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Paul Winterhalder

Hi folks,

In case you hadn't noticed, we have released brainCloud 5.8 to our Public BaaS. It will be made available to private licensees in the coming weeks.

brainCloud 5.8 has some great new features:

Classroom Invites - for inviting and setting up a whole class of team members. It will even set up private apps for each student!
App Calendar - a new calendar view that's great for Product Managers. View Sales Promotions & Redemption Campaigns - and keep track of platform launches, ad campaigns, store promotions, and more. The Calendar is going to be a central part of brainCloud - so stay tunes as we continue to add to it!
Steam Ownership Checks - our AuthenticateSteam() call can now optionally validate that the user owns the game. Just turn on the option in the Steam settings on the App > Design > Core App Info > Application IDs page.
IAP Improvements - we've added a new API that allows devs to provide more context for Apple and Google IAP purchases - which in turn allows devs to re-use the same price keys across multiple products in brainCloud. We felt your pain - we hope this helps!
Push Optimizations - we're constantly monitoring and assessing the system for where we can make improvements - and this release we made significant gains in the Push Notification system - especially when sending notifications to all players or targeted segments.

Those are just some of the highlights of brainCloud 5.8. See the release notes for more info.

So - what do you think? Do you like what you see? Do you have a question? Did we fail to mention your favorite new feature?

Hit reply and let us know!

Paul & the brainCloud Team

Paul Winterhalder

Hi @devsleeper - please contact our support directly (via the support chat widget) to provide that information.

Note that I think Steam will only return friends that you have that also have the game.

Also note that Jason is correct - you don't have to use that call unless you wanted to make a local (braincloud) copy of those friend relationships.

JasonL

Please contact us via our support chat to provide the info above.

JasonL

Also, please provide us with your brainCloud app ID along with the associated profile IDs for those users.

JasonL

This means brainCloud will automatically check the external platform for existing friend relationships, so you don’t need to call AddFriendsFromPlatform if they’re already Steam friends.

The friend info returned depends on each user’s Steam privacy settings as well, so ensure their profiles aren’t set to private for the friends’ data to be retrieved.

JasonL

You might be a bit unclear about the AddFriendsFromPlatform call. This method adds the specified externalIds as internal (which is brainCloud) friends from the given platform. Suppose users are already friends on the external platform. In that case, you don’t need to call this explicitly, brainCloud will automatically retrieve and reflect that friendship (as long as users grant your app permission).

For example, if User A and User B are friends on Facebook, and both authenticate using Facebook, then when you call ListFriends, you’ll see their friendship automatically without needing to call AddFriendsFromPlatform.

JasonL

You can set up a lobby type with no server by leaving the server dropdown unselected in the lobby type configuration.

In this setup, the lobby will disband after sending the STARTING event once it's full. At that point, you can use
the OnLobbyEvent callback and connect your players to Photon Cloud when the DISBANDED event is received.

Lobbies in brainCloud are flexible, they can be used to gather players before transitioning into hosted servers or async offline matches, and more.

JasonL

Currently, lobbies are the only supported way in brainCloud to connect players to a hosted server. If you need a session-based gathering that transitions into a hosted game, lobbies are the right option.

Also, note that the lobby creation APIs include a parameter called otherUserCxIds, which you can use to invite/add additional users (who are already connected via RTT) directly into the lobby.

JasonL

First, it's recommended to use FindOrCreateLobby call instead of CreateLobby. It’s generally a better approach since it handles both cases — creating a new lobby if one doesn’t exist, or joining an existing one if it does. This gives your players a smoother experience when first trying to get into a lobby.

Second, just to clarify the sequence: the STARTING event doesn’t mean the lobby itself is starting, it happens after members have already joined and the server launch conditions are met. At that point, brainCloud is spinning up a game server for the lobby. You can find more details in our lobby documentation here -- https://docs.braincloudservers.com/api/capi/lobby/#lobby-events

Because of this, your loading spinner should remain active continuously after the FindOrCreateLobby call succeeds, since the user’s intent (“joining a lobby”) isn’t complete yet, from the user’s perspective, they’re still “joining a lobby” until they either:

Receive ROOM_READY → success, hide the spinner.

Receive an error → failure, hide the spinner and show an error.

This way, you avoid the hide → show gap, and the spinner matches the full lifecycle of the join process; it simply stays up until the full lobby join flow is resolved.

So in short: use FindOrCreateLobby, and keep the loading spinner up until you get either ROOM_READY or a failure event.

Paul Winterhalder

Good points @antony .

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