NEO: The Game – Update v1.30.0: Stronger Worlds, Safer Space

Hello everyone,

This update is a big one behind the scenes: we rebuilt the foundations of NEO’s universe so your worlds are more stable, safer, and better protected than ever before. You will keep exploring the same galaxy — it just holds together much better now.

Stability & Reliability

Your position is now saved exactly where it belongs. We fixed a subtle bug where player positions could drift after reconnecting. The exact spot you left is the exact spot you come back to. No more surprise teleports across the map.
Safer saving at server shutdown. The game now finishes every save before it announces success. « Saved all datas. » actually means all your data is written.
No more duplicate star systems. The galaxy generator can no longer create two identical systems at the same coordinates. Existing duplicates found in the live universe were cleaned up safely — no data was lost.

Security & Fair Play

Stronger server authority. Commands for buildings, ships, orders, and stargates now verify that you actually own what you are controlling. A modified client can no longer interfere with other players’ property.

Economy & Progression

Atomic resource economy. Resource gains and costs are now applied atomically — no more race conditions that could lose or duplicate resources under load.
Unique resource and research tracking. The database now guarantees one resource entry and one research entry per player, cleanly.
Smarter loading. Empire listings and stats load with far fewer database queries.

What you should see

Reliable reconnection: position and planet stay exactly as you left them.
Stable sector generation: every system you find is unique.
A smoother, fairer multiplayer experience thanks to server-side validation.

Thanks for playing NEO! Stay tuned for more updates.

— Nalem

Full changelog (technical)

Stability & persistence

Reworked the MongoDB write path: every first-party save is routed through a single reliable gateway with admission, draining, and a final shutdown scope.
Server shutdown is now honest and idempotent: one stop, one deadline, real completion signal. TimedOutDraining is never mistaken for success.
Added a load-completion gate: if a sector fails to load, shutdown reports an explicit failure instead of a fake success.
Atomic upsert for player data models; explicit MongoDB result policies.
Fixed player position persistence: positions on a planet are stored planet-local and converted exactly once at spawn. Legacy drifted data self-heals within one or two cycles.

Economy & data

Introduced an atomic resource ledger: spend and gain operations use guarded $inc. No read-modify-write races remain.
Unique indexes on resources, research, player stats, systems, ships, and ship orders. Duplicate detection is fail-closed (blocked index and log, no data deleted).
Targeted multi-document transactions for trades and diplomacy and linked destruction. Standalone MongoDB fails explicitly instead of silently downgrading.
schemaVersion with idempotent, non-downgrading migrations. Legacy documents remain readable and spendable.
Removed dead code and added a standalone-transaction regression test.

Space & generation

Fixed concurrent galaxy generation: duplicate system creation is now impossible (existence check, atomic guard, unique index).
Production database deduplicated: 62 duplicate systems removed, 101 planets re-attached to their surviving system. Zero data loss, backups taken.

Network & security

Centralized Can* authorization policy. Mutating Commands (buildings, consoles, ship orders, stargate) now validate real sender identity and ownership.
Hostile-client test matrix added.

Builds & tooling

Restored the DEV client build (server-only persistence files correctly guarded with #if IS_SERVER).
SetVersion batchmode helper; documented DEV server build define requirement.
Harness improvements: client auto-quit after delay, room log dir derived from GameServer cwd.

Verification

EditMode suite green under Server (238+ tests), positive smokes with save/reload cycles, negative smoke (Mongo down) reports explicit failure, independent reviews passed, production smoke on treated sectors validated.