It was the biggest, most complicated update we've ever done, but Armello's v2.2 Crossplay update is finally complete.
v2.2 Crossplay is now live across Steam, PlayStation, Xbox & Nintendo Switch
This update is not only a complete restructuring of our multiplayer architecture, but it has brought all consoles up to date with Steam, AND most importantly, has seen the implementation of cross-platform multiplayer (Crossplay) between Steam, Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo Switch.
There are also numerous bug fixes, quality of life and stability improvements.
The data is in and with the time we spent in v2.2's Beta we now have the most stable version of Armello ever released.
Thanks to all of you who stuck with us and helped along the way. And of course, huge shout out to our QA crew, Jono and Stacey, for doing the work they do.
Remaining Known Issues:
On extremely rare occasions, screen can freeze in a solid colour causing an NMA.
Some difficulty connecting to online Party functions, ie. Gather Party window doesn't populate.
Difficulty starting MP games (general issues where games can't start, or less than 4 users appear in lobby). We feel this may be a regional issue.
No Party Functionality (including Private Games) on MacOSX & native Linux. Due to the severity of this one, we've removed any advertising of support for Linux & Mac from Steam (and shortly Humble Bundle), though folks can still purchase and play those versions. For anyone affected by this issue, you can find more info (including a workaround and refund options) here.
Note: All known issues were investigated over months, sometimes years, and could either never be reliably reproduced, are bugs in third party software we use (Unity, Playfab, Fmod, etc), were happening on hardware below min spec, or to an extremely small subset of seemingly unrelated players, regions or hardware. Unfortunately, there was one casualty we had feared may happen with being forced into a major network upgrade...
No More Reconnect
We were really hoping that getting Reconnect back online would be a simple solution once the network upgrade was done. After working for weeks on reconnect with little promising progress, it became clear it was going to require nothing less than an entire rewrite. As much as we want to bite that off for y'all and rewrite Reconnect so we can bring it back online, now that we're eleven years into Armello's dev with two new projects heading towards Alpha, we simply do not have the resources or time to invest the focus and effort required into Reconnect. So unfortunately Reconnect will remain offline indefinitely.
The silver lining here is that whilst the forced network upgrade has taken Reconnect from us, it has given us the most stable version of multiplayer in Armello's history. Additionally, Armello thrived for years without Reconnect, so whilst it's a wonderful quality of life feature. Armello's well positioned to live on without it, even if it's removal is against our will.
Dice Collection Rotations are Back!
And we're kicking it off with Skeeve's Curiosities! The collection is live in-game now on Steam, PlayStation Xbox & Nintendo Switch!
We'll continue to roll through Dice Collections every eight weeks.
Long Live the King
As many of you know, v2.2 Crossplay also serves as Armello's final update.
Seven years post release and with two brand new games in full production, we are turning our attention to the announce and upcoming release of our new games. We cannot wait for you to see them!
We're not going anywhere. We're still here. We will still be scheduling Stranger Games, as well as rotating through Dice seasons and events. I think we're even gonna start streaming some Armello again. Though this is absolutely the end of the road for content and features for Armello.
We're incredibly proud of what the game has become from our humble aspirations over 11 years ago. We set out to answer the question: What does it mean to bring a tabletop adventure to life?
I can faithfully say I feel we know the answer to that question now. And we have many of you to thank for helping us figure it out.
We may not have pleased everyone along the way, or made the perfect game, but we're pretty proud of what we've all achieved together. So if you've enjoyed our game over the past seven years, how far its come, and everything we've put into it, a positive Steam review is always welcome.
Thank you for being here with us. Whether since the Kickstarter, or last week's Summer Sale. Thanks for adventuring out into the wyld of Armello, for Armello.
See you in-game! I know I'll be questing for the throne over the weekend.
<3 Trent & the entire LoG Squad.
PS. For anyone interested, you won't have to wait long to hear about these new games. Stay tuned.
