status.tw 2.0 is coming 👀
status.tw has been around for quite a while. Long enough for parts of it to become outdated, awkward to maintain and, in some cases, held together by good intentions and questionable technical decisions.
So instead of continuing to paint over the cracks, we decided to rebuild the whole thing. 🔨
status.tw 2.0 comes with a completely reworked frontend and backend. We have cleaned up old systems, modernized the technical foundation and improved how we develop and review changes internally. That includes better automated testing, more consistent code reviews and processes that should make it considerably easier for us to ship updates without accidentally setting something else on fire.
The website itself is getting a major visual overhaul. Server lists, player pages, statistics and history views will present their information more clearly, with better structure and fewer walls of unexplained numbers.
Almost every relevant view will receive live updates. If a player joins a server, a map changes or new data becomes available, you should no longer need to hammer the refresh button like it personally offended you. ⚡
Server and player histories will also load gradually instead of trying to fetch an unreasonable amount of data at once. This should make larger histories much smoother to browse.
More for server owners 🛠️
The Server Manager is receiving more than just a fresh coat of paint.
Server verification will be easier to understand and provide live feedback while you complete the required steps. Once verified, server owners can continue adding custom information such as a description, website and Discord invite to their public server pages.
There will also be several new insights, including:
- Your server’s global ranking and performance compared with other servers
- Regular, returning and daily players
- New players and players who stopped returning
- The most active countries and clans on your server
- Map performance and direct comparisons between your maps
- Player-count charts, activity heatmaps and server history
The idea is simple: server owners should be able to understand what is happening on their servers without maintaining their own analytics stack or consulting three spreadsheets and a crystal ball. 🔮
A much better API
Developers will get new endpoints for server rankings, player statistics, activity heatmaps, countries and daily global statistics.
Server and player responses will also contain more useful information. Depending on what a server provides, this can include map hashes, map sizes, country information, skin colors and an estimated bot indicator.
We are also introducing API tokens, usage statistics and request logs. Tokens will not become mandatory immediately when 2.0 launches. Developers will have time to create one and update their applications before we begin requiring authentication.
The API documentation has been rewritten as well. Every route and field should properly explain what it contains, where the data comes from and any limitations you need to know about. “Here is a field, good luck guessing what it means” is not documentation.
Less silence, more updates 📣
We also know that our communication around status.tw has been practically nonexistent for a long time.
That is changing.
We want to use the teeworlds.dev blog and Discord to share updates, explain changes and let interested users know what we are working on. Nobody should have to discover a new feature by randomly clicking around the website six weeks after it was released.
There are still a few things left to finish, and the final list may grow before release. But status.tw 2.0 is actively being worked on and is getting closer.
Same status.tw. Much better foundation. Considerably fewer questionable corners.