds updated to use PNPM version 9, and PNPM and Node version compatibility is now enforced by the build. The version of the pnpm-lock.yaml file generated by earlier versions of PNPM is deprecated and must be re-generated in your project.
  • Action required: All dashboard developers must update their local pnpm installs to version 9: npm i -g pnpm@9.
  • Action required: Run pnpm install to re-generate the pnpm-lock.yaml file.

INFO

Note: If you have a service contract signed with Metaplay, your SDK integration has already been updated to reflect any backward-incompatible API changes in the Metaplay SDK in the SDK upgrade pull request of your project. Otherwise, please see the migration guide for a full list of changes, along with the HelloWorld and Idler samples for references on how to apply the changes.

Infrastructure

We have updated both the infrastructure and game server Helm charts and bumped the minimum requirements. Please consider updating to the latest versions during your next maintenance window.

• For infrastructure, terraform module infra-modules v0.2.14.
  • Action recommended: Upgrade your self-hosted infrastructure to use the latest version.
• For deployments, Helm chart metaplay-gameserver v0.6.1.
  • Action required: Upgrade your deployments (in Helm values or CI job parameters) to use the latest version.

The minimum required versions are infra-modules v0.2.9 and metaplay-gameserver v0.6.0.

Changes

Live-Ops Dashboard

• New UTC clock: The header bar now has UTC and local time clocks for quick reference.
• New DateTime input: The MInputDateTime component is completely re-engineered from scratch for better usability. It now separates the date and time into two separate inputs. The new input only accepts and shows UTC times.
• MInputDuration improvements: The MInputDuration component now shows preview times in UTC instead of local time and has a new, clearer UX for inputting "empty" durations.
• New controls in MetaEventStreamCards: The MetaEventStreamCard now has a more comprehensive set of utilities for filtering or highlighting events. It also has new props for pre-filtering and highlighting events. This makes it easier to make custom preset projections of and event stream (like player events) while still allowing manual control to search the events further.
• Improved server status reporting: Dashboard is now quicker to warn of a lost connection to the server. It also detects when the server has restarted and advises you to refresh your browser to avoid working with stale state. This is a quality-of-life improvement when working in environments where servers are frequently redeployed, such as development or staging environments.
• Major project tooling updates: PNPM updated to version 9, and TypeScript to version 5.4. TypeScript is now configured to use the new build system for significantly faster type checking. ESLint rules updated for easier migration to ESLint 9 in future releases.
• Dynamic role updates: The changes to user roles are now propagated to the dashboard without requiring a logout/login. This works with environments that manage their roles through the Metaplay developer portal.
• DefaultDashboard project: Frontend/DefaultDashboard now contains a vanilla LiveOps Dashboard project that we use to both create the pre-built dashboard and as a template to scaffold your own, custom dashboard project.

Under the hood

• Added:: MInputText now has a @blur:modelValue event that can be used to trigger input validation.
• Added: The new MModal component offers a simplified and more intuitive API for displaying read-only modals that do not require user interaction.
• Added: A new visual indicator on 'Event' and 'Offer' cards to help users easily identify when collapsible content is available.
• Added: New MInputDate and MInputTime components for picking dates and times separately.
• Added: New MInputHintMessage component for consistently styled hint messages in input components.
• Added: Added support for nullable types in generated forms.
• Added: Added generated UI testing page to the dashboard, found at /test/generatedUi. You can now test generated forms and views for different types.
• Added: Added a new, global query parameter ?scroll-to-data-testid=ID_HERE to scroll to a specific element with the given data-testid attribute. This implementation works with lazy-loaded content.
• Added: MInputNumber has a new step prop to control the increment/decrement value.
• Added: MInputText and MInputNumber now have an optional clear button that can be used to more easily clear the input field. MInputText has a new showClearButton prop to show the button, while MInputNumber uses the already existing allowUndefined and clearOnZero to show the button.
• Added: Subscriptions now support adding a type hint to the SubscriptionOptions type so all useSubscription() call sites will have typings for the return data. This reduces bugs by making the return data typings easier to maintain.
• Added: New ways to archive game config and localization archives, you can now batch archive all older game configs/localizations when archiving a unpublished game config/localization.
• Added: A new alert to the game config/localization pages recommending to archive old game configs/localizations when you have too many.

