Extended Downtime for Exilebuddy

Exilebuddy will be undergoing extended downtime starting at the release of the Ascendancy expansion March 4th.

I expect around a month of downtime, so please manage your expectations. If things go extremely well, it will be less, and if they don't, it will be more. If there's one thing we've learned while working on this game the past 3 years, expect everything to break, because it typically does.

Users will be fully compensated for the downtime as usual, so please take some time to enjoy the game when it comes out, as it should be pretty awesome.

 

With the release of the 2.1.2.7 client, Exilebuddy's extended downtime has now begun for the Ascendancy expansion!

We'll be working as hard as possible to get Exilebuddy back up and running as soon as possible, but it's definitely going to take some time due to the client changes (and that's assuming this is the Ascendancy client). Barring this new client being rolled back due to the new issues being reported, I do not expect Exileuddy to be working again before the actual release of the expansion.

We'll keep users updated with progress as needed time to time, but rest assured, we'll be hard at work.

 

I'm going to give a little update since it's been almost 2 weeks now since the new client came out and the last post was made.

Updates are progressing extremely well, but there's still a lot to do, so we're still weeks away from a beta at minimal (if not more depending on other things).

We're still in the API update phase, where we go though the entire API and make things compatible with new client. EB's API has grown quite substantially the past year, so there's a lot more to do this time around than any of the previous expansions. Usually, this phase wouldn't take as long as it is currently projected, but a major compiler change is one of those significant events that hits setups like ours extremely hard. When all is said and done, we're probably going to have changes affecting almost every file in the project.

As part of this long downtime, we're not just going to do a simple update, and try to make everything work exactly how it was before. There's real potential in the future of this game and this bot, so we're taking this time to do some major internal renovations, as we've always done things thinking about the long term. While we don't have to plan around another major compiler update for quite some time, we do ask ourselves, "what can we do to reduce maintenance and downtime in a game that changes as frequently as this one does?"

We're going to be trying out a new system we've recently come up with for this new client. It's not quite done yet, but it's showing a lot of promise as we update all the old broken things to it. While I can't give details on what we're doing differently now, the hope is that this will make a significant difference in the long run for this project. We'll start to see how things go in the upcoming months using it.

It's also too early to start talking about API changes and building up hype with new stuff for EB, but the API patch notes for the eventual release for this expansion are going to be massive. For example, character creation is now supported, the issues with quest states being extremely slow and buggy is now completely fixed, and a lot of GUI related things at the login and character selection screen are now taken care of. There's a lot more being updated and worked on, but we do want devs to know they will have a lot of new and improved things to work with.

Anyways, that's it for now, we thank everyone for their patience during this process.

 

Another quick updates for you guys and gals: our downtime will be extending a few weeks into April before a Beta will be ready for testing.

It really might not seem that way, but things are progressing extremely well with the updates. There's just a lot that needed to be updated (and a lot is an understatement), so it's taking a while. I'll be making some really long posts soon going over the redesign of our GUI API and why it's so important we do this now and how the new setup will be invaluable moving forward.

I know this isn't the news users want to hear, and people are getting worried, but believe me when I say everything is 'ok', and it's just one of those rare cases where we're not having excessive downtime because we're stuck on anything or don't know what to do, but rather we know exactly what needs to be done, and have found new ways to significantly cut down our internal code base while supporting more functionality with less code, greatly reducing the overhead of that code, and, if all things work out, help reduce future downtime for GUI related changes, as we know they will be coming.

Once again, we thank everyone for their patience, and I hope the next time I post in this thread, it'll be with a Beta release in a few weeks.

 

Beta #1242 has just been deployed. Please see the Exilebuddy Beta/Release Thread (2.2.1+)!

 

Maintenance has now started for the 2.2.2 update.

There's no ETA yet, but we hope to be back soon!

 

Beta #1250 has just been deployed for 2.2.2!

Please report any issues in the Support forum with full logs.