Small Update: 1.7.1

WarLight will be upgraded tonight to version 1.07.1. This update doesn’t have any new features, but it contains a lot of bug fixes and performance/scalability improvements.

This deployment will involve a little more downtime than usual. WarLight will be going down tonight (Saturday, September 24th) at midnight PDT (7am GMT). If all goes well, it should be down for less than 45 minutes. Please plan accordingly for any fast games or single player games that may get interrupted during this time.

During the downtime, you can visit the Server Status page on the wiki for up-to-date information about the status of the WarLight server.

I previously said that the 1v1 ladder setting change would be in 1.07.1. However, since this release will require a little more downtime than usual, I wanted to do it on a weekend since fewer people play on weekends. Therefore, the 1v1 ladder change is being pushed back to 1.07.2. But don’t worry, 1.07.2 should be along soon.

The main motivation behind these performance and scalability improvements is to get WarLight’s cost down. A few weeks ago the WarLight database outgrew its hardware, so it needed to be upgraded to a beefier machine. Since WarLight uses cloud hosting, it’s easy to upgrade and downgrade the server, however the higher monthly bill is killing me. In this release, WarLight’s chat system is being internally de-coupled from the game system, which should reduce the number of transaction conflicts. Not only will this increase the speed of the site in some cases, but hopefully it will reduce the hardware costs as well. This schema change is also the reason for the extended downtime.