• Changed: The dashboard no longer needs access to the authorization token to access the game server. This reduces the chance of leaking the secret from the dashboard.
• Changed: The user info is now queried through the game server endpoint /api/userInfo instead of directly accessing the OAuth2 provider endpoint.
• Changed: The following components have been deprecated in favor of the new MetaUiNext components:
  • MetaButton is replaced by MButton, MIconButton and MTextButton.
  • MetaClipboardCopy is replaced by MClipboardCopy.
  • MetaActionModalButton is replaced by MActionModalButton or a combination of either the MButton, MIconButton or MTextButton with an MActionModal component.
  • MetaCollapse is replaced by the MCollapse component.
• Changed: All references to the bootstrap BCollapse and CollapsePlugin have been removed in favour of the new MCollapse component.
• Changed: Split the SDK cypress end-to-end tests into separate modules found in Frontend/E2ETests.
• Changed: Updated the MCollapse component to support additional controls for managing the initial state of the collapsible section. Now, you have the option to set the initial state as open or hide the collapsible section entirely.
• Changed: The MInputDateTime component is now a wrapper for the new MInputDate and MInputTime components.
• Changed: Removed getIsProductionEnvironment(), which didn't work as expected, and replaced with getEnvironmentFamily() instead. This new function allows the code to check if it is deployed into a production environment with getEnvironmentFamily() === EnvironmentFamily.Production.
• Changed: The onlyClose property in the MActionModal component has been deprecated in favor of the MModal component. This was an optional property used to create modals that do not trigger an action when closed.
• Changed: ESLint, TypeScript and the main package.json configs have all been updated to use the new TypeScript build system for significantly faster type checking.
• Changed: Removed the now-outdated meta-components.d.ts file. MetaUi (soon to be deprecated in favor of MetaUiNext) components still work globally, but they should be imported from the @metaplay/meta-ui package for type hints and easier future migration.
• Changed: The audit log search form got a polish pass and is now easier to use.
• Changed: ESLint, TypeScript and the main package.json configs have all been updated to use the new TypeScript build system for significantly faster type checking.
• Changed: Removed the now-outdated meta-components.d.ts file. MetaUi (soon to be deprecated in favor of MetaUiNext) components still work globally, but they should be imported from the @metaplay/meta-ui package for type hints and easier future migration.
• Changed: Player join experiment action got a UX pass and is now easier to use when a player is already in one or more experiments.
• Changed: Game config diffing now works also when either side of the diff has missing libraries.
• Changed: Abbreviated date strings produced by constructExactTimeCompactString() now say "3mo" instead of "3m" when shortening months to avoid confusion with minutes.
• Changed: MListItem and MErrorCallout now have a max-height in their main content slots to prevent accidental large strings from breaking the layout.
• Changed: MetaplaySDK.LocalizationManager.SetCurrentLanguage() now throws an exception if you try to change to a language that is not defined in the Languages game config library.
• Changed: The game config details page got a UX pass to make build errors and validation messages more readable. The tabs are now also deep linkable and respect back button navigation.
• Changed: The localization details page got a UX pass in line with the above game configs page. The tabs are now also deep linkable and respect back button navigation.
• Changed: Game server errors now have a dedicated page in the sidebar for easier access and the related callouts in the dashboard landing page are more space-efficient for a cleaner layout.
• Changed: The delete player action received a UI pass to make it look cleaner.
• Changed: Removed the noDeselect prop from MetaInputSelect as it doesn't make sense to allow deselection in this way.
• Changed: Modals are now wider in the two-column layout to better accommodate wide form inputs like MInputDateTime.
• Changed: Broadcast and notification campaign modals have been split into two columns for better use of space.
• Changed: The dashboard now defaults all Luxon (date, time and duration) formatting into 'en-gb' locale for consistency.
• Changed: Entity event log predefined filters are now separate from the user controlled filters, the event list is always filtered based on the predefined keywords and event types.
• Changed: The sidebar open/close icon got updated to look less like a "back" button. It also has a bigger touch area for easier use on mobile.

• Fixed: PlayerPurchaseHistoryCard item collapse in MetaListCard no longer persists when navigating between pages.
• Fixed: In Game Config Contents, fixed incorrect element name when the field was a child of an array.
• Fixed An issue with the new MButton component, where the middle click event within the Live-Ops Dashboard didn't trigger the opening of a new window.
• Fixed: The URLs in the localization diff view have been fixed. Both the "View baseline localization" and "View new localization" buttons navigate to the correct view.
• Fixed: Fixed a bug in generated views camelCase handling which could lead to some values not displaying correctly.
• Fixed: Admin actions on closed or empty guilds are now disabled.
• Fixed: The "Please refresh the page to get the latest changes." link that appears in the header when the server's game config changes now refreshes the page properly again.
• Fixed: Fixed server error log showing wrong exception types.
• Fixed: Fixed MModal and MActionModal not emitting hide event when closed by pressing the escape key.
• Fixed: Fixed MInputNumber being too aggressive in clamping non-allowed values while typing. Input validation now happens only on focus change instead of on value change.
• Fixed: The database items modal now has a responsive layout and looks much better on narrow browsers.

SDK

• Added: New game config build window in Unity. It can be enabled by using the Metaplay/Create Default Game Config Build Window menu item.
• Added: New model timeline checksum granularity option of None to disable the checksum verification. This can be used when the overhead of checksum calculations is too expensive and the game logic can be trusted to never cause a divergence between the client and server.
• Added: The SDK now contains an Apple privacy manifest declaring the types of data accessed by the Metaplay SDK (see: https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/apple-privacy-manifest-policy.html). The Metaplay SDK manifest is automatically incorporated into iOS applications built with Unity.
• Changed: The docker builds now use chiseled base runtime images by default that are approximately 270MB smaller. The chiseled images also contain significantly fewer dependencies and are thus safer. Read more about chiseled containers at Announcing .NET Chiseled Containers. The old base image can still be used by giving docker build the --build-arg CHISELED_IMAGE= argument. We only recommend this to ease transition to the safer and smaller chiseled images.
• Changed: The configuration of model timeline debug consistency checks and the model checksumming granularity have been moved to the server. The default per-environment configuration can now be found in Player runtime options. See the migration notes for the required actions. Now you can also override these options per player session for advanced debugging.

