Matchbox 0.9.7 - Community Edition! 🎉

Today we are shipping Matchbox 0.9.7 as a stable release.

This update focuses on three things:

• Better map setup flow for admins and map makers
• Stronger session observability for debugging and integrations
• Higher production confidence through test and CI hardening

Highlights

• New world-local setup workflow centered on setup commands
• Structured session flow logging for game lifecycle visibility
• Session statistics and timeline access improvements in the API
• Deterministic role assignment extension points
• Session-scoped ability handler extension hooks
• Documentation refresh across setup, operations, and release-readiness guides

Admin and Map Maker Improvements

• Setup flow now supports map initialization, validation, spawn setup, and seat setup in a more guided process
• Map geometry is managed with world-local configuration for cleaner multi-world operation
• Setup diagnostics and validation are easier to run before opening games to players

API and Integration Notes

• API surface has expanded around game logs, session logs, and game statistics snapshots
• Extension seams were added for custom role assignment and ability handling
• Session behavior is now easier to inspect and reason about during active matches

Quality and Stability

• Full build, check, and coverage verification gates are green
• CI pipeline is aligned with Java 21 and release flow expectations
• Deprecated API usage was cleaned up in core areas to reduce maintenance risk

Release Status

Matchbox 0.9.7 is marked stable and ready for production servers.

If you are updating from earlier 0.9.x releases, we recommend:

• Reviewing your map setup process with the setup tooling
• Running setup validation once per map world
• Confirming your admin command routines against the current docs

Thanks to everyone testing, reporting edge cases, and helping shape this release.

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