Hey everyone, this is hot off the presses (and is not Project 39)!
There are some problems with hosting unofficial Plaza servers that we’ve been trying to solve internally for a while now and we wanted to let you know where we are on that.
First off, we don’t have an effective solution for protecting the Casino economy from hacking. A server host could pull a man-in-the-middle attack on the bets and transactions to mimic or alter player participation in Casino games.
The same thing goes for any Boardwalk games, Bowling, and the Arcade.
We can’t reliably determine if a payout was authentic in this scenario.
Some authentication schemes were proposed internally but would require a lot of extra development time to get working, we’d like to spend that time making new stuff for the game instead.
The other issue we’ve run up against is, we don’t have plans for Plaza customizability. The Plaza is a very complicated part of our game and we just don’t know how to open that up to players for customization.
To solve these issues (and more), we’ve come up with a new feature for our game that will replace player-hosted lobbies:
#PRESENTING… COMMUNITY CONDOS
The basic concept is that condos will evolve beyond just being a personal space, and will become player-hosted communities.
Rather than having players host their own lobbies, they will be able to host dedicated public condos. This means that when the owner leaves, the dedicated condo will still be available for others. And at any time their friends can join and optionally edit the condo.
With this upcoming update, there will be tools which will enable condo owners to manage their own community.
A condo owner will be able to moderate, edit groups, set permissions on guests, etc. These changes will affect both dedicated and non-dedicated condos.
We also have ideas on how to expand upon our tool-set for editing condos to allow both the host and their guests to change the condos layout, place items, etc. We’ll also be looking into more Plaza-esque levels that you can buy for your condos.
The new logic IO system will allow players to use the condo editor to design their own contraptions and games within the condo setting.
We hope you’re all as pumped as we are for these improvements to the condos. We can’t wait to see what you create in your dedicated condos.
Please feel free to ask us any questions you may have.
All our love,
PixelTail Games