Progress Update

Tobias
Tobias admin
edited July 2018 in Photon Bolt
Hi everyone.
Here is an overdue progress update:

As you know, there was no Bolt version release this week. Progress was low, as sickness got the better of our week.

Despite that, there was some (invisible) progress: We reviewed the current build process and defined goals to improve it. We will automate it a lot more and include building the latest doc (which should go in the package, really).

As always: When you report issues, we track them and try to fix anything depending on severity and effort. Hopefully, we can release an update before Christmas.

I hope everyone else is fit. Have a nice weekend.

Comments

  • Thanks for the update. Very excited to integrate the newest features into our project. Here's to hoping the Photon Santa comes early this year!
  • We decided not to release a update at the end of this week but to do that early next week, with more testing going on beforehand. We worked mostly on the tools around the package but there are also a few fixes coming.
    Unless sickness strikes (again), we should do a Bolt package update before Christmas.

    We did update the API Doc for Bolt to some degree. Doc generation is working again, so now we can add content again.
  • I really like these weekly progress updates, it's a lot better than being kept in the dark.
    Keep it up Tobias! :)
  • @Pixeleap: Thanks! I will try to keep it up but I can't guarantee it. In any case, the point is: We do work on Bolt, even if it doesn't manifest in a new release on fixed schedule.

    That said, we're also open about when things don't work as planned. Last week, we didn't make more progress towards a new version. Team members were sick again (poor guy) and needed the time to recover.

    As Exit Games is out of the office for the Christmas time, this means that we push the Bolt update to next year. Hopefully in the first full work-week. Maybe early in the week after that.

    Stanchion will infrequently check if there are any urgent questions but in general, support is minimized for the coming weeks until January.


    To all of you:
    Have a great Christmas Time and a Happy New Year!

  • I hope everyone had a good start into 2016 :)

    We are going to package a new Bolt release and hopefully get it live in the Asset Store this week.
    There are a few fixes but the most important progress was made for Zeus, which should be way more stable now.

    We also have two new docs online for you. There was a lot of interest in a Comparison of Bolt vs PUN and there's a in-depth Streaming Manual.
  • We just submitted a small update to Bolt to the Asset Store: v0.4.3.11.
    The Zeus punchthrough issues are fixed, you don't need Unity Pro for level synchronization and you can now register delegates as event callbacks.
  • Sorry about the lack of posts recently. I was sick for more than a week and had to catch up afterwards.

    The team worked on Bolt meanwhile and we got a few fixes and improvements, which are more or less ready for release. One of the fixes is that Bolt will no longer acknowledge packets with only acknowledgements as content. In games with low frequency updates, this will save some bandwidth.
  • "One of the fixes is that Bolt will no longer acknowledge packets with only acknowledgements as content" Someone mind explaining this further for me? We're using UDP, so it's not an ACK... so... err... for my curiosity, please?
  • You're not using plain UDP. In it, Bolt uses a slim header that adds sequencing and reliability. This is where ACKs get written (not on the UDP level).
  • This week, we switched the generation of the reference doc from Fredrik's tool to doxygen and we identified another batch of improvements to do. For example, we will check performance for Mecanim and see how that can be improved.
    We lost some time on waiting for a few updates, which didn't materialize yet. We will look for alternatives and how to speed up development on Bolt. Being a small team, that's not done in a few days but it's on it's way.

  • "Bolt for Steam SDK" — when?
  • Alright I waited a full day before asking this time... what's new in 4.3.14? No updates on the Bolt Release History page, no updates here :(
  • Website will be updated soon.


    Beta 0.4.3.14
    Fixed: Entities instantiating at wrong position
    Fixed: Zeus not updating lobby count when clients connect (was only on disconnect)
    Fixed: Command correction interpolation for Vector3 and Quaternion, and exposed SnapMagnitude in the editor UI
    Added: Smoothing for floats
  • Beta 0.4.3.15
    Fixed: Improvements to Bolt physics for lag compensation
    Fixed: Bolt will now import properly when upgrading or switching between debug and release mode
    Fixed: Will no longer lose Global Illumination on Bolt scene load
    Fixed: iOS improvements