2.3.0

Hello Everyone,

I apologize for my lack of communication. I've been quite busy with both my day job and in my personal life, but I have been able to make significant progress with COMP/CON. The next update, version 2.3.0, is scheduled to go live on Wednesday, 4/13, and I’d like to take some time to talk about the new features, changes, and some of the rationale behind the changes.

New Features in 2.3

New Save System

The ways in which COMP/CON detects changes and saves those changes locally has been reworked, and now saves data much more quickly and cleanly. Along with much improved app performance, C/C now handles multiple tabs without (too many) problems. Additionally, Chrome browsers can take advantage of an even more performant save scheme, which can be enabled in the Options menu.

Content Analyzer

The Content Manager now has a tool that finds and isolates data that is unloadable due to missing and deactivated Lancer Content Packs, along with instructions (if possible) on how to resolve data issues. It’s not (yet) smart enough to analyze the content of LCPs themselves to detect errors, but it should help a great deal in isolating and correcting missing LCP data.

Deleted Item Recovery

From now on, when you delete an item in COMP/CON it is not immediately removed. Instead, it’s flagged as having been deleted and will persist both locally and in the cloud for 30 days. At any time before items expire, they can be restored or deleted permanently. These flags manage both local data as well as in your cloud account

Behind the Scenes Changes

Not exactly a user-facing feature, but in preparation for the GM overhaul and new features beyond that, a great deal of the logic side of the app has been refactored to make it cleaner and more extensible. This should significantly improve the velocity of development.

Brand New Cloud Save System

The vault/cloud save system has been completely overhauled, and now includes a user cloud data manager and a much improved share code system. However, the way COMP/CON auto-syncs has been changed significantly. Although cloud data can always be manually synced at any time, C/C, at most, will automatically sync your cloud data when the app starts up, which may disrupt one of the ways some users use COMP/CON in live games. This is unfortunate, but necessary. Due to the way C/C structures data and manages it in the backend, it was very poorly suited for the sort of near-live updating many users expected, and it was also becoming prohibitively expensive.

Instead, the cloud save system has been pared back to hopefully provide a much better user experience for its intended functionality. A future update will include an active game mode that provides live game functionality across multiple users.

When you upgrade to 2.3, cloud users will be prompted to update their accounts. This process will create a backup (that can be used at https://compcon-old.netlify.app for the foreseeable future) and automatically update your account, a process that should take only a few seconds. Any remote data (such as a pilot another user has shared with you) will no longer automatically update. These pilots will need to be re-imported using the new save code system, available on the pilot pages in the lower-left navigation bar (under the share icon)

Along with these, expect a good handful of bug fixes and minor tweaks. Expect a few quick updates shortly thereafter as there are inevitable post-release bugs found and fixed.

Next up, while the new GM tools are still under development, I’m going to take a quick break to add in the new Bonds system, though it will only be available after loading the KarrakinTrade Baronies LCP (or any other LCP with Bonds content)

Thanks, as always, for your continued support!
Beef