% 0.1.2 Release

MUGS 0.1.2 Released!

The Raku-MUGS org is proud to present our second development release on the way to our next major milestone. This release includes many changes since 0.1.1 to address feedback from our users in #mugs in IRC, but the majority of the milestone work is yet to be done. :-)

Packaging

MUGS is available in both source and package form, via these methods:

zef

To simply play with what's already there, use zef to install all of MUGS from the zef/fez ecosystem. To prevent failure due to an unneeded transitive dependency that does not exist on all systems, use the following command:

zef install --exclude="pq:ver<5>:from<native>" MUGS

NOTE 1: If you're having trouble with installing via zef, please take a look at our installation guide, which has additional troubleshooting hints.

NOTE 2: In this release, MUGS-UI-WebSimple is known to be broken when installed by zef, because it cannot find its HTML templates. If you would like to try this UI, please use the Source Repos method below.

Source Repos

The source for all released MUGS repos can be found in the Raku-MUGS org on GitHub. Note that if you are working on a UI repo, you will probably want to install MUGS with zef as described above to satisfy dependencies, or at least install both MUGS-Core and MUGS-Games.

Docker

MUGS does not yet have prebuilt Docker packages, but each source repo includes two Dockerfile scripts. The main Dockerfile simply installs the relevant MUGS libraries, scripts, and resources on top of a rakudo-star official image and creates a default MUGS identity universe. Dockerfile.test builds on that by also installing test identities into the default universe.

JSON → CBOR

The single largest change in 0.1.2 is the switch of message serialization from JSON to CBOR, based on the new TinyFloats, CBOR::Simple, and Cro::CBOR modules, all of which were written from scratch to support this transition (but released separately).

This change allows for much more efficient handling of packed binary data, much more data in each server message without overwhelming network bandwidth, and allows a much richer data model on the wire.

This was made possible by the recent Cro 0.8.5 release, which includes performance and developer enhancements supporting these changes; MUGS now depends on that (or later) Cro release.

NOTE 1: As a side effect of the richer data model, some data will be coming through in native (or in the case of enums, numeric) format, rather than converted to strings as with JSON. You may be assuming receipt of string data in some places; expect to undo any workarounds you may have added. (This has already been fixed in several places in the core MUGS repos.)

NOTE 2: In order to provide easier-to-read debugging output, some debug code outputs messages in prettified JSON format, which as mentioned above can't represent the full richness of CBOR data. This JSON::Fast PR will at least prevent debug output failures; if you're having debug issues, apply the JSON::Fast PR, reinstall it, and try again. UPDATE: The PR has been merged, just upgrade to JSON::Fast 0.16 or later.

Other Improvements

After the 0.1.1 development release, the members of #mugs on IRC offered excellent feedback on issues great and small. There is still much to do to address it all, but together with the JSON → CBOR transition discussed above, the following represents a mini-milestone in that direction:

Bug Fixes

• Fix a race condition in game client/UI startup

• Don't create a second lobby client if directly entering lobby

• Slightly improve invalid structure error messages

• Support more terminal types in MUGS::UI::CLI::Input (which previously could hang after displaying a prompt on some terminals)

• Fix "Use of Nil in string context in sub escape-text" warnings in WebSimple UI

• Switch to newer client.my-winloss() method for determining winloss status in WebSimple UI

Documentation

• Add GOTCHAS section to MUGS-UI-WebSimple README for issues found by #mugs folks that could not be completely fixed in this release

• Add top-level MUGS repo docs/ README

• How To

  • Add new docs/howto/ tree

  • Move Release Guide to docs/howto/

  • Add Installing MUGS guide

  • Add WIP Port a Game and Create a UI guides

• Design

  • Add Game Classes orientation doc

  • Add Data Validation design doc

  • Add Supporting "Bullet Hell" Games rumination doc

  • Add Logo Ideas historical doc

  • Add WIP Life of a UI and Life of a Request docs

Genres and Games

• Start implementing PFX "game", testing performance of server-managed particle effects (finally possible with the JSON → CBOR serialization transition)

• Add a simple UI for the PFX test "game" in MUGS-UI-TUI (mugs-tui pfx)

• Stub in the beginnings of the CardGame genre

Logging/Telemetry

• Track creation Instant for Message objects

• Add GameStateUpdate as first Log::Timeline::Task in Server

• Switch --debug default to False (off) for mugs-ws-server and mugs-web-simple

Performance

• Depend on Cro 0.8.5+ to get significant WebSocket performance improvements

• Much faster and perf-stable StructureValidator

• Support fast path for validating packed arrays (where the message decoder itself guarantees that all elements match the array element type)

Contributions

This development release is largely the work of Geoffrey Broadwell (japhb on Libera.Chat and GitHub), based on excellent feedback on the 0.1.1 release from the denizens of #mugs in IRC.

If you'd like to contribute to future releases, please take a look at our CONTRIBUTING doc; we'd love to have you!

Contacting Us

We are on the #mugs channel on Libera.Chat IRC; please come and ask questions or offer suggestions! Please note that we do not yet have 24-hour round-the-clock coverage, so please stick around and allow some time for response if you don't get one immediately.

If you are interested in the more general world of game development on Raku, we are also on the #raku-gamedev channel, also on Libera.Chat IRC.

Future

The next few milestones have been sketched out in our release roadmap. Future releases are of course subject to change, but the most likely changes are deferral of iffy changes or incomplete features that are holding up release of finished work.

Thank You

THANK YOU to the ever-helpful #mugs crew, to everyone who worked on the many projects on which MUGS is built, to the awesome and supportive Raku community, and of course to Larry, Damian, Jonathan, and all the other Raku designers for creating a language that brings joy day after day!