As you know, our current focus is restoring Private Multiplayer and Party functionality across all platforms. I've been posting these to the Armello Steam forums, but wanted to send this one out a little wider, because we've got some great news this week.
So in summary... full multiplayer functionality (with the exception of Rejoin) is now back online across PC, Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch, and, crossplay is now live across all of those platforms.
Perhaps even more excitingly, our analytics show the stability of multiplayer is better than we had hoped when initially embarking on the epic journey of fully updating our multiplayer architecture. Game completion rates are at an all-time high! A huge win for Armello's longevity and future.
Party functionality (and as a result, private multiplayer) does remain offline for Linux and Mac. For the few of you on supported Linux distros, don't forget there's a workaround utilising Valve's Proton.
So what's next?!
Rejoin functionality and updated game guide entry!
Resolving issues with Daily Chests for Mac & Linux players.
Ensuring game invites work when being invited from outside of the game.
Miscellaneous bug fixes and stability improvements.
Final word on the fate of party functionality on Mac & Linux.
ALSO, very important...
If you've got a bug that's really getting you down, NOW is the time to send it in. And be sure to do it via the in-game bugsender with "attach log files" checked, when you see it occur in-game. We're doing final fixes now and as always, if you want something fixed, the best shot we've got at it is when we see those logs. We need your help there.
Thanks for stickin' with us, folks. Will be back with another update in the Steam forums next Friday.
Trent Kusters here, studio and production director at League of Geeks.
First things first, if you missed it, we just pushed a small patch live that should fix multiplayer issues for the vast majority of Steam players, as well as restore Daily Chest functionality. You can find the patch notes here.
Alright, so back at the end of Feb we informed you that some multiplayer functionality would be offline while we engaged in the final part of a major upgrade of Armello's multiplayer architecture. We said at the time we didn't know how long it would take, and whilst we're proud we've managed to keep public multiplayer and crossplay live the entire time (which is no small feat!), we had no idea we'd be here 10 weeks later still working at bringing private multiplayer back online for a bunch of you.
Some of you have rightfully asked what's going on, and as always, we're an open book. So if you're not interested in the (very detailed) explanation of what's going on and where this upgrade is at, the TLDR is simply...
We're sorry we haven't communicated more with you. We should have.
We did not choose to do this upgrade, but we must (at great financial loss) in order to keep Armello multiplayer online for as far into the future as possible.
Crossplay needs all platforms to be in sync to work, and Switch is stuck in Nintendo's certification process, holding everything up.
To avoid this hold up, we've chosen to pivot strategy to just pushing platforms live as they're ready with their own multiplayer fixes, which will disrupt crossplay, but get private multiplayer back online faster for each platform. We'll then do a sweep updating all platforms so that they're back in sync and we can turn crossplay back on.
Our multiplayer service provider has chosen not to support party functionality for Mac OSX and Linux in the new version we're forced to upgrade to. We're investigating solutions and will update our Mac/Linux players when we know more.
We're close to finishing the network upgrade. Everything could be resolved in a couple of weeks. But the nature of crossplay means to finish this upgrade, we are at the mercy of all platform holders' certification processes.
I'll be providing short, weekly updates on the progress of the network upgrade moving forward.
That's it. Now, for those of you sickos like me that love the gory development details, let's gooooo...
What is the current state of multiplayer functionality?
Great question.
On Windows, Public and Private multiplayer functionality is currently live and stable. Though Crossplay with consoles is temporarily disabled, and you will not be able to Party Up with friends on Mac OSX and Linux due to current issues from those platforms (see below).
On Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, Mac OSX and Linux, forming Parties and Private Multiplayer games are currently unavailable. Public matchmaking on your own is still available. Crossplay is still available between console platforms.
Meanwhile, across all platforms, all features (including; login, inventory management, progress saving, singleplayer games, item drops, etc) have remained live and stable.
Note: Rejoin functionality is currently offline across all platforms while the network upgrade is in progress.
I see people talking about multiplayer issues, but multiplayer works fine for me. What's happening?
