Quick one this week, but an important one.

Right now, whether you connect to a match through a dedicated server or through Relay is handled completely differently behind the scenes. That's been fine while it's just us testing, but it's not something that scales, and it gets in the way of proper matchmaking down the line.

So this update was about fixing that. The game now has a single system that handles connecting to a match no matter which method is actually being used underneath. Dedicated servers, Relay, or an automatic mode that just picks whichever works best, it all goes through the same door now. We can even switch which mode is active without pushing a new build, which is going to make testing different setups a lot easier.

The bigger benefit is that the rest of the game genuinely doesn't care anymore how you got connected. It just gets told "you're in," and carries on. That might sound small, but it means when the real matchmaking and server allocation system goes in, we won't need to touch how the game itself starts up. It just plugs in underneath.

We also caught and fixed an annoying bug where the game would occasionally hiccup on first launch when setting up networking. It wasn't happening every time, which made it a nightmare to track down, but it's stable now across a full round of testing.

Highlights from this update:

✔️ One unified system for connecting to matches, regardless of method
✔️ Dedicated server, Relay and Auto connection modes all working
✔️ Can switch connection modes without a new build
✔️ Game startup no longer cares how you connected
✔️ First-launch networking hiccup found and fixed
✔️ Full regression testing across all connection types

Next up, we start designing the proper Session Service, the system that will actually handle matchmaking and server allocation. This update was about clearing the ground for it.

Back again soon.

• Lana

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