Beacon 2.0

Major Features and Changes

Ark: Survival Ascended Support

This version of Beacon allows the creation of Ark: Survival Ascended projects, which will connect to Ark: Survival Ascended servers.

New Mods Editor

The old Blueprints tab has been renamed Mods and given a bunch of new features. A new Community tab, just like the Projects tab, allows you to search for mods that other users have previously processed with Mod Discovery. Mod Discovery results are automatically added to the Community tab, and running Mod Discovery on a mod that has already been discovered by another user will ask if you'd like to download their results instead. Mod authors can now also use Mod Discovery to help load their data into Beacon.

Better Project Sharing

Adding users to a project now happens instantly. Also, users have roles: Admin, Editor, and Guest. Editors have the same permissions as in older versions of Beacon. Admins are Editors who can add or remove Editors or Guests. Guests have read-only access to the project and cannot create configuration files. Projects still have only one Owner, who is responsible for adding or removing Admins.

If multiple users have the project open at the same time, they will be warned if their project has changes and another user has just saved the project. This helps reduce the chance of two users overwriting each other's changes.

Changes to External Account Authorizations

In the past, Beacon has stored external account authorizations (such as to Nitrado) inside the Beacon project. This is very secure, but can also be very cumbersome, especially if something goes wrong. And there were a lot of ways things could go wrong.

These authorizations are now part of your Beacon account. Once you sign in to Beacon, you will see a new "Connections" option in your account control panel. Nitrado login, as well as GameServerApp.com and Nitrado long life tokens can be added here. Your projects will automatically use these authorizations.

Opening an old project that has authorization data will automatically add it to your Beacon account if you don't have a matching account.

Full Release Notes

• Added more detail to recent projects list.
• Restored autosaves will save back to the original instead of asking to save a new version.
• Connected services are now stored in your Beacon account instead of your projects.
• Added support for Nitrado long-life tokens.
• Login window uses Beacon's v4 OAuth API.
• Config manager can assign sets to servers.
• New project format holds mod content.
• New mod editor is more organized and supports better import and export options.
• Mod discovery can run inside a mod editor.
• Mod discovery uploads Ark: Survival Evolved results to the community.
• Increased system requirements to macOS 10.14 and Windows 10.
• Added setting for profile icon.
• Added setting to show symbols on switch controls.
• Cloud projects can keep local backup versions.
• Improved sharing controls.
• Added buttons to reprioritize config sets.
• Project sharing changes are instant.
• Added a hint to Nitrado's "state 4" error.
• Increased Nitrado request timeout to 120 seconds to improve the success rate when their API is overwhelmed.
• Improved error messages when loading a project from disk on Mac fails due to the system sandbox.
• Deploy logs can be scrolled properly without being locked to the bottom.
• "Single Player, Local Files, or Copy + Paste" has been split into two options: "Files on your computer" and "Copy + Paste." This improves consistency so that Beacon knows which content to use. In the past it was possible to choose a file but make changes in the text area, making it impossible to know which should be considered correct.
• Improve language of the Omni notice bar and dialog.
• Added "Game" column to Cloud and Community project lists.
• Added a "Migrate Anonymous Accounts" tool to the help menu. This normally happens when switching from an anonymous account to a named account, but this tool can help in case something goes wrong.
• Added a "Remove Unknown Content" tool to ASA project's Tools menu that will look through the entire project and remove anything that isn't known by Beacon's database. This can be useful when importing an older ASE config that may have items that ASA does not support.
• Fixed exception with MOTD ends with </>.
• Added column to Accounts editor to show the Beacon account each row belongs to.
• The user menu in the top-right corner of Beacon will show the full username.
• Improved disambiguation logic.
• Fixed wonky section resizers.
• Improved positioning of toolbar help tags near screen edges.
• Fixed experience wizard starting level.
• Improved the behavior of File -> Close.
• Beacon will recognize the "/Script/Engine.Blueprint" paths generated by the ASA dev kit.
• Added "Show Diagnostic Information" option to the Help menu.

Beacon 2.0 Beta 5

• Creatures are not detected by ASA mod discovery.
• Improved algorithm for mapping item unlock classes to their items.
• New "Show Diagnostic Information" option in the Help menu.
• More login logging.
• Fixed ASA mod export.

