Period: October 23, 2025 Total Commits: 4

Daily Dev Update: Smoother Desktop Updates, Fewer Service Hiccups - October 23, 2025

Hey, here’s what we worked on today. No balance changes this round—this one’s about making the desktop app update cleanly and keeping services from face-planting mid-session.

What’s New

Cross‑platform desktop auto‑updater

We added a built‑in updater to the desktop build so you don’t have to chase downloads. It’s simple and gives you control over when to install.

What it does now:

• Background downloads that don’t interrupt matches
• Optional prompts so you can defer installs until you’re done playing
• Manual “Check for updates” from the app UI
• Automatic checks on startup and every 6 hours
• Clear progress and error messaging
• SHA512 verification on downloads
• Works on Linux (AppImage), Windows (NSIS), and macOS (DMG)

Why this matters:

• No more juggling versions with friends before queueing
• Fewer mismatches when we ship small daily fixes
• Updates won’t spike CPU or I/O during battles

What Got Fixed

Service crash from a bad Redis connection fallback

We tracked down a crash where one of our services would try to connect to the wrong Redis address on boot. It defaulted to localhost before config loaded, then refused connections and took the service down with it.

• Fix ensures environment config loads before any connection attempts
• Result: fewer random service restarts and more stable match/session tracking
• Player impact: less chance of weird lobby state or dropped telemetry during matches

Under the Hood

• Desktop packaging and release flow got polish:
  • Clearer build steps for cross‑platform packaging
  • Ignoring built binaries to keep repos clean
• New docs to help contributors and testers:
  • A full updater guide with platform specifics (signing/notarization)
  • A shorter quick reference for the common update path
• Wiki cleanup and dependency updates to reduce stale info

If you see anything odd with the update prompts (looping dialogs, stuck progress, etc.), send a note with your OS and steps to reproduce. That helps us tighten it up quickly.

Thanks for the steady stream of reports and logs—today’s stability fix came straight out of that feedback.