Catan Universe News

Hi Catanains,

In this is weekly development update VII we have some news to share on a backend update we just deployed on January 17th and how the next client update is progressing.

Last week, Jan 9th. - Jan. 15th
As we outlined, our QA team tested the changes made to the clients and backend in an internal test. Our focus of this update is reconnect-handling when one or more of the clients disconnect, as issues here can cause consequential errors. We saw significant improvements in this regard, but identified a related mobile caching issue that we need to tackle at the same time. Therefore, we need to build a new client update for internal testing first.

We also revisited account migration and tested a fix, which should help most of the remaining accounts to finally migrate to our new database properly. We furthermore added additional logging to this system to catch remaining issues.

On top of this, our team investigated and identified certain account status settings that affected matchmaking issues for Auto- and Custom-Matches. A backend fix for this was tested and released.

This week, Jan 16th- Jan. 22nd
We continued testing the backend update for account migration optimization and additional logging as well as matchmaking fixes on Monday. Feedback from our users confirmed our suspicion that the matchmaking issue in custom matches WAS related to player avatar customization. Thank you for your detailed feedback!

This backend updated was rolled out this Tuesday afternoon (CET), January 17th.
Focus for the rest of his week is to finalize the next internal version of the client update for internal testing. As soon as we can confirm it is all working as intended, we can schedule a release as soon as possible.

Hi Catanains,

In this is weekly development update VII we have some news to share on a backend update we just deployed on January 17th and how the next client update is progressing.

Last week, Jan 9th. - Jan. 15th
As we outlined, our QA team tested the changes made to the clients and backend in an internal test. Our focus of this update is reconnect-handling when one or more of the clients disconnect, as issues here can cause consequential errors. We saw significant improvements in this regard, but identified a related mobile caching issue that we need to tackle at the same time. Therefore, we need to build a new client update for internal testing first.

We also revisited account migration and tested a fix, which should help most of the remaining accounts to finally migrate to our new database properly. We furthermore added additional logging to this system to catch remaining issues.

On top of this, our team investigated and identified certain account status settings that affected matchmaking issues for Auto- and Custom-Matches. A backend fix for this was tested and released.

This week, Jan 16th- Jan. 22nd
We continued testing the backend update for account migration optimization and additional logging as well as matchmaking fixes on Monday. Feedback from our users confirmed our suspicion that the matchmaking issue in custom matches WAS related to player avatar customization. Thank you for your detailed feedback!

This backend updated was rolled out this Tuesday afternoon (CET), January 17th.
Focus for the rest of his week is to finalize the next internal version of the client update for internal testing. As soon as we can confirm it is all working as intended, we can schedule a release as soon as possible.

Hi Catanains,

in our Dev update VI we want to talk about how we are currently addressing the most reported issues.

Week Jan. 2nd - Jan. 8th

Our team did resolve a remaining issue with the database that involved game sessions to create a huge workload on the servers even after all clients closed that game session. We are seeing a steady and good performance of the servers since then.

Our team also started to work on client updates that will focus on reconnecting to games as well as how the game detects if a player is offline or online.

Week Jan 9th. - Jan. 15th

Our QA team is currently testing the changes made to the clients in an internal test. Our focus is to resolve issues with games not proceeding properly after one or more of the clients did disconnect. We are also focussing on improving how gracefully a client can reconnect to a game after a short disconnect.

We also took another look at our account migration and are currently testing a fix there which should help the remaining accounts to finally migrate to our new database. We will let you know once this fix has been added to the servers.

On top of this, our team is currently looking into a possible connection between certain accounts and matchmaking issues for Auto- and Custommatches. These investigations only started yesterday. That is why we can´t present any conclusions yet but we will be able to give more info on that in next week's Developer Update.

As you can see our team is currently tackling the biggest issues and we are looking forward to releasing a new client after we tested the changes successfully. Please keep in mind that testing changes on those important functions takes some time. Once testing is finished we will let you know when to expect the rollout of the update.

Hi Catanians,

After the holidays, we want to give you an update on what we are working
on this week and what will be the next steps we are taking to resolve known
issues with the game.

Week Dec 26th - Jan 1st: Our QA team (quality assurance team) went
through your feedback and based on that intensified further testing on the
servers, also by playing games with the community. We were able to retrace
reported issues and forwarded them to our development team. The main issues we saw mostly related to handing over turns, both to other clients and/or with the AI not properly replacing other users.

That is causing further consequential errors you are experiencing.
We also tracked other issues in online games, especially in the setup
phase of games. All these are being addressed with the highest
priority by the dev team.

Week Jan 2nd - Jan 8th: The dev team is back at full strength to keep on
working on the above-mentioned issues. It is our highest priority to make
online games as enjoyable to you as they have been. The team knows what systems
they will work on to resolve these issues thanks to the work of the QA team and
your continued feedback.

Another reported issue (especially by iOS users, who had to log in again
after switching between apps) is one symptom of online games not restarting as
intended when a player is shortly disconnecting from the servers. This is due
to ported “old” code not working as intended and expected on the new infrastructure.
We will continue to adapt or rewrite existing code for fixing this and
other issues. We are confident that once these core issues are
resolved, we will see significant progress in improving of the online gaming
service.

We are personally very disappointed that despite all of our efforts in
the last months, we were and are facing unforeseen issues with components that
are not performing as expected on the new platform. Regrettably, these were not
foreseeable and/or we were not able to replicate them on the test systems, as
they are limited to the live environment.

We are committed to working on resolving these issues as soon as
possible and ask for your understanding that the core team is absolutely
focused on this and we will limit most interaction via social media on identifying
and resolving bugs for the time being.

As always, we want to thank you for your patience and constructive feedback.

We also want to encourage those of you who might be missing in-app purchases
after the migration to reach out to our support team ([email protected]). We will find solutions for these sorts of issues together!

Hi Catanians,


in this week's Developer Update we want to give you some insights on the impact of the changes we introduced last week and we will provide you with an overview of what to expect in the coming weeks.

Please note that due to the holiday season we won´t be able to post a developer update next week. But we will be back on Jan 3rd with more info regarding our next moves to resolve known issues with the game.

Week Dec. 12th - 18th

This week we focused on releasing the client update alongside backend updates which heavily focussed on matchmaking and increasing the overall performance of our database. The client update also included a fix for display issues on macOS devices. MacOS users now can load the game scene again. We also saw the number of games being played on our platform increase.

Our metrics show an improvement in the database CPU usage after we released a backend update on Dec 13th.




This massive drop now gives us the breathing room we need to have a much more stable system overall. Based on your feedback we saw that these changes did lead to a noticeable improvement on your end as well. We are happy to hear that. Of course, we are aware that there are still issues and we will address those. We stand by that and won´t stop until the game works as you expect it.


Weeks Dec 18th - Jan 1st

Our team is analyzing your feedback and logs after the latest changes we introduced.

We are aware of issues with placing board pieces and of users dropping out of games. We are also aware of desynced games and of custom-match lobbies not always working as intended. We also got feedback that a certain number of users are still having issues with matchmaking and that the replacement AI is not working as intended.

Our team is working on fixes for these issues.

Now that we have the computing capacity available due to last week's changes we focus on working out these issues while knowing those aren´t caused by a generally poor-performing database.

Our team will keep monitoring your feedback also in the week after Christmas and we are available to resolve immanent issues with the servers or database. But we won´t be able to introduce code fixes to the backend or client between Dec. 23rd and Jan 2nd.

We want to thank you for your patience and ongoing feedback. It helps us a lot.