It's been a while - but we've finally added a proper forum for the brainCloud development community.

We don't do this lightly. Although we're a small team - focused, direct support is important to us - which is why our direct chat forums have been in place since day 1 of brainCloud's launch.

That said, especially in the past six months or so, the call for community forums has become deafening - and as our community of developers is rapidly growing, we're realizing that enabling the community to help support itself (in addition to our crack support team) has its appeal! (We're Canadian, not dumb!)

After a long search, we decided upon NodeBB for our forum software solution. The software is modern, nimble, and fast - with a clean look-and-feel. We were also able to integrate it with our Portal logins - so you don't need two accounts to participate (that was important to us). As a bonus, NodeBB is also built in Canada! (We honestly didn't realize that until just a few days ago!)

Now that we've got our forums in place, we're hoping that you all will visit often and contribute! It's too clean and tidy now - come on in and mess it up!

Feedback welcome!

Cheers!

Paul.

Update - we suspect that this is the same problem:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/ios-post-request-with-raw-data.690514/

Hi folks,

We've discovered what looks to be a pretty significant issue with using brainCloud for large packet requests on IOS devices. (edit: removed mention of Android as we have confirmed that it does not occur on Android devices).

The issue appears to be limited to Unity 2019.X.

More info here - https://getbraincloud.com/apidocs/warning-unity-2019-x-ios-issues/

We are constructing a minimal test app so that Unity can easily repro this issue (i.e. trying to take brainCloud out-of-the-test loop) - and then we'll submit the defect to Unity directly.

We'll keep you posted.

Paul.

Hi folks,

Our planned 4.6 release was getting too big - so we're splitting it into 4.55 and 4.6.

The 4.55 release should arrive within the next 30 days.

The big headliner feature is at long last, brainCloud will support Amazon In-app Purchases !

There are also a bunch of useful API additions. Check out the details on our Roadmap.

The bad news is that Cloud Code Folder are still planned for 4.6 - which is going to be a bit longer. That said, we're working hard to get it right!

Cheers,

Paul.

Hi guys,

The plan is to release 4.5 in April.

Cheers!

Paul.

We are pleased to announce the new brainCloud Roadmap! site.

This Roadmap gives a view of:

• what we're currently working on
• what we're planning to add to the platform
• what we're considering adding to the platform

(Note - we won't be necessarily putting everything we're working on here. We still like to surprise!)

Make yourself heard! Vote for the features that are most important to you - and submit suggestions for new features!

In the short-term, go check out the list of goodies that will be included with Release 4.1 next week!

Paul.

Good news?

Looks like Unity is aware of the defect (and working on a fix)...

From discussion here - https://forum.unity.com/threads/ios-post-request-with-raw-data.690514/

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 folks,

brainCloud 4.6 is now live!

The biggest change is that we've upgraded our MongoDB abstraction layers to be compatible with MongoDB 4.X going forward. All without affecting the brainCloud APIs that our customers use.

In addition, there are a few cool new features including:

• Script API Usage Stats - makes it easier to understand the performance and cost implications of your scripts
• SAML End-user authentication - for those writing apps that require SAML authentication
• Random Custom Entities API - great for those writing custom selection or matchmaking services
• API Keys System - a foundational component for our new Builder APIs, coming soon

In addition, there are mucho improvements to the client libraries including:

• Greatly improved RTT connection handling
• Removed tons of previously deprecated methods (so the client libs are now cleaner and leaner!)

For all the details, see the release notes here - https://getbraincloud.com/apidocs/release-4-6/

Feedback welcome!

Paul.
(PS - Also a reminder, anyone moving to the 4.6 libs (from libs earlier than 4.5.6)- if you are using Relay Servers, be sure to upgrade your relay servers as well - instructions in the 4.5.6 release notes - http://getbraincloud.com/apidocs/release-4-5-6/ )

As a further heads up folks - it is looking like the 4.5.6 server release may get delayed until early next week. This is to allow us to create a proper mechanism for controlling with specific versions of Lobby Services are active at a time... (right now, it is possible for both old and new lobby services to be active during an upgrade transition - and given how much lobby processing has changed in this release - that wouldn't be good).

That said - the rest of 4.5.6 is ready - so we are going to be doing a bit of an incremental roll-out...

• We are starting to release the 4.5.6 Client Libraries today
• We are also making the 4.5.6 Relay Servers available (on our existing 4.5.5 servers) <- this is a simple feature gate for us to enable.

Then, once the 4.5.6 servers (with the new Lobby Servers and a few other fixes) are available, we will release them... that should be either late this week, or more likely early next week).

Anyway, just FYI...

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.

Hmm, I actually am not sure why sampleData[1] works.

I would have thought the correct syntax would have be sampleData["1"] and data["1"] ?

No?

Hi Fabio,

The full roadmap on this is still in progress.

We do have an API now that allows you to upload cloud code scripts.

It's part of our Builder API - and you can request it via our support channel.

The script management API is still a V1 version - in that you manage scripts individually. We have plans to evolve the API so that you can upload zipped packaged to be synced with the scripts - in a similar fashion to what you can do via the web portal.

Although this is taking longer than planned, we wanted to ensure that we built the new support on a solid foundation. So we've added cloud code includes, folders, new script management screens, improvements to performance and caching, etc.

The Visual Studio plug-in is still on our radar - we just need to ensure that the proper API foundation is in place.

Anyway - if you are interested in getting ahold of the builder API, definitely message our support team.

Cheers!

Paul.

See our GameSparks Migration FAQ.

Hi folks,

brainCloud 4.8.0 is now live!

4.8 adds the following features:

• Script Search - You can now search for cloud code scripts by name – across all your folders.
• Facebook Limited Login Friend Support - we can now retrieve the user's list of friends, and copy them to the internal friends lists, during Facebook Limited Login authentication
• Account Migration Support - we've added APIs to make it easier to dynamically migrate users from other apps (or platforms!)
• Edit User Email Identities - you can know edit a user's email identity via the Design Portal
• And more!

See the full release notes for more details.

Also - head here for the list of prior releases.

Feedback welcome - and happy coding!

Paul.