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Here's all the great info on brainCloud 5..

yadda yadda yadda

We hope you like it!

Give us feedback!

Update 3 - okay - the networking optimization is back in place now.

(Though we haven't turned it on for the Portals yet - just want to ensure there aren't any issues first...)

Paul.

Update 2 - we have had to revert the changes for now.

We discovered an issue with properly enforcing IP restrictions in some scenarios. We'll re-deploy the optimization when we have a fix.

Paul.

Update: We've updated the networking for the Portal as well. So it should <hopefully> feel more snappy as well!

Paul.

... that SHOULD speed up world-wide response times from the servers.

That said - it's a bit difficult for us to measure of feel the impact of those changes from around the world.

So if you are finding brainCloud snappier (or slower) from where you are now - let us know!

(Note - so far we've changed this for the api.braincloudservers.com and sharedprod.braincloudservers.com endpoints -- we have not adjusted the Portal URLs yet - so you won't see any difference in the Design Portal).

Anyway - if you have a change - let us know if you see a difference - good or bad!

Paul.

Hmm, not really...

You can get the number of sessions created in an hour with this call: https://getbraincloud.com/apidocs/apiref/#capi-globalapp-sysgetdailycounts

But brainCloud doesn't otherwise track a concurrent session count per app.

There are certainly 3rd party analytics packages that you could link into your client that would give you that sort of information though.

Paul.

I see - clever Ali.

So basically the matchmaking was a custom implementation using custom entities.

I assume once all players had been decided the last player in ended up creating the async match and then it went from there?

And agreed - sounds like a good use case to add to our list.

Paul.

FYI - this feature was added in brainCloud 4.13 - https://getbraincloud.com/apidocs/release-4-13/

Hi,

brainCloud currently offers two forms of matchmaking:

Offline matchmaking - for async match (i.e. words with friends) or one-way multiplayer (i.e. class of clans) style games. Both of those multiplayer types require you to have an opponent to play against when the match starts.

There is also online matchmaking - which uses our lobby system - which is suitable of any online / real-time sort of multiplayer.

(That one doesn't require you to have an opponent in mind when the lobby starts... and the lobby can start a match via a relay or room server session right away...)

That said - I get the feeling that you are talking about more of an async match scenario (i.e. not-necessarily-online multiplayer) - where the match can start before an opponent has been identified.

Am I correct that that is the scenario you are wanting to target?

It's an interesting approach - as there's a much lower chance of matching against another player who isn't going to respond in a timely manner.

Let me know if I've got the scenario right and we'll give it some more thought...

Paul.

So - the 3rd party service would use OpenId to log into your brainCloud app to verify whether a user exists or not (and presumably to potentially get other permissions).

Is that the suggestion?

Paul.

I agree - and security-wise prefer it to the pre-hook solution we were considering...

We are looking into it.

Jake - I've sent you a question in the support chat - wondering what the timelines for your app are...

Paul.

brainCloud 4.11 is targeted for release tomorrow...

There are a bunch of features and improvement, including:

• Enhanced Redemption Code service
• New Division Management API
• Configurable timeouts for Relay Servers
• Improvements to the Unity Client (including a websocket-native.jslib fix for Unity 2021)
• New Unity Authentication Example

and more.

You will find all the details here: http://getbraincloud.com/apidocs/release-4-11/

Happy coding!

Paul.

Well - the new release isn't out yet - it's just a Release Candidate.

https://github.com/mozilla/rhino/releases

That said - we are very happy to see the progress - since it has been over a year since 1.7.13 was released!

Hopefully soon!

And brainCloud 4.9 is live!

Let us know if you have questions or issues!

Paul.

It looks like the next Rhino release may have some extra support for us there. We will look to enable it once it's available.

Hi,

brainCloud doesn't really force anyone to do anything - we are a toolbox to be used to build your game.

And we certainly wouldn't try to force bad code.

The recommendation to bundle API calls together into scripts reflect the reality that:

• Deserializing a request from a client takes significant time+processing. Processing API calls from within a script is definitely less CPU intensive than receiving and processing them one-at-a-time - thus our API Count pricing reflects that
• There is also a perceivable performance benefit to the end-user. A script that performs a number of API calls from within will outperform those same API calls called directly from the client.

So - we see it as win:win:win - better user experience, better experience for the end-user, and less cost to you.

We encourage you to organize your scripts as makes sense for your application. To help support this - brainCloud allows you to import script functions into your script to be called (bridge.import()) - or to call other scripts directly (bridge.callScript()).

As for why our pricing is elastic - that is so that the costs we incur from your app match the costs to you. This puts us both on the same side when optimizing your app. The lighter your app, the lower the costs on our end, and we pass those savings onto you!

Hope that helps!

Paul.

Hi folks,

brainCloud 4.9 is coming soon! (i.e. will be released in the next 2-3 weeks).

Here's a quick summary of the new features:

• Amazon GameLift support
• Join-in-progress for Room/Relay server games (i.e. backfilling)
• Query available Lobbies
• Unity client compression
• AppStore item purchases
• Tournament management APIs
• $text query support (for custom entities)
• Async Match API improvements (returns summaryFriendData in calls)

And more.

For all the details - see the release notes - https://getbraincloud.com/apidocs/braincloud-4-9/

Any questions or comments - post them here!

Cheers!

Paul.
(PS - brainCloud 4.9 contains an important change/fix for script path handling. Folks organizing their scripts into folders will want to take note. Of course, there's a compatibility flag so the changes don't take effect until you want them too.)

Hi Jose,

Sounds like you want to look into our Presence feature.

Presence is designed to let users know when their friends are online. You can think of it like the old Xbox Live friends feature - where you can see which of your friends are online - and optionally what they are doing.

And Presence uses RTT - so users will be notified in realtime when the presence information of a followed user changes.

Presence works with Friends, Groups, and arbitrary lists of users.

More details here - http://getbraincloud.com/apidocs/apiref/#capi-presence

Hope that helps!

Paul.