Yep. For the vast majority of Steam players (over 96% of you actually), you're unlikely to see any issues with multiplayer right now (other than 'Rejoin' currently being offline). But as you can see for our friends on console, Mac OSX and Linux, Private Multiplayer and Party functionality remains offline.
Okay, so why is this network upgrade taking so long? Where are we at?
I know the time this network upgrade has taken is less than ideal (to put it lightly). We, like you, are extremely frustrated.
To understand why it's taken so long there are a few crucial pieces of info about how both crossplay development, and build certification, work for different platforms that will assist you in understanding.
Crossplay Development
For crossplay to function, each platform needs to be pointing to the same server 'version number'.
Whenever we make changes deep enough in the serverside code for any platform (which is obviously the exact type of changes we're making right now) we need to increment the server version number.
Which then means we have to update each platform to point to the new server version number, even if the serverside changes were for an issue not present on all platforms.
Once that's done, we then have to then publish all the new, updated builds live at the same time for crossplay to continue working.
As you can imagine, the above requires some intense release management coordination, This is a daunting undertaking for any studio. Still, we're capable of managing this.
Build Certification Across Different Platforms
All platforms (i.e., Steam, Xbox, the App Store, etc) have their own submission and certification guidelines and processes for publishing content/patches/updates. You may have heard these referred to before as "lotcheck" or "cert".
Some cert processes are slower or more intensive than others, and all have differing degrees of autonomy entrusted to us as developers.
On Steam we can just push builds live ourselves, immediately, at any time. Because we're already live and have gone through their main cert process, Xbox and PlayStation permit us to do rapid patches that can go live in less than 24 hours. And Nintendo takes about 4-7 days to return results on a submission, because they personally test them all. Even small patches.
For this reason, we led first on Switch so that a) we were utilising Nintendo's testers as well as our own to ensure a higher quality release, and b) Nintendo had the longest lead time, so we could use the time we were waiting for Nintendo to go through cert in order to then roll those updates across to the other platforms. Once the submitted Nintendo build was approved, we would then wrap up any changes to the other platforms and push them all live.
We have analytics that tell us that the vast majority of playtime in Armello is spent in Singleplayer, followed by Public Multiplayer, and then Private Multiplayer games. So our focus throughout this network upgrade was to ensure that we did not lose any online functionality that impacted Singleplayer, Public Multiplayer and hopefully crossplay (due to its impact reducing public multiplayer queue times).
This approach made great headway in the first four weeks, we even managed to get a couple builds out addressing various issues across all platforms. However, due to weird edge cases in getting this new multiplayer service to interact with the way network connectivity works for the Switch (Sleep mode, etc), for the last four weeks we've been sitting on the fix for private multiplayer games but that build has unfortunately been locked in a certification loop with Nintendo. Each build seeming perfectly good to go, but failing cert on some weird multiplayer edge case. We fix one bug and another pops up. Repeat ad nauseum.
Mulitplayer infrastructure is tricky and finicky. The edge case bugs can be seemingly endless. And in this case, they have not let up. Still, Nintendo have been great to work with and the good news is that their efforts along with our restructure of multiplayer architecture are leading to a greatly improved multiplayer experience for the other platforms too.
So where from here?
Well, as you can see from the Steam build that went live today, we're no longer going to wait for Switch and have pivoted to just update Steam, Xbox and PlayStation asap. This will disrupt crossplay on those platforms, but as they go live, we'll bring crossplay back online where we can.
We're still working on Switch (we actually have another submission candidate ready to roll) and once Nintendo have approved that patch, we'll roll those updates across to the other platforms and set 'em all live, enabling crossplay across all platforms again.
How long will this take?
Well, I didn't get my first guess right, and honestly, we're at the mercy of Nintendo and the chaos gods right now, but if I were a gambling man I'd say 1-2 weeks and we should have private multiplayer back online across Nintendo Switch, PlayStation and Xbox, with Crossplay live again. And in 3-4 weeks, I imagine we'll be ready to switch Rejoin functionality back on.
Why even do this upgrade if there are this many issues?