Under the hood

• Added: EntityActor.UnsubscribeFromAsync() now takes optional MetaMessage goodbyeMessage that is delivered to EntityActor.OnSubscriberUnsubscribedAsync().
• Added: HttpUtil methods now have an optional argument for authentication and an optional CancellationToken argument.
• Added: Local server runs will now fall back to the SDK prebuilt dashboard when no game-specific dashboard exists.
• Added: The server docker build now uses the SDK prebuilt dashboard to be included in the server image when no game-specific dashboard exists.
• Added: SDK now includes a .dockerignore file for server image building as Dockerfile.server.dockerignore.
• Added: The built docker images now contain labels about the SDK version and the recommended Helm chart versions to use to help deploy pipelines do more automatic versioning.
• Added: MetaValidateInRangeAttribute now supports unsigned integers and values up to the range of Int64. Additionally a new MetaValidateInRangeFloatAttribute supports floats and doubles.
• Added: Deleted players now retain information about the deletion source (user, admin, system) in the DeletionStatus PlayerModel property.
• Added: Deserializing a MetaSerializable object using the constructor now allows the use of optional parameters. This is especially useful when adding new MetaMembers, allowing you to deserialize and specify default values when deserialize old instances.
• Added: Game Config building now allows you to specify which constructor should be used to create the object using the MetaGameConfigBuildConstructor attribute.
  • We automatically match the parameters based on member name and type from the source data.
  • Optional parameters can be used to auto fill members which are missing or empty in the source data.
  • GameConfigKeyValues are currently not supported, support coming in a later update.
• Added:: Added LocalServer utility for Unity Editor for launching and managing the game server process. See "Menu -> Metaplay -> Local Server".
• Added: [BigQueryAnalyticsRecursionLimit] attribute allows recursion of types in BigQuery formatted analytics events.
• Added: Added a new runtime active environment override parameter ActiveEnvironmentIdOverride to MetaplayClientOptions which is used when calling MetaplayClient.Initialize(). This allows easily changing the active environment at init-time.
• Added: Offer group game config now has a new field, IncludeSoldOutOffers, which you can set to false to stop sold-out offers from being included in offer groups. By default, this is true (matching the old behavior), meaning that sold-out offers can get included in offer groups.
• Added: StartServicesAsync() (and corresponding StopServicesAsync()) hook is available in ServerMain, for initializing custom services before entity clustering.
• Changed: Upgraded server-side dependencies to their latest versions, including ASP.NET v8.0, EFCore 8.0, Akka v1.5.19, and SqlClient 5.2.0.
• Changed: For Docker builds, target the specific runtime. This makes the output image sizes approximately 70MB smaller.
• Changed: For Docker builds, the dotnet diagnostics tools (dotnet-counters, dotnet-dump, dotnet-gcdump and dotnet-trace) are no longer installed by default in the images. This reduces image sizes by 125MB. The tools can be installed with dotnet tool install --global <tool-name>.
• Changed: Dockerfile.server runs validation and bake steps using the server and botclient projects rather than running the build output in a separate build stage.
• Changed: Integration tests no longer explicitly check the validity of the runtime options YAML files as these are now covered by the docker builds.
• Changed: The AdminApi now accepts the authorization token from the HTTP header named AdminApiOptions.JwtConfiguration.BearerTokenSource. It gets used in case the standard Authorization header is not specified.
• Changed: On development platforms, FileUtil.Write*() methods explicitly reset file creation time to avoid "file tunneling" of metadata from the overwritten file.
• Changed: The default AdminApi listen port is now 8080 to enable use of non-root user in the Docker container.
• Changed: Player sampling for segment size estimation is now disabled when there are no segments configured.
• Changed: Reduced the default value of analytics event maximum buffering time to 1 minute.
• Changed: Android plugin's minimum SDK version is bumped to API level 21 (from API level 1). As Unity already requires API level 22, this should cause no changes. If your application did not define an AndroidManifest or the specifically target an API level itself, the Android build pipeline automatically added the dangerous permissions WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE, READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE and READ_PHONE_STATE from the API level 4.
• Changed: The MySQL database connections are now created through a MySqlDataSource object and logging has been enabled to help diagnose database-related issues.
• Changed: Deleting a player marked as developer now clears the deleted player from the "developer players" list.
• Changed: Added checks that various Enqueue(Server)Action() and Execute(Server)Action() methods cannot be called unsafely from background threads.
• Changed: The ability to override game config importing via GameConfigBase.PopulateConfigEntries() has been fully removed.
• Changed: The ModelListener interfaces now have default empty implementations for the listener methods. Therefore, there's no longer the need to define empty implementations for methods that wouldn't be used otherwise. The affected interfaces are IPlayerModelClientListenerCore, IPlayerModelServerListenerCore, IGuildModelClientListenerCore, IGuildModelServerListenerCore, IDivisionModelClientListenerCore, IDivisionModelServerListenerCore.
• Changed CTRL-C and SIGTERM signal to shut down the process is captured only once. Second CTRL-C or SIGTERM will immediately kill the process.
• Changed: EntityActor.StartPeriodicTimer() and EntityActor.StartRandomizedPeriodicTimer() require handler method to exists and be declared with [CommandHandler].
• Changed: If the handler for EntityActor.StartPeriodicTimer() and EntityActor.StartRandomizedPeriodicTimer() takes more time than the timer's interval is (i.e. new work is scheduled faster than executed), new timer invocations triggered before the completion of the handler are dropped and a warning is logged.
• Changed: Regardless of the shard declaration in helm values, service nodeset is now the first nodeset. This makes entities with NodeSetPlacement.All have EntityIds with the value of 0 be placed on the service node.
• Changed: Log messages about MetaMessages being routed to a destination node that does not exist or is not available are now logged at Warning level. If an entity keeps sending these unroutable messages more than once a second on average, the log level for this entity's warnings get temporarily throttled to Verbose level.
• Changed: EntityShardId now contains a separate NodeSetIndex and NodeIndex.
• Changed: EntityIds created with ManualShardingStrategy.CreateEntityId() have changed as the EntityShardId encoding above has changed. If you store EntityIds generated with ManualShardingStrategy, they need to be regenerated. Note that this is extremely unlikely as ManualShardingStrategy cannot be used for Persisted Entities, and storing the EntityIds of Transient Entities is useless. The EntityID with the zero value continues to be valid.
• Changed: EntityActor.GetAssociatedServiceEntityId(EntityKind targetEntityKind) is now only allowed for targetEntityKinds that have ServiceShardingStrategy.
• Changed: Application.Instance.ClusterConfig is removed. Use RuntimeOptionsRegistry.Instance.GetCurrent<ClusteringOptions>().ClusterConfig instead.
• Changed: Introduced a new project Metaplay.Attributes containing attributes which are shared between the server and client.
• Changed: The GameConfigBuildTemplate base class no longer requires knowing the build parameters type statically, which allows using context-dependent build parameter types and allows the default implementation to work with user-defined build parameters classes.
• Changed: MetaRef<> are now resolved in place, this causes the HashCode to change and as such MetaRef<> should not be used as keys in dictionaries or as elements in hash based collections (e.g. HashSet or OrderedSet).
• Changed: AsyncMatchmakerActor will no longer fail to start if the bucket labels declared in code have been changed in backwards incompatible fashion.
• Changed: Removed playerId parameter from AuthenticateSocialAuthenticationClaimAsync(). In general the process of authenticating should now care about the current or claimed playerId, and requiring some playerId in this method has proven to be confusing.
• Changed: DefaultEnvironmentConfigProvider.ClearActiveEnvironmentClientOverride() has been removed. The DefaultEnvironmentConfigProvider no longer persists the runtime active environment override to PlayerPrefs.
• Fixed: AsyncMatchmaker no longer strips server-only data from the matchmaker player model in its messages.
• Fixed: Fixed a race in entity shutdown that could cause Player entity to shut down immediately after client login, causing an internal error message to be shown to user.
• Fixed: Enabled --Environment:ExitOnLogError for the BotClient in integration tests to help catch more errors.
• Fixed: Integration tests no longer assume the location of the Assets/ directory to be in the project root.
• Fixed: Fixed the server rejecting ConfigArchives with entries named in a particular way. This was caused due to the entries being mistakenly sorted in different order on Unity and on the server, causing a sanity check to fail. Now, the server no longer cares which order the archive entries are in.
• Fixed: 1 can now be used as action codes for ModelActions.
• Fixed: The /isReady endpoint now returns 503 Service Unavailable (instead of 500 Internal Server Error) when the node is not yet ready.
• Fixed: Properly refuse session start attempts for deleted player accounts, and clear existing authentication records when session start for deleted is attempted.
• Fixed: Fixed a case where registered MessageHandlers of a MultiplayerClientContext could remain alive and active even after Entity was removed.
• Fixed: Avoid a temporary allocation on Unity when MessageDispatcher handler was a method of a generic class.
• Fixed: Fixed PlayerActor crash if enqueued ServerAction enqueued another ServerAction via ServerListener after a game session had ended.
• Fixed: An offer group will no longer become active if it would only contain sold-out offers.
• Fixed: BigQuery analytics events with fields of type Nullable<T> with a null value are no longer dropped.
• Fixed: BigQuery analytics event no longer have null valued string/int/double_value fields in event_params RECORDs. This behavior now matches the documentation.
• Fixed: Fixed a rare race in session resume which could lead to loss of sent messages.
• Fixed: StartApplicationAsync() is now called only after the cluster has properly initialized, i.e., all entity shards are running.
• Fixed: Calling PersistedMultiplayerEntityActorBase.AddEntityAssociation() in OnClientSessionHandshake() now adds the association as expected.
• Removed: The obsolete method GameConfigBuildIntegration.GetAvailableBuildSources(string sourcePropertyInBuildParams) has been removed. It was obsoleted in release 26 by being renamed to GetAvailableGameConfigBuildSources().
• Removed: The AppTooLongSuspended timeout which triggers when a frame took too long to execute has been removed, this is instead handled by the server kicking a client when the client has not responded for 60 seconds by default.

