Official Infrastructure & Game Update Part 1 (29/04/2023)

[Heliology]

Hey everyone,

Today we're bringing the long-awaited infrastructure update that we've been hyping over the past couple of weeks. With over 80,000 line changes occurring in 1200+ files, we're excited about what's to come as a result of this update and we hope you are too. Additionally, we've made some quality-of-life changes and fixed quite a few issues with this patch. Be sure to check out the changelog below.

New Infrastructure

• Our internal API has been overhauled to increase the speed of future updates.
• Our server and proxy cores have been merged into 1 project.
• Server-side Player events have been overridden with custom events to make future development easier.
• Cosmetics and achievements are now registered by the base AuroraMC API, so issues with plugin version mismatches and forgetting to register cosmetics or achievements are now significantly reduced.
• Abstracted common code from our Proxy and Server cores to make future development easier.
• Abstracted common Player functions to be runnable from our internal default AuroraMCPlayer class, resultantly we have disabled our developer access to the Player object.
• Message formatting should now be consistent between versions, as we have switched from using Strings with Formatting Codes to using base component messages.

General

• Certain cosmetic types will now remain enabled regardless of whether or not cosmetics are enabled in a server.
• Items in the main cosmetic GUI now glow when a cosmetic of that type is currently active.
• A hidden achievement has been made less sensitive due to certain strings in chat triggering the achievement to be achieved.
• Holograms have been slightly reworked to prevent lag.

Lobby

• Players will now receive reminders in the Lobby if they do not have their account linked to Discord.
• Captain Calypso has fixed his issue and gone on to his final destination.
• Added Daily Reward Streaks to Lieutenant Luna.
• Increased the frequency in which parkour leaderboards update.

Duels

• Implemented a brand new Duels Lobby.
• Captain Calypso has landed in his final destination, keep an eye out for him.
• Added a Spectator Mode to allow players to spectate ongoing duels.
• Tips will occasionally be sent in chat giving key information about the gamemode.
• The message sent to both players at the end of a duel will now have a "Rematch" option to send a new duel request for the same gamemode.
• Fixed an issue where in kits with a Bow, you could time an arrow to shoot the second the start timer is over.
• Fixed an issue where you could teleport using ender pearls before the start timer is over.
• Fixed an issue where you could place/break blocks before the game started in BuildUHC.
• Fixed a bug where Debuff and NoDebuff items were shown as water bottles in the kit selection GUI.
• All Duels (with the exception of Gapple) are now time limited to 15 minutes.
• You can now skip the Kit Selection GUI, and you can just type the kit name as an argument in /duel.

Games

• The game engine should now be more tolerant of errors.
• Paintball will increase the number of lives lost per death after 3 minutes rather than 4 minutes.

Bug Fixes

• Ranks are now correctly bolded in Global Chat.
• Games will no longer break if a player joins whilst the countdown is ongoing.
• The game will no longer start if a player spectates during the countdown causing the "playing" count to go below 2.
• The game will now begin the countdown if a player unspectates and causes the "playing" count to be above the required amount.
• Announcements can now be sent to all individual game lobbies, rather than just Crystal Quest.
• Players will now be told if they are exempt from Chat Silence/Slow.
• Player Chat will no longer continuously get closed for the last 5 seconds of the countdown. It will instead prevent you from opening GUI's and not close chat.
• Fixed a bug where the Lieutenant Luna menu would display her name as "Cosmonaut Luna".

Discord

• New /name command to update your Discord nickname to your in-game username.
• Updated the Read-Me post to be solely rules.
• Linking information has been moved to #link
• Updated our Discord API wrapper to avoid compatibility issues with newer updates of Discord.

We have loads more updates coming up in the next couple of weeks/months. Now we have our new infrastructure, overhauling some of our other features is going to become much simpler. We have several upgrades coming soon to help make the network more stable and error-tolerant, including a way for players to help us find and fix bugs (more details will come in due course)!

Our current list of priorities are:

• A new game coming out very soonTM
• Re-writing our Team Balancing algorithm
• 2 new Arcade Games - Block Party & Mob Arena!
• Possibly up to 5 new Duel types.
• Creating an Event plugin to allow us to bring you exciting events and cool twists to our games! (if you have any ideas, feel free to send them to us!)
• Some QoL features to make it easier for new players to know what to do.