Believe me. Doing a complete network upgrade seven years post launch is not something we exactly wanted to do, but we had no choice. Plus it is better for the longevity and health of Armello and its community. So for anyone who's interested, let me give you the entire context.
Just like the vast majority of developers, we utilise a third party solution for Multiplayer. Always have. The solution Armello has used for the better part of a decade now, was purchased a couple years ago by a very large company. Considering our large investment into their service for our final Crossplay update, we expressed our concerns for the service, but were assured there would be no disruptions to the service that would not affect our plans for crossplay and and/orArmello's multiplayer community.
Flash forward to late 2021; as we were preparing to announce and ship our Major Crossplay update v2.2, we were informed that the Multiplayer service and architecture it was built upon was, in fact, about to be deprecated (aka; shut down).
You can imagine our extreme frustration. The choice was to let Armello's multiplayer servers go offline forever as of March this year, or suck it up and begin the complete rebuild of our multiplayer architecture again on their new service, across all six of our premium platforms.
The idea of expending all that time and money again, when we had two new games in development and Crossplay ready to go live already was no fun, but we couldn't deny the upside that the upgrade would ultimately improve Armello's stability for the long term, and shutting down Armello's mutliplayer was not an option we were ever interested in entertaining. So, we rolled up our sleeves, and got stuck in.
When I last came to you at the end of February, we were a chunk of the way into this second upgrade, and ready to dig into the final part of it to close out the Crossplay Beta. We just needed to knock some things offline in order to tackle the deeper side of the upgrade. As I mentioned then, we had little way of knowing how complex it would be or how long it would take until we begun.
The work we've been doing since we engaged in the final part of the upgrade has taught us the following:
It is much more involved than we anticipated and has taken much, much longer than expected.
Due to it being a new service, it also has some quirks of software early in its lifecycle. These won't affect you as a user, but have led to many development difficulties (i.e., the one's we're experiencing in cert with Nintendo right now).
There were also unforeseen complications for Windows 7. Though we have managed to find a workaround for these (which was pushed live today).
Frustratingly, the new service's 'Party' functionality does not support Mac OSX and Linux. Considering both platforms were fully supported in the previous version, we were not expecting nor were we prepared for this.
What does this mean for Mac OSX and Linux?
It is very unlikely we will be able to restore full multiplayer functionality. Rest assured, if that is the case, Armello would continue to function as expected in every other regard.
If we cannot find a solution utilising this new version of our multiplayer service, it will just be Private Multiplayer and Party functionality that we are unable to get back online for Linux or Mac OSX.
Our third party multiplayer service provider we've used for almost all of Armello's life online has just removed support for those platforms, and unfortunately we do not have the time, nor the resources currently available to roll our own Multiplayer solution specifically for Mac OSX and Linux.
The devastating commercial reality is that most days, Linux and Mac OSX sales don't even get close to surpassing $100 USD. They are a tiny fraction of our sales and our community, and whilst Mac and Linux users are important to us (I'm literally writing this post on a MacBook, which I use to play Armello), literally every day we spend working on anything solely Mac OSX and Linux related is a loss we will never make back. This has been the case for many years.
So, whilst we're committed to getting out this final Crossplay update, and ensuring a smooth experience where possible across all platforms, at this point in Armello's lifecycle, it is simply not possible to undertake an initiative as large or complex as rolling our own multiplayer solution for Linux and Mac OSX.
We understand not being able to play Private Multiplayer or join Parties may be upsetting to our Linux and Mac OSX players. We wish the reality were different. We wish our service provider continued support. And I say that as someone literally typing out this post on the MacBook Pro that I also use to play Armello on.
We will continue looking for solutions to this issue. When Crossplay v2.2 is all said and done, if it turns out we were in fact unable to restore full multiplayer functionality for Mac OSX and Linux users, we will honour any refund requests for affected players and remove the Mac OSX and Linux versions from the storefront.