Samples

• All samples now ship with prebuilt dashboards that are served by the sample game servers at http://localhost:5550 when running locally.
• Unity version used by sample projects has been updated to 2022.3.28f1.

Under the hood

• Changed: The Backend project containing the SharedCode/ folder has been renamed from CloudCore to SharedCode to clarify its purpose.

Documentation

• The Troubleshooting Servers page has been rewritten and now includes instructions to use Kubernetes ephemeral debug containers to debug running servers.
• New section on how to remove player accounts from devices on the Accounts and Authentication page.
• A guide on Creating Support Tickets has been added.
• A guide on how to support multiple client versions has been added. Check out Legacy Client Support.

Under the hood

• Changed: Updated Environment Configs to reflect changes to active environment override API.
• Changed: The Localization page has been updated to reflect the current workflow.
• Updated: The Google Sheets Integration, Working with Game Config Data, and Tutorial: Game Configs have received some updates to make the example implementations better and the steps easier to follow.

Migration Guide

INFO

Note: If you have a service contract signed with Metaplay, your SDK integration has already been updated!

SDK

Required migration steps for C# code.

Metaplay.Attributes project

Add the MetaplaySDK\Backend\Attributes\Metaplay.Attributes.csproj project as an existing project to the Metaplay folder in your MyGame-Server solution file.

CloudCore C# Project Rename

MetaplaySDK samples have renamed Backend/CloudCore/CloudCore.csproj to CloudCore/SharedCode/SharedCode.csproj to clarify the project mostly contains the Assets/SharedCode folder. For consistency, it is recommeded that the you update the project name too.

