uZone 1.0.0 (2012-10-02)

[Martin Segersten]

Dear UnityPark developers,

We are happy to announce that uZone has finally managed to escape its beta zone and is fully joining its older siblings in the UnityPark-suite! Check it out in our download zone, which happens to be just one click away from our updated user-manual that might come well in hand! Listed below are just a few of the changes:

uZone 1.0.0 (2012-10-02)

New Features:

• The addition of a configurable port_allocation and port_range parameter in the node configuration-file that lets the user set which ports that are to be assigned to instances by uZone. Each instance gets assigned a unique port number within this range, which can be retrieved on startup and used to listen for incoming traffic. If no port is available, uZone will refrain from initiating any new instances on that node.
• An configurable instance_ip parameter in the node configuration-file that lets the user set the IP address that uZone will associate instances on that node with. This could for example be the IP-address the instances use to listen for incoming connections.
• Added support to provide command-line arguments to StartGameInstance-requests. These can then be accessed on startup on the game server. This allows the game programmer to send custom arguments on startup, or start an instance with any of the built-in Unity-flags.
• Made uZone-master report errors in requests back to the client to enable the handling of these, such as failures to launch an instance.

Improvements:

• Completely overhauled interface which should result in better performance, functionality, stability and ease of use. This is reflected in the API, which looks a bit different than earlier. See the API documentation and user manual for reference.
• Made the uZone-master choose the best available node with the least amount of instances running when starting an instance.
• Added EventCode enumerable that identifies all the events in uZone.
• Added IP and Port-fields to the GameInstance-class.
• Added IP-field to the Node-class.
• Fixed ability to list instances per game type.
• Added ability to list instances per node.
• Merged the client interface with the instance interface.
• Changed the way callbacks are handled. Instead of creating game objects that define callbacks and subscribe to events, callbacks are now set by associating a method with an EventCode.
• Removed the need for any extra scripts. Just import the unity-package and you are set.
• Added tons of internal error-handling in the Erlang parts to make them even more robust.
• Added limited error-reporting, such as why a node failed to start an instance, to the Erlang interface.
• Added automatic error and crash-logging in the Erlang parts.
• ... and much more!

Sincerely,

Martin Segersten

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