What about Steam Deck, doesn't that run on Linux? Steam Deck will be unaffected by these issues as we've just switched the Steam Deck version over to Windows Proton and have resubmitted it to Valve for verification. We imagine the Windows version will be live within a couple of weeks
Why have you been so radio silent?
This one is literally on me, personally. We could have been more communicative with you, and while there are legitimate reasons we haven't been, ultimately those reasons don't matter. For the small subset of players affected by these issues, you should have been updated far earlier. In hindsight, now knowing how long this process has taken, I would and should have updated you along the way. Even if that news was bad news.
I'll be here with an update for you every Friday from now on, until we push the last patch on the v2.2 Crossplay update.
Thanks!
If you're still here, thanks for reading on with me! I hope that all makes sense. I'll be back on the Armello forums Monday to answer any questions folks might have.
I also want to thank you all for your patience. Armello's now been live for over seven years, and we played the first paper prototype over eleven years ago. We never dreamed crossplay was even possible back then, let alone the notion that seven years post release we'd still be supporting this game in some way.
I've seen a lot of speculation, so I do want to confirm. Crossplay v2.2 will be Armello's last update. That's been the plan for a long time. Crossplay was meant to be the final parting gift, and our multiplayer service provider kinda ruined the party here, but we're excited to see you all engaging with it. Most importantly for us (and a lot of you), as more people are able to get into more games together more quickly, Crossplay has largely stabilised our concurrent player count which will help us achieve our goal with v2.2 of giving the Armello community the best chance of continuing on and booting up Armello for a game or two many years into the future.
We love Armello and we have loved continuing our support of it, even though we now do so at a significant financial loss, because we enjoy interacting with all of you and seeing you engage with our little game. But in order to pay the bills and truly grow at what we do, we must move onto new things. The vast majority of the studio has been working on other things for the past couple of years and we are fast approaching Alpha on two brand new projects. And that's why I'm excited to say, both projects will be revealed this year. One in the not too distant future! They're both brand new IP for us, strategy titles (with a bunch of heart!) and vastly different from one another.
I honestly cannot wait for y'all to see them. If you enjoy Armello and our work, these two will absolutely appeal to you. And if not both, at least one of them. ;)
Now, if you're reading this thinking, "shut up, my dude! I only care about games where animals fight each other" well, completely normal person, do not fret. The phrase "Armello 2" gets thrown around the studio quite a bit. So I'm sure our favourite furry friends will get another day in the sun at some point.
Thanks again, and see ya next Friday!
<3 Trent & the LoG squad
P.S. Huge shout out to the champions over at LoG who have remained on Armello and tirelessly slaved away at getting Crossplay out the door for well over a year now. It's nothing but a desire to give y'all the solid gaming experience you're looking for, and a love for Armelly, that gets us all through the day.
We've heard from a small number of you on Steam who are being affected by unexpected multiplayer issues right now, so we've broken from our current plans and just pushed a new patch live that should resolve them for most players, and we snuck in another (much requested) little fix too. ;)
I've got a much bigger update for you later today that will give you more details on the ongoing network upgrade and Crossplay Beta, but we wanted to get this build and patch notes out to you asap.
Addressed in this patch:
Players on Windows 7 will now be able to form parties and play private multiplayer.
Daily chests should now be functioning and collectable again.
Just note, in order to get you this patch ahead of the other platforms, we've had to temporarily disable Crossplay (with consoles) on Steam. We expect it to be back online in the next 1-2 weeks, when Nintendo finally lets our patch through certification :eyeroll-emoji: and we can sync the builds back up (Crossplay requires all platforms to be in sync).
Known Issues
Crossplay (with console platforms) has been temporarily disabled on Steam.
Players on Linux (including Steam Deck) and Mac OSX are still not able to form parties and play private multiplayer. You should be able to queue for and play Public Multiplayer however.
The ability to 'Rejoin' multiplayer games remains offline.
As mentioned, if you're interested in more info on the current major network upgrade underway, keep your eyes peeled for that larger update later today.
Lastly, thanks for all of your patience. It is greatly, greatly appreciated.