First, you need to update project file and folder name. Then you update the paths Backend Solution file (Note that GUIDs may be different, and the existing GUIDs should not be modified):

BackendSolution.sln

-Project("{9A19103F-16F7-4668-BE54-9A1E7A4F7556}") = "CloudCore", "CloudCore\CloudCore.csproj", "{D3CE2986-5A54-4300-9AA8-5E0D3434B69F}"
+Project("{9A19103F-16F7-4668-BE54-9A1E7A4F7556}") = "SharedCode", "SharedCode\SharedCode.csproj", "{D3CE2986-5A54-4300-9AA8-5E0D3434B69F}"

Finally, you need to change all project references in the Server, BotClient and other Backend Projects:

BackendProject.csproj

-    <ProjectReference Include="..\CloudCore\CloudCore.csproj" />
+    <ProjectReference Include="..\SharedCode\SharedCode.csproj" />

TIP

To find all project references, you can use git grep "CloudCore.csproj"

Changes to ConfigArchive's Constructors

In order to clarify the purpose of the two different ways to create instances of ConfigArchive, its public constructors have been replaced with static creation methods. Replace your ConfigArchive constructor invocations as follows.

Creating a ConfigArchive from newly-built data:

- new ConfigArchive(creationTime, entries)
+ ConfigArchive.CreateFromBuild(creationTime, entries)

Creating a ConfigArchive from data that was loaded from a previously-serialized archive:

- new ConfigArchive(contentHash, createdAt, entries)
+ ConfigArchive.CreateLoaded(contentHash, createdAt, entries)

The actual difference between the two methods is that CreateFromBuild sorts the given entries by name and computes the contentHash automatically, whereas CreateLoaded keeps the entries in the given order and the contentHash as given.

Using the client active environment override

DefaultEnvironmentConfigProvider.ClearActiveEnvironmentClientOverride() has been removed. The runtime active environment override is no longer persisted in PlayerPrefs and is instead an in-memory override that applies for the current lifecycle of the app. The new, recommended way to use the runtime active environment override is to provide ActiveEnvironmentIdOverride in MetaplayClientOptions when calling MetaplayClient.Initialize.

Client Debug Config changes

The member ClientDebugConfig in class EnvironmentConfig has been removed and is replaced with ClientLoggingConfig that only configures the per-environment client logging. If you have custom configuration for the client logging options, please update the environment the logging options in your enviroment configuration.

The configuration of EnablePlayerConsistencyChecks and PlayerChecksumGranularity is now done on the server side. If you have custom configuration for these options then migrate them into the appropriate Options.xxx.yaml files hosted in the server Config directory. The default options provided by the SDK remain unchanged:

• ClientConsistencyChecks: Enabled for local and development environments, disabled otherwise.
• ChecksumGranularity: PerOperation for local and development environments, PerActionSingleTickPerFrame for other environments.

For example, to override checksum granularity to PerActionSingleTickPerFrame also in development environments you would add this to Options.dev.yaml:

Player:
  DebugConfig:
    ChecksumGranularity: PerActionSingleTickPerFrame

Client Debug Config associated API changes

The signature of the MetaplayClientCreatePlayerContextFunc and the default implementation DefaultCreatePlayerContext has been changed. The parameters currentOperation, enableConsistencyChecks and checksumGranularity have been replaced with the single parameter initialState received from the server. The old parameters are now accessible from initialState, highlighting that they are now part of server configuration. If you have a custom implementation of IPlayerClientContext, update your code to read these parameters from the passed in initialState.

If you create an instance of DefaultPlayerClientContext in your BotClient.HandleStartSession(), you'll need to remove the arguments for currentOperation, enableConsistencyChecks and checksumGranularity. For the new initialPlayerState parameter, pass in success.PlayerState (where success is the SessionProtocol.SessionStartSuccess success to HandleStartSession().)

GameConfigBase.PopulateConfigEntries has been removed

To provide better error handling, PopulateConfigEntries has been removed. If you need to pass custom data to the game config, we recommend doing so by providing an implementation of GameConfigBuildTemplate<TSharedConfig, TServerConfig, TBuildParameters>.GetEntryBuilder(Type configType, string entryName). This method does the processing during at build time, reducing the amount of work that needs to be done when the game client imports the game config.

For example, the Idler sample imports a JSON file as part of the build process:

public class IdlerGameConfigBuild : GameConfigBuildTemplate<SharedGameConfig, ServerGameConfig, IdlerGameConfigBuildParameters>
{
  protected override ConfigEntryBuilder? GetEntryBuilder(Type configType, string entryName)
  {
    if (!ShouldBuildEntry(entryName))
        return null;

    if (configType == typeof(SharedGameConfig))
    {
      if (entryName == "OpaqueSourceTest")
      {
        if (!BuildParameters.HasLocalFileSource)
          return null;

        return CustomEntryBuildSingleSource<byte[]>(
          // Fetch data from the OpaqueSourceTest defined in the build parameters
          GetGenericFetchFunc("OpaqueSourceTest.json", BuildParameters.OpaqueDataSource),
          (builder, data) =>
          {
              // Deserialize from json to the target type.
              JsonSerializer serializer = JsonSerialization.CreateSerializer(
                  new JsonSerialization.Options(JsonSerialization.Options.DefaultOptions)
                  {
                      TraverseGameConfigDataType = typeof(OpaqueSourceTestInfo),
                  });
              List<OpaqueSourceTestInfo> list = JsonSerialization.Deserialize<List<OpaqueSourceTestInfo>>(data, serializer);

