Devlog by Talking Pixels

The sign-in screen now has a status bar at the top that checks the Hall every 20 seconds: • Online (green), with the ping in milliseconds • Down (red, pulsing) when the game server isn't answering • Maintenance (amber) when I've closed the Hall on purpose • No connection when the problem is your own internet, not the Hall When the Hall is down, a panel under the bar says what's wrong in plain words and how long it's been down. It also has a Check again button. Had this been in V.0028, it would have said "A server update didn't load" and pointed at the co-op trial. Whatever the reason, it says your account, Companions and saves are safe. The explanation can't come from the game server itself, since that's the part that's down. A small watchdog on the server machine checks every 20 seconds what state the game server is in and why. It writes a short, plain-English report that the website keeps serving even when the game server is dead. It only ever uses fixed wording and never copies the server's own logs, so nothing private can leak into it. Staying signed in, and notices from the Hall Before this patch, if you opened the game while the Hall was down, it quietly threw away your saved sign-in. Once the Hall came back, you had to log in again. Now it keeps your session and shows the status panel with "You're still signed in". When the Hall comes back, the game carries on by itself. Signing in while the Hall is down now tells you the truth: "The Hall is down, so signing in can't work right now. Your account is fine." A wrong password still gets the usual message. I can also post a message on the status panel from the server. That covers a heads-up before a restart, patch day news, or "back by 4pm" during planned maintenance. Planned downtime shows as amber Maintenance, not red Down, so nobody thinks the Hall broke. Making sure it doesn't happen again My server tests passed on V.0028. They run the Hall's rules against a stand-in server, and the stand-in doesn't enforce the real one's rule about match handlers. So I've added a check that reads the server script the way the real server does. It fails if any match handler is written inline or missing. It flags the V.0028 script, passes V.0029, and now runs before every deploy. The post-install checklist I run after each update now also confirms the status watchdog is running and its report is fresh. Patch notes: Alpha V.0029 • The sign-in screen shows whether the Hall is up; if it isn't, it says what's wrong and how long it has been down • Opening the game while the Hall is down no longer signs you out: it waits, and carries on by itself when the Hall is back • The Hall could not start after the last update; it can again, and the co-op trial with it Next up is a proper two-player run of the co-op trial on the live Hall. It went out in V.0028 but never got a single real session before it took the server down. If you're in the alpha and want to be the other Keeper in that first trial, message me.