Just an important heads up; The team has been hard at work integrating a critical, network upgrade across all platforms (except mobile) and we expect some multiplayer functionality to go offline from tomorrow (March 1st) until further notice.
Note: Although occurring during the current v2.2 Crossplay Beta, this network upgrade is actually independent to the work being done behind the scenes stabilising the recent Crossplay Beta across all platforms. This independent upgrade is critical in moving Armello off legacy server functionality that one of our major service providers is in the process of decommissioning.
This critical network upgrade will bring Armello up to the latest version of matchmaking, party system, and server hosting that our provider offers. Yes, that means swifter starts to games, quicker forming of lobbies, and greater stability overall. Unfortunately though, while the upgrade takes place a temporary outage of some Multiplayer features in Armello is unavoidable.
On Switch, Multiplayer games both Public and Private will be temporarily unavailable.
On Xbox, PlayStation, Mac OSX and Linux, forming Parties and Private Multiplayer games will be temporarily unavailable. Public matchmaking on your own will still be available.
Windows will be largely unaffected. Other than not being able to party up with your friends from other platforms, Public and Private multiplayer games should continue as normal.
Lastly, rest assured that across all platforms, all other features (including; login, inventory management, progress saving, singleplayer games, item drops, etc) will remain available.
Naturally, we appreciate and encourage feedback about any speedbumps you hit that haven't been mentioned here. Log a bug via the in-game Bugsender tool or simply email qa@leagueofgeeks.com.
Annoyingly, we're uncertain how long this critical upgrade will take, due to the complexity being largely unknown until the upgrade commences. It could be 3 days, it could be 3 weeks, and it will differ for each platform. However, we've been working hard to ensure that once this upgrade is complete and all functionality is restored across all platforms, that should also mark the end of our Crossplay Beta! v2.2 will officially be live and Armello multiplayer will be a much more stable and robust experience for you and your friends!
We truly appreciate your patience whilst we do the work necessary to invest in Armello's future. It's not every day a service provider decommissions the technology our games run on (this has never happened in our 11 years of doing business).
Over the last days of the winter season, complete valid games for your shot to find these frosty cubes.
Start: Friday 11th February 2022 (AEDT) End: Friday 18th February 2022 (AEDT)
Game Modes: Steam, Xbox, PS4 and Switch, Public Multiplayer (matchmaking necessary)
How: These dice have a small chance of dropping after completing any game that yields a regular drop. If you obtain a chest from playing a game, you've got a chance that chest will come with an extra event dice.
Please Note: You can obtain multiple sets within the event, but you are not guaranteed a drop. These dice are rare. If you get multiple sets, look out for your pals and share 'em around!
Wishing you a Happy Lunar New Year from the LoG Team!
Howdy, folks! If your collection is still missing Lunar Dice, your chances of grabbin' them are high this year as they are dropping twice as frequently with Double Drops! These round orbs of radiant moonlight will be dropping for just a week!
How does it work?
Start: Today, 4th February AEDT
End: Friday, 11th February AEDT
Game Modes: Steam, Xbox, PS4 and Switch, Public Multiplayer (matchmaking necessary)
How: These dice have a small chance of dropping after completing any game that yields a regular drop. If you obtain a chest from playing a game, you've got a chance that chest will come with an extra event dice.
Please Note: You can obtain multiple sets within the event, but you are not guaranteed a drop. These dice are rare. If you get multiple sets, look out for your pals and share 'em around!
The seasons are changing, so too must the illustrious Dice Collections of Armello. The Druid's Bequest Dice Collection are now live, and dropping in a game near you 🎲
Dice Cycling
🎲 For Steam and Xbox players, the Druid's Bequest is now live The Dice in the Druid's Bequest are:
The above Collections will be: ✨ Live from today, Wednesday 24th of November AEDT ✨ Ending approx Monday 24th January AEDT (running for approx two months)
Complete multiplayer games to find Chests and remember to visit Skeeve’s Shop to get daily freebies. Get in there and complete your collection!