              // Convert to a type that the SDK can consume, if your data type supports variants, they can also be passed here.
              List<VariantConfigItem<OpaqueSourceTestId,OpaqueSourceTestInfo>> items = list.Select(x => new VariantConfigItem<OpaqueSourceTestId, OpaqueSourceTestInfo>(x, null, null, null)).ToList();

              // Finally, assign the result to the game config builder
              builder.AssignLibraryBuildResult(nameof(SharedGameConfig.OpaqueSourceTest),
                  items,
                  null);
          });
      }
    }

    // For every other entry, return the default builder.
    return base.GetEntryBuilder(configType, entryName);
  }
}

Another option is to add binary data to the game config. To do this, add the data as part of the build process:

public class IdlerGameConfigBuild : GameConfigBuildTemplate<SharedGameConfig, ServerGameConfig, IdlerGameConfigBuildParameters>
{
  protected override Task Build(IGameConfigBuilder<SharedGameConfig> shared, IGameConfigBuilder<ServerGameConfig> server, IdlerGameConfigBuildParameters buildParams)
  {
      byte[] bytes = ...;
      shared.AddCustomArchiveEntry(ConfigArchiveEntry.FromBlob("CustomEntry", bytes));
      return base.Build(shared, server, buildParams);
  }
}

This can then be loaded in the GameConfig.PopulateCustomConfigData(GameConfigImportParams importParams) method as follow:

public class SharedGameConfig : SharedGameConfigBase
{
  public override void PopulateCustomConfigData(GameConfigImportParams importParams)
  {
      ReadOnlyMemory<byte> bytes = importParams.Resources.BaselineArchive.GetEntryBytes("CustomEntry");
      // Parse your byte data and assign it to a property in your game config class
  }
}

MetaRefs are no longer supported as keys in Dictionaries and other hash based collections

You can instead manually resolve references at runtime. For example, replace your MetaRef collection with a collection containing StringId (or the Id of your config items):

- [MetaMember(1)] public OrderedSet<MetaRef<ProducerInfo>> DiscountedProducers { get; private set; }
+ [MetaMember(1)] public OrderedSet<ProducerTypeId> DiscountedProducers { get; private set; }

You can then access the item from the relevant game config library:

foreach (ProducerTypeId id in DiscountedProducers)
  ProducerInfo info = GameConfig.Producers[id];

Another option is to use a normal list in the your game config, then construct the hash based collection in the IGameConfigPostLoad.PostLoad() method:

public class HappyHourInfo : IMetaActivableConfigData<HappyHourId>, IGameConfigPostLoad
{
  [MetaMember(1)] private List<MetaRef<ProducerInfo>> discountedProducers { get; set; }

  public OrderedSet<MetaRef<ProducerInfo>> DiscountedProducers { get; private set; }

  public void PostLoad()
  {
    DiscountedProducers = new OrderedSet<MetaRef<ProducerInfo>>(discountedProducers);
  }
}

StartPeriodicTimer and StartRandomizedPeriodicTimer require a [CommandHandler]

Timers started with StartPeriodicTimer and StartRandomizedPeriodicTimer require a handler for the scheduled message. The existence of the handler is checked when either method is called.

All handlers using the Akka's Receive<> methods must be changed to use [CommandHandler]. Code in the form of:

protected Task Initialize()
{
  StartRandomizedPeriodicTimer(TickInterval, Tick.Instance);
}

protected override void RegisterHandlers()
{
  ReceiveAsync<Tick>(ReceiveTick);
  ...
}

async Task ReceiveTick(Tick _)
{
  ...
}

Should be converted to:

protected Task Initialize()
{
  StartRandomizedPeriodicTimer(TickInterval, Tick.Instance);
}

[CommandHandler]
async Task HandleTick(Tick _)
{
  ...
}

Entity Association API

The PlayerActorBase.GetSessionStartAssociatedEntities() has been removed. Instead the actor keeps track of all entities that have been added with AddEntityAssociation, and those are sent to new sessions automatically. To port existing code from GetSessionStartAssociatedEntities:

• At the end of EntityActor.OnClientSessionHandshakeAsync() call AddEntityAssociation(.., removeOnSessionEnd: true) for every associated entity as was called in GetSessionStartAssociatedEntities.
• Whenever an entity declared in GetSessionStartAssociatedEntities was added with AddEntityAssociation, use removeOnSessionEnd: true to maintain the expected, session lifetime.

The PersistedMultiplayerEntityActorBase.GetSessionStartAssociatedEntities() has been removed. Instead the actor keeps track of all entities that have been added with AddEntityAssociation, and those are sent to new sessions automatically. To port existing code from GetSessionStartAssociatedEntities:

• Whenever an entity becomes associated with the Entity, use AddEntityAssociation to add an association. This was required previously too.
• Whenever an entity is no longer associated with the Entity, use RemoveEntityAssociation to add an association. This was required previously too.
• At the end of EntityActor.Initialize() call AddEntityAssociation for every associated entity as was called in GetSessionStartAssociatedEntities.

