Hey everyone!
It has been a few months since I’ve released an update on the state of the community and I’ve been really wanting to write one for some time now with how much progress we’ve made on our server browser. Unfortunately, I’ve been left overwhelmed due to the amount of work I’m putting into the community (which is still fun, though!) and my job. This is why I haven’t been able to post updates as frequently as I’d like and I’m prioritizing the development of the project over transparency updates at this time.
I recommend checking out the public roadmap and dev tracker as well!
The Initial Server Browser Release + Issues
After the initial server browser released, things were going okay for a while. However, after some time issues that didn’t show up in development quickly became noticeable and one major issue was how bad performance was. Around this time, I had to take a break due to being overwhelmed with life events I’ve been going through which rendered the server browser unusable for some time.
Around a month and a half ago or so I started working on everything again and the first thing I addressed and fixed was the performance issue by optimizing PSQL queries, utilizing caching, and moving everything to a machine with better hardware.
Since then, I’ve reworked a lot of logic and implemented new features for tracked servers. While I do believe the server browser is now in a useable state, there are still so many things that needs to be worked in the server browser and community as a whole.
What’s New?
Other than the server browser, there aren’t any updates worthy to mention. I have been working on the new Assets browser which will contain open source game assets we make for game engines such as Godot, but that won’t be done for some time (and it’ll also lead to the mod workshop which will be very exciting!).
While I don’t have a complete list of things I’ve added and changed with the server browser since the last update, I will be listing some features other seem to be liking so far.
Improved User Graphs
I’ve decided to switch chart libraries and the newer one works a lot better in my opinion. Additionally, I’ve also added support for tracking user joins and leaves (there is currently a bug with user joins spiking as seen below which is being tracked in our dev tracker!).
Banners
You may embed server banners that display the server’s name, user count, map name, and also a graph of the last 24 hours user counts.
Here’s an example:
The above image URL is:
There are also ways to change the color scheme of the above banner, but it is not publicly documented yet. I will be working on this in the future 
Server-Specific Maps Browser
There is a map browser on every server view page which shows what maps are played on the server along with:
- How many times they were played on the server (uniquely, cooldown is an hour).
- The average user counts (playing, new, join, leaves, etc.).
- Minimum and maximum user counts.
One thing I did want to note is there are no ways to search for maps within the browser. I will be adding support for this in the future, but it’s a bit more complicated than you’d think since the maps are retrieved by numeric ID inside of the stats database (no references of the map name itself).
This makes searching by name really complicated since I’d have to join info by two database engines while searching/sorting which I haven’t implemented yet.
I’d also like to make a global and app-specific server map browser that comes with graphs as well!
Tracking Servers In More Games
I’ve added many more games to track servers in. I’m also continuing to add support for more query protocols which will lead to even more games in the future
Games include:
- Ark: Survival Evolved
- DayZ
- V-Rising
- Enshrouded
- DayZ
- Minecraft
- Call of Duty
- Hytale
And many more!
Support For Manually Adding Servers
Logged in users may now manually add servers under the app-specific server browser!
I’ve made many other changes, but I don’t want to make this topic too long. Therefore, as stated at the beginning, I suggest taking a look at our public roadmap and dev tracker!
What’s Next?
In addition to other features we’ll be implementing into our server browser which may be found here, I’m also working on the our future Assets Browser and Mod Workshop.
These will be the next major features to the community and the ones I’m most exciting about since it’ll lead to developing open source assets in Godot and making open source games!
That’s it from me though! I will be providing more updates in the future. However, they most likely won’t be as long and detailed as I’d like (like this one, which I rushed lol).