As most of you are aware, there has been a lot of work happening behind the scenes towards getting FUMBBL to support the BB2020 ruleset. We've reached a point where we are getting ready for a major milestone: Running the updated client in the live divisions.

The new client has been running in the FFB Test division for a while, with a lot of testing going on, including running games under the BB2016 ruleset. While we're not fully ready to go completely live with BB2020, we do need to push the updated client to the live environment (meaning R, B and L games will be played with the new version), which hopefully will only surface minor issues and easily fixable bugs.

We are planning to do this update over a few days starting Friday the 27th through Sunday the 29th of August. Our hope is that it will not require that much time, but we have scheduled this entire weekend for fixing any issues that may crop up. Our hope is that we can remain on the new version of FFB for the live environment after this weekend, but have a rollback to the previous version as an option if necessary.

So what does this mean to you?

Well, it means that there is a relatively high probability that the game server is unstable for this weekend. Potentially, games in progress or started can be irreversibly broken and need to be abandoned and/or restarted. Match results may not apply correctly to your teams. We are clearly hoping that this won't be the case, but there is a risk. The change on the technical platform is very very significant and there are code paths that have not been tested properly for technical reasons (result uploading is one of those).

I would strongly advise you to not play important games during this period, and possibly avoid using your favourite teams just in case there are major issues.

The exact schedule for this update will be announced a bit closer to that weekend (some real-life things need to be fully scheduled out first).

To give a bit of context and a plan for how this BB2020 rollout will happen:

1. Switch the bb2020 client and server to the live environment (this is what we're doing at the end of the month)
This will likely involve a period of bugfixing and resolving issues. After this version is deployed, the site is doing two separate tests: First and foremost, we're testing that the BB2016 rules are still working as expected (practically the same as before, but with some minor game client changes). Secondly, the updated client will enable Leagues to start testing BB2020 rules with some limitations. Most notably, these limitations involve out-of-client things like seasons and redrafting not being functional. BB2020 skill progression should work as per the new rules, and most of the major BB2020 rules should be in play.

2. The Competitive division will open
This will be strictly for new teams, and seasons and redrafting will not be enabled. This will likely be after a period of bugfixing from step 1.

3. Seasons and redrafting
Completion of support for seasons and redrafting, which will be enabled in the Competitive division

4. New Gamefinder and Blackbox systems
This is a bit of an old project I've been wanting to do for a long time, and is essentially a complete rewrite of these two subsystems. It's unfortunately a bit of a necessity to do more or less complete rewrites because of what's called "technical debt". Some early decisions during the development of the existing subsystems is coming back to bite me and I simply need to bite the bullet and get it done properly. Until this step is completed, the current versions will continue running as per normal.

5. R and B migration into the new Competitive division
Once the new Gamefinder and Blackbox subsystems are done and functional, the team migration process needs to be finalized and opened up for R and B teams. When this is pushed live, the current R and B divisions will be halted and no longer allow matches to be played, and at this point L will be the only place BB2016 matches can be played.

6. Method to migrate L leagues to BB2020
Migrating teams from BB2016 to BB2020 is a complicated task and once the steps above are done and things are running smoothly, I will try to work with some of the major leauges on the site who wants to migrate to the BB2020 ruleset and come up with a modified version of the migration tool that works for leagues as well. This is far from being an easy task and this could potentially take a bit of time.

Beyond these steps there are probably quite a bit of additional work to be done, and we are hoping to update the BB2020 client every now and again to add missing features (such as the Star Player special abilities which are currently being planned as I write this blog post).

Until the update weekend, I encourage all of you to help out running tests in the FT division as any bugs found now will reduce the stress of the update weekend for the FFB dev team. Feel free to ask on Discord how the testing process works should you be interested in helping out.