EntityActor Subscription API Migration

Replace void OnSubscriberLost with Task OnSubscriberLostAsync:

- override void OnSubscriberLost(EntitySubscriber subscriber)
+ override Task OnSubscriberLostAsync(EntitySubscriber subscriber)
{
  ...
+ return Task.CompletedTask;
}

Replace void OnSubscriberTerminated with Task OnSubscriberTerminatedAsync:

- override void OnSubscriberTerminated(EntitySubscriber subscriber)
+ override Task OnSubscriberTerminatedAsync(EntitySubscriber subscriber)
{
  ...
+ return Task.CompletedTask;
}

Replace void OnSubscriberUnsubscribed(EntitySubscriber subscriber) with Task OnSubscriberUnsubscribedAsyncAsync(EntitySubscriber subscriber, MetaMessage goodbyeMessage):

- override void OnSubscriberUnsubscribed(EntitySubscriber subscriber)
+ override Task OnSubscriberUnsubscribedAsync(EntitySubscriber subscriber, MetaMessage goodbyeMessage)
{
  ...
+ return Task.CompletedTask;
}

Rename Task OnSubscriptionLost to Task OnSubscriptionLostAsync:

- override Task OnSubscriptionLost(EntitySubscription subscription)
+ override Task OnSubscriptionLostAsync(EntitySubscription subscription)
{
  ...
}

Rename Task OnSubscriptionKicked to Task OnSubscriptionKickedAsync:

- override Task OnSubscriptionKicked(EntitySubscription subscription)
+ override Task OnSubscriptionKickedAsync(EntitySubscription subscription)
{
  ...
}

AdminApi Anonymous Endpoints

The attribute marking an "anonymous" AdminApi HTTP endpoint (i.e., an endpoint that can be accessed as long as the user is authenticated to the dashboard) is changed. If you are using the [AllowAnonymous] endpoint for any custom AdminApi endpoints, replace it like as follows:

[HttpGet("hello")]
- [AllowAnonymous]
+ [RequirePermission(MetaplayPermissions.Anyone)]
public ActionResult GetHello() { ... }

Dashboard

Required migration steps for the dashboard project.

Dashboard Project Tooling Updates

• Ensure that you have Node version 20.12.0 or higher installed. We recommend using the latest LTS version of Node 20 which, at the time of writing, is 20.14.0.

• Changes to several configuration files have been made during this release. The MetaplaySDK/Frontend/DefaultDashboard folder is to be considered the source of truth for these files. You will need to make the following changes to files in your Dashboard folder, based on the source files in MetaplaySDK/Frontend/DefaultDashboard:

  • Copy and overwrite .eslintrc.cjs. The file introduces new ESLint configurations.
  • Copy and overwrite vite.config.ts. The file introduces new Vite configurations.
  • Copy and add tsconfig.app.json. The file contains TypeScript configurations for the browser app.
  • Copy and overwrite tsconfig.json. The file introduces new configurations.
    • Additionally, you will need to change the configuration path on line 5 of this file that points to "../tsconfig.libraries.json" to point to this folder within your own repository's structure. Typically this will be "../../MetaplaySDK/Frontend/tsconfig.libraries.json"
  • Copy and overwrite tsconfig.node.json. The file introduces new TypeScript configs for the Node tooling.
  • Copy and overwrite cypress.config.ts.
  • package.json has new dependencies and an updated lint script. You should copy over the source file from DefaultDashboard and overwrite your existing file. Doing so will overwrite some changes to the file that you will now need to revert. This is best done using a file diff tool:
    • Restore the name property inside the file to that of your project. This is typically of the form <projectName>-dashboard.
    • Any game-specific package dependencies that you have added will need to be re-added.

• You can now remove the following two obsolete files from your Dashboard's root folder:

  • Remove the meta-components.d.ts file.
  • If you have a cypress.config.js then you should remove it. Please note the exact filename.
  • If you have a .eslintrc.js then you should remove it. Please note the exact filename.

• Delete all node_modules folders from your project's repository. npm can sometimes get confused about stale dependencies when we make big changes to structure or configuration, as we did above. You can remove all modules with the command git clean -fdx ':(glob)**/node_modules/*' from anywhere inside your repository.

• Run command pnpm i from your Dashboard directory to freshly re-install all required modules.

• Run command pnpm lint from your Dashboard directory to get more opinionated TypeScript checks on code quality.

• Finally, run pnpm build to build the Dashboard. Depending on how much customisation you have made to your project, you may now see warnings or errors related to component changes and deprecations inside the Metaplay SDK. The following migration guides will help you to fix these.

UI Component Import Changes

To make imports more consistent, the import scope has changed for some components. This will cause build errors of the form: Cannot find module '@metaplay/core/src/components/generatedui/components/MetaGeneratedForm.vue' or its corresponding type declarations.ts-plugin(2307) You can fix this by changing the import statement to be of the form: @metaplay/core' i.e. The import now appears at the root of the library and the internal structure of the library is no longer visible to external code. This simplification results in import statements of the form: import { MetaGeneratedForm } from '@metaplay/core'.

The components that are known to be affected are:

• AuditLogCard
• BroadcastDeleteFormButton
• MessageAudienceForm
• MetaAudienceSizeEstimate
• MetaGeneratedCard
• MetaGeneratedContent
• MetaGeneratedForm
• MetaGeneratedSection
• MetaLanguageLabel
• PlayerListCard
• TargetingCard

MInputDuration Component Changes

The MInputDuration component's allowZeroDuration property has been removed in favor of the new allowEmpty property. The component's UX has been updated to make this clearer to the user. Additionally, please consider using hintMessage to provide additional context to the user of what an empty value means in practice. Maybe a feature has been disabled?

