November 2024 Recap

Welcome back to another blog post! Today we're going to talk about some of the things we've been working on in November. We've made a lot of progress towards our goal of getting PaintSquad back online. However, as we are currently working on a small surprise that will revealed in December, today's blog post will only focus on the most important developments this month, making it a bit shorter than usual.

With that out of the way, let's take a look at the progress we've made this month:

Echoes of the past

Just like in the last few blog posts, we have prepared yet another small surprise in the form of a reworked PaintSquad map:

Feel free to share and discuss your opinion with other players on our Discord server. We're excited to hear your thoughts. :)

So far, 4 maps have been revealed for PaintSquad 3.0, and while we plan to continue working on the remaining PaintSquad maps in the coming months, we don't want to give away too much new content just yet. Therefore, the next blog posts will likely focus on introducing new or updated game mechanics, models, textures and other assets.

Updates & Deployment

Let's talk about some of the technical changes this month: One of the most important technical developments this month consisted of creating a system that takes care of delivering updates for PaintSquad, Rush and other experiences. In the past, we almost always had to put the entire server into maintenance mode to deploy updates on our public servers and thus shut down the entire network for a few hours, even if the update only consisted of a few bug fixes.

In order to combat this, one of the first steps consisted in designing our new backend infrastructure to ensure game modes can be updated individually without affecting the rest of the system. Another important design change also includes preventing matches to start right before a maintenance phase, which is especially important for Invasion matches which can take about ~45 minutes to complete.

Lastly, we've also reworked one of our services that is responsible for storing & distributing game data such as level data (schematics), translations, models, textures and other game-related information. All these changes result in a system that not only enables us to provide updates faster and more reliably, but also makes prototyping and testing much easier.

Introducing Puppeteer

If you have played PaintSquad in the past, you've most likely encountered some of the animated models in the form of ink tanks, beakons, sprinklers or other game objects. One thing all of these models have in common is the fact that they either rely on code that is difficult to maintain or consist of manually created copies of existing models. Therefore, we've decided to dedicate some time to finding a better solution which will make it easier for us to re-implement some of these game models while also taking advantage of some of Minecraft's new technical features.

After some testing, we've decided to work on a solution that allows us to design & animate models in Blockbench and then import them into the game by using resource packs and display entities. This way, animations defined in the model file can easily be referenced by the server, resulting in code that is easier to read and maintain while also decoupling game logic from model animations. Let's take a quick look at this new system by comparing the animated ink tank models of PaintSquad 2.1 and 3.0:

As you can see, the ink level on the left side ink tank can be adjusted far more smoothly than on the right side. This isn't the only benefit however: The new ink tank game object only uses two models while the old one consisted of 11 different versions, each representing a different state. Reducing the number of models used helps us to keep PaintSquad's resource pack smaller, which also has a small positive impact on the loading and download times of the resource pack.

As of now, Puppeteer is fully integrated into our model management system “Warehouse”, enabling animated models to be displayed on both our build and game servers.

A look into the future

And that brings us to the end of this monthly recap post. Even though today's blog post is a little shorter than usual, you can rest assured that we have something very special planned for December. More information will follow in another blog post, which will be published in the next few weeks. Thanks for reading, we hope to see you back in the game soon!