News

Gamevention Nov. 29, 2019

Once again we would like to thank everyone who made it to the far north and visited us at the Gamevention. We had a lot of fun and good playing hours with you. Especially thanks for the numerous discussions about KnightFight, MonstersGame and Wizard Tower. We are looking forward to the next event with you.

KnightFight Update - Changelog Nov. 19, 2019

KnightFight Update - Changelog

As promised (even though it took a bit longer, sorry everyone), here are the player-visible/noticeable changes:

Added

• Consistent cross-site request forgery protection across all forms
• Better URL routing so that eg. /index.php?ac=showuser&showuserid=12345 becomes /player/12345/
• Images used in BBCode are now retrieved via an image proxy to prevent mixed-content warnings and tracking
• KnightFight DK, GR, HU, RO and RU worlds are now back again and have moonID support
• KnightFight BG, FR, IT, NL and TR worlds now have moonID support
• Database transactions in several places, so no more race conditions in attacks or players being stuck because data has only been written partially
• Aggressive caching for static files

Changed

• Battle server is now part of the normal game
• Battle server no longer has a "Logout" button but instead a "Home" button that leads to the home world of the user
• Battle server: The maximum amount of battle points a player can receive is now capped at 3 BP up to level 100, 4 BP up to level 200, 5 BP up to level 300 and so on... (thanks to Daglfinger for the suggestion)
• Battle server: Since it's no longer a separate server, the new name is now Battleground, some of those references have been renamed, but there might still be references to the old term
• Switch internationalisation to gettext (has a few advantages like eg. support for plurals)
• Language switching is now allowed for all game worlds and defaults to the browser's language
• Use secure cookies with SameSite=Strict protection
• Switch to HTML5
• Replace background, border and some content graphics with new ones
• Player avatars are now generated lazily, which should should fix a few image loading issues
• BBCode parsing is now done using a new parser, so invalid BBCode might look a little bit different now (valid BBCode should still look the same, though)
• Mobile view can now be enabled via profile setting

Fixed

• NPCs are now attacking again and sending/answering messages to/from players
• Jewels transfer feature
• Shadow energy (+13) now requires an alignment of -38000 or lower
• Holy energy (+13) now requires an alignment of +38000 or higher
• Shadow energy (+14) now requires an alignment of -43000 or lower
• Holy energy (+14) now requires an alignment of +43000 or higher
• Shadow energy (+15) now requires an alignment of -48000 or lower
• Holy energy (+15) now requires an alignment of +48000 or higher
• Shadow energy (+16) now requires an alignment of -53000 or lower
• Holy energy (+16) now requires an alignment of +53000 or higher
• Shadow energy (+17) now requires an alignment of -58000 or lower
• Holy energy (+17) now requires an alignment of +58000 or higher
• Shadow energy (+18) now requires an alignment of -63000 or lower
• Holy energy (+18) now requires an alignment of +63000 or higher
• Subject lines already containing RE: won't get another RE: prepended when replying to messages
• Bug that limited the amount of skill point resets to 127 resets
• Weapon names exceeding 35 characters are no longer truncated

Removed

• Obsolete AIM, Yahoo! Messenger and MSN profile fields
• Useless use of CAPTCHAs
• All integrations of various trackers and obsolete cooperations we're no longer involved with
• A bunch of obsolete JavaScript
• Maximum user limit for battle server
• Ability to have more than one battle server
• All Adobe Flash content
• Deutscher Entwicklerpreis badge
• Facebook integration
• Redundant mg_user, mg_password and token cookies

These are just the most important changes and doesn't include all the changes we've made in our backend. Overall the update consists of 716 changesets so far.

Next steps

We still have a few bugs left to squash, which surfaced since Sunday. So we will work on getting them fixed as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, our artist is also working on some more new content, but let's not spoil the surprise with details yet... :-)

Next big update: MonstersGame! Although since this is a full rewrite it will land in 2020. We'll keep you posted.

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KnightFight update on Sunday, 17th November 2019, 02:00 UTC Nov. 15, 2019

KnightFight update

We already announced that we were working on overhauling KnightFight and the big day where we switch to the new version is coming up.

The update will take place on Sunday, 17th November 2019 at 02:00 UTC (which is 03:00 German time) and will result in a downtime of about 3 hours if things don't go according to plan.

Please note that you will be logged out and need to log in again after the update is finished.

Further details on the changes will be announced shortly after the update.

Technical details

The following information is meant for people who want to know more about the details on how we plan to migrate to the new version.

Preparations

Essentially, we're going to switch from a bunch of old servers to our new infrastructure with new servers that we already prepared for the update.

Since we're switching everything to HTTPS, we also need proper TLS certificates. To make sure we don't run into issues during the actual update, we already changed the DNS records and generated the certificates and got them signed.

This means that right now, KnightFight is already hosted on our new servers by using HTTP proxies that relay everything to/from our old servers.

We also already changed backups and monitoring accordingly.

Sunday, 02:00 UTC

The first step is to put a placeholder page on all KnightFight domains, so that visitors know what's going on.

Next up, we're going to set all databases read-only and transfer the old databases to our new deployment.

Once this is done, we're going to apply all migrations that bring the databases in sync with our new code base. While we've already tested this extensively on production data, this is still the point where things might go wrong and it's also the main reason why we scheduled a longer downtime.

If nothing has exploded, we are new simply going to switch the web servers to the new KnightFight version. We're using NixOS, so activating the new configuration is only a matter of seconds.

Post-update

At this point, the new KnightFight version should be up and running and the following items are left to do:

• Verify all game worlds to see whether the update has been successful
• Update moonID API addresses to use the HTTPS variants
• Enable moonID for game worlds that didn't support moonID so far
• Publish news post about what has changed
• Shut down and wipe all of the old servers
• Monitor support tickets to see whether any post-update problems arise

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Finale-Halloween-Premium Nov. 12, 2019

Today at 10pm our Halloween premium promotion ends with the 50% bonus on moonCoins and gem packages. Last call to get your bonus:

Halloween Premium +50 Bonus

Increasing crescent moon Oct. 22, 2019

It took us almost a year of work to get RedMoon's business, platform and tools off the ground. With the general moonID update, our new hosting infrastructure, the build pipeline, automated testing, we are at the technical forefront again. That was the necessary foundation on which everything else is now built. Some construction sites, such as a further update of the payments, will follow as the platform expands.
Once again, we bring the existing games to the new technology. Now, for the first time, we can update the game worlds centrally and quickly. Improve a bug and roll out an update immediately, effort four minutes and no longer four weeks. You understand what this means for all of us in daily gaming.

When will the games come?

• KnightFight is currently going through translations and will start with the new game world in the next weeks.
• The new development of MonstersGame is going ahead, but the relaunch will be next year.
• To get ahead on the game front, we are involved in copublishing with Indiependent developers. These are mainly small and interesting projects that fit in well with us and our platform. The first project Wizard Tower will be playable this year.

RedMoon Family

In order to do all this in the support, we have Patti at our side next to Tommelchen and so that there is something for the eye next to technology and support, our legendary creative and creator of the MonstersGame and KnightFight Designs Raffaele Picca will join us again. Welcome everyone!

Outlook

In this sense, we are approaching the fuller moon for a long time. We are looking forward to the next round with you and would like to thank you for your loyalty with the current Halloween Premium Promotion and Uncle Pumpkin.

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