To migrate, replace the allowZeroDuration property with allowEmpty as follows, and update your surrounding code to handle undefined outputs from the component:

MInputDuration(
   :model-value="duration"
   @update:model-value="duration = $event"
-  allowZeroDuration
+  allowEmpty
+  :hintMessage="!duration ? 'Feature is disabled' : undefined"
  ...
)

// Selected duration can now be either Luxon.Duration or undefined
const duration: Ref<Duration | undefined> = ref()

MetaEventStreamCard Component Changes

The MetaEventStreamCard component has been updated to include new props for pre-filtering and highlighting events. These replace the previous, similar props and overall should make the component easier to use. Please update your callsites to the new props as follows:

meta-event-stream-card(
  title="Some events",
  :eventStream="eventStream",
- tooltip="Tooltips got removed as a bad UX pattern. Please use a descriptive card title instead."
- searchIsFilter
+ utilitiesMode="filter" <- "highlight" (default, like before) or "filter"
- :initialSearchString="initialSearchString"
- :freezeSearch="freezeSearch"
+ :searchPreHighlight="searchPreHighlight" <- A search string that permanently highlights events, like before (not editable by the user)
- :initialKeywordFilters="initialKeywordFilters"
- :freezeKeywordFilters="freezeKeywordFilters"
+ :keywordPreFilters="keywordPreFilters" <- Array of keyword strings to pre-filter events by, like before (not editable by the user)
- :initialEventTypeFilters="initialEventTypeFilters"
- :freezeEventTypeFilters="freezeEventTypeFilters"
+ :eventTypePreFilters="eventTypePreFilters" <- Array of event type strings to pre-filter events by, like before (not editable by the user)
  ...
  )

Location of doesHavePermission() Changed

The doesHavePermission() function moved from gameServerApiStore to usePermissions. Please update your callsites:

-import { useGameServerApiStore } from '@metaplay/game-server-api'
-const gameServerApiStore = useGameServerAPIStore()
-const hasPermission = gameServerApiStore.doesHavePermission('xxx')
+import { usePermissions } from '@metaplay/meta-ui-next'
+const permissions = usePermissions()
+const hasPermission = permissions.doesHavePermission('xxx')

Deprecated Props and Components

• As a part of our long-term migration away from Bootstrap-Vue, we have deprecated some of our internal components and replaced them with new ones in the MetaUiNext package. Unfortunately, the new components are not drop-in replacements and will need a minor refactor. The following components have been replaced:
  • MetaButton is replaced by MButton, MIconButton and MTextButton.
  • MetaClipboardCopy is replaced by MClipboardCopy.
  • MetaActionModalButton is replaced by MActionModalButton or a combination of either the MButton, MIconButton or MTextButton with an MActionModal component.
  • MetaCollapse is replaced by the MCollapse component.

For detailed examples of how the new components work, run pnpm storybook within the MetaplaySDK/NodePackages/MetaUiNext folder.

• The b-collapse and BCollapsePlugin have now been removed. To ensure continued functionality, update all game-specific references to use the new MCollapse component. If you prefer to continue using the b-collapse component, you can import the library into your game-specific dashboard project and maintain it as a custom dependency.

• The MetaInputSelect component no longer supports the noDeselect property. This property had no useful effect and is now ignored. You can safely remove the prop from any of your MetaInputSelect components that use it.

• The MActionModal component no longer supports the onlyClose property. To achieve the same functionality, replace instances of the MActionModal with the onlyClose property to the new MModal component as follows:

- MActionModal(
+ MModal(
  title="modalTitle"
  ref="modalRef"
- :action="async () => {}"
- only-close
  ...
)

Vue VS Code Extension Upgrade Guide

The official Vue extension for VS Code has matured to the point that we now highly recommend using it. Take the following steps to ensure that you are using the latest version:

• Make sure you have the latest version of VS Code installed.
• Install the official Vue extension which as of writing this guide is at 2.0.19.
• Previous versions of this extension told you to disable VS Code's built-in TypeScript checking, but this is no longer the case. To make sure that you are using VS Code's built-in typescript server:
  • Open the extension settings inside VS Code from the Settings -> Extension menu.
  • Find the TypeScript extension by typing "@builtin typescript" into the search bar.
  • Ensure that the "TypeScript and JavaScript Language Features" extension is enabled.

A problem that could arise during the steps mentioned above where VS Code pins the Vue extension to 1.8.27 despite you trying to upgrade to the latest 2.0.xx version.

• Re-install the VS Code or equivalent editor (Cursor IDE where this issue has been known to happen) from a clean slate.
• Delete the files containing IDE-related configuration data from a relevant folder location.
• Once successfully re-installed, open your repository from its root directory (not the workspace).

Hotfix Releases

Release 28.1

Released on: July 11th, 2024

• Dashboard: The latest version of TypeScript (version "5.5") contains bugs in its handling of generics. We use generics heavily inside our UI components and this latest version causes errors when building the Dashboard. Our project dependencies allowed for the latest version of TypeScript to be installed if you created a new project or updated (with npm update) an existing one. To fix this we have pinned TypeScript back to version "5.4". We will update to the latest version of TypeScript once these issues have been addressed.

• Dashboard: Fixed getEnvironmentFamily to return the correct value.

• Dashboard: Fixed player search to stop it from breaking when trying to display uninitialized players.

• Dashboard: Improved formatting of game config validation log messages.

• SDK: Fixed login potentially getting stuck a Metaplay Guild transaction is pending.

• SDK: Improved caching of the GameConfig List endpoint, causing potential old data to be display.

• SDK: Fixed dashboard "game configs updated" and "server restarted" popups not working with newest infra version. The long-poll SSE channel used to communicate the state gets incorrectly buffered in the ingress proxy.

Migration Guide

• package.json has new dependencies and an updated lint script. You should copy over the package.json from DefaultDashboard and overwrite your package.json. Doing so will overwrite some changes to the file that you will now need to revert. This is best done using a file diff tool:
  • Restore the name property inside the file to that of your project. This is typically of the form <projectName>-dashboard.
  • Any game-specific package dependencies that you have added will need to be re-added.