Server Status addition to Tequila

[wdoerfler]

Pretty self explanatory. Adding server statuses to Tequila so folks can easily and quickly see whether not a server (or any server) is up before starting the game. It wouldn't have to include information on server loads and player numbers, just an up or down indicator would be great.

[Mr. Vee]

The server status button at the top of the forum page and the server status section of discord isn't enough?

[Number Six]

Thanks for posting!

 

Tequila is basically dead at this point, but server status is something we already have in our upcoming replacement for it. You should be hearing more about it Soon(TM).

 

[Apparition]

7 minutes ago, Number Six said:

Thanks for posting!

 

Tequila is basically dead at this point, but server status is something we already have in our upcoming replacement for it. You should be hearing more about it Soon(TM).

 

Does this mean that we’re getting a shark week?  Sharknado in Talos Island? 😃

[Number Six]

Shark Week has been a running gag during development of the launcher and testing of the news feed. I couldn't resist sharing a little bit of that. 😄

[Outrider_01]

52 minutes ago, Apparition said:

Does this mean that we’re getting a shark week?  Sharknado in Talos Island? 😃

No shark week, someone  RELEASE THE KRAKEN and it ate every shore creature bigger than a loaf of bread.

[Lines]

1 hour ago, Number Six said:

 

This picture has raised more questions than it answered.

[DoctorDitko]

Have you guys tested your new launcher under WINE?

[Number Six]

16 minutes ago, DoctorDitko said:

Have you guys tested your new launcher under WINE?

Yes, works out of the box with stock wine on Linux, and we've been working directly with the Island Rum developer to make sure it works on mac (it does, now anyway, macs are a lot more finicky).

 

Should be a much easier setup than Tequila since there's no .NET involved.

[DoctorDitko]

A thousand blessings upon your collective heads!

[ImpousVileTerror]

No .NET?  A step in a good direction, @Number Six!  Thanks.

What else can you tell us about the new launcher?  Any details on security/privacy and reliability?  I remember the scare we had a while back about Tequila not being "smart enough" to avoid downloading malware from bad manifests.  If some extra layer of protection could exist in whatever this replacement launcher will be, that would just be lovely!

[Number Six]

1 hour ago, ImpousVileTerror said:

No .NET?  A step in a good direction, @Number Six!  Thanks.

What else can you tell us about the new launcher?  Any details on security/privacy and reliability?  I remember the scare we had a while back about Tequila not being "smart enough" to avoid downloading malware from bad manifests.  If some extra layer of protection could exist in whatever this replacement launcher will be, that would just be lovely!

We'll be talking more about it fairly soon as we get closer to public testing and release, but I can confirm that security is one of the two key design components that led to designing a new launcher from scratch. The other was alluded to earlier and is that it's built without needing any outside libraries or dependencies that the game itself doesn't have, so that if you have something that is capable of running COH (i.e. wine on linux/mac), it should be able to run the launcher. It also has a lot of streamlining of the new player experience to make it easier to get up and running, and several commonly requested features like moving architecture (32/64) out of the launch list and to a persistent setting, ability to download or not download beta updates independently, reordering the launch list, etc.

 

On the security front, while nothing that downloads files from the internet can ever be 100% bulletproof, it's about a hundred times better than Tequila.

 

While there isn't really a "manifest" anymore, all of the components that make up the closest equivalents are cryptographically signed to prevent a malicious third party from modifying them - regardless if it's in flight or on the server directly. There's a full chain of trust all the way from the initial bootstrap that tells the launcher how to install/configure itself down to the package files that contain the sha256 hashes used to verify downloads before saving them to disk.

 

If that somehow were to fail, all of the file operations happen inside a VFS layer that is rooted at the install directory, so it can't be escaped with ".." or absolute paths.

 

There's a lot more that makes it much more robust than the existing methods, but we'll be covering that later, likely in a community update along with some other related items. In general, it should no longer be possible to accidentally launch with half-updated files, and verification is something that will become a last resort to detect disk corruption rather than at the first sign of trouble.

[ImpousVileTerror]

Awesome, and thank you for taking the time to answer!  That rather neatly sums up all the sticking points I have about the backend.

 

The only thing left is to see the GUI/UX in action, I suppose.  I find that's often a stumbling block in a lot of applications these days as development happens with SDKs for big operating systems that . . . well, the companies that made the kits in the first place don't even account for their own operating systems' customizability, and the kits only really display the expected GUI/UX properly under factory default settings for the OS.

[Metalios]

Well since this thread is apparently moving forward, figure I'll show the launcher I decided to create for HC as we continue to work on the next release of Mids Reborn. The launcher should be done very soon. A few things left to do on it and a couple things to tidy up but here's an early preview. 

The launcher will feature a custom progress indicator for downloading. 
No more forced auto downloads. 
Selection between 32 or 64 bit clients via settings to keep it clean.
Ability to opt-in for the public beta branch (server).
And possibly more....
 

 

 

 

Edited July 26, 2020 by crytilis

[ImpousVileTerror]

Sorry, @crytilis, but is this the same one which @Number Six was just telling us about, or a different launcher?

[Number Six]

That looks like something completely different.

[Apparition]

[Bopper]

1 hour ago, ImpousVileTerror said:

Sorry, @crytilis, but is this the same one which @Number Six was just telling us about, or a different launcher?

Something different. Notice the Hero Designer would tie into Mids Reborn.