Beacon 2.0 Beta 4

This build merges the beta back into the main Beacon install. The old beta versions will be uninstalled.

• Fixed experience wizard starting level.
• Fixed a bug with device private key encryption.
• Fixed loading loot item sets from ancient v2 projects.
• ASA's MessageSetterID setting will no longer be extracted into the message of the day.
• Fixed opening projects from beacon:// urls.
• Fixed PreventDuplicates and AddToDefaults values getting swapped.
• Empty loot objects will not be loaded from projects.
• Improved behavior of File -> Close.
• Request queues should no longer get stuck. This is most obvious when trying to add more than one user to a project.
• Added log messages to help track down excessive login requests.
• Beacon will recognize the "/Script/Engine.Blueprint" paths generated by the ASA dev kit.
• Implemented a very janky mod discovery for ASA. While better than nothing, it'll often be wrong, especially for engram unlocks. It's the best we can do for now.
• ASA servers are no longer treated as platform-specific.
• Removed "Force Console Compatibility" option from ASA projects.
• Fixed "Go To Issue" button in project validation step.
• Login tokens will compensate for user clock differences.
• Fixed duplicate loot item set naming issues.
• Added "Account" menu to Nitrado and GameServerApp import to allow filtering the server list when more than one account is available.

Beacon 2.0 Beta 3

• Fixed "Setup Fibercraft Server" default settings in ASA projects.
• Fixed exception creating a Template from an item set migrated from an ASE project.
• Handling weird exception trying to look up mod info from CurseForge.
• Fixed exception closing a project while a Nitrado server view is open.
• Fixed bad loot drop import.

Beacon 2.0.0 Beta 2

• Fixed loot drops not loading from v7 ASE and ASA projects.
• Fixed numerous ASA mod registration bugs.

Beacon 2.0.0 Beta 1

• Fixed an exception while trying to determine the encoding of an empty file.
• Creature Spawns and Loot Drops store their data differently to make projects more resilient to missing or unknown content.
• Fixed exception when MOTD ends with </>.
• Added column to Accounts editor to show the Beacon account each row belongs to.
• The realtime cloud connection is more reliable.
• Added support for ASA templates and mods.
• Fixed exception running the "Setup Transferrable Element" tool.
• ASA projects will always set MaxDifficulty to false.
• User menu now shows the full username.
• Improved disambiguation logic.
• Fixed wonky section resizers.
• Improved positioning of toolbar help tags near the screen edges.

Beacon 2.0.0 Alpha 6

• Fixed SFTP import.
• Fixed cloud project version listing.
• Fixed "Save As" reusing member data.
• Updated ASA "Item Stat Limits" list.
• Added "Game" column to Cloud and Community project lists.
• More legible cloud status icons.
• "Refresh Purchases" now confirms success or failure.
• Added a "Migrate Anonymous Accounts" tool to the help menu. This normally happens when switching from an anonymous account to a named account, but this tool can help in case something goes wrong.
• Added a "Remove Unknown Content" tool to ASA project's Tools menu that will look through the entire project and remove anything that isn't known by Beacon's database. This can be useful when importing an older ASE config that may have items that ASA does not support.
• ASA projects can now import from ASE projects. This process is not perfect, but there are additional improvements that can be made in the future.
• Added notices to Mods and Templates that these features are not ready for ASA yet.

2.0.0a5

• Added clarity to the Omni warning when exporting or deploying.
• Fixed ticket submission when a project is attached.
• Fixed issues with file writing on deploy.
• Real time communication is more resilient.
• Fixed "invalid character" errors while importing.
• It is now possible to clone config sets from the config set manager window.
• Removed some unnecessary menu items.
• Fixed ASA file import label.
• Fixed an issue causing the project icon not to update after regenerating the project's encryption key.
• Restored "Levels and XP" editor for ASA projects.
• ASA maps picker is no longer too narrow.
• Fixed creature disabling in ASA projects.
• Adjusted placement of maps and mods dialogs.
• Fixed SFTP file listing.
• "Refresh" button in Servers editor will no longer clear the server settings.
• Fixed importing GameServerApp.com ASA templates.
• Projects are marked as modified while opening if there is at least one user that needs an updated project encryption key.

Beacon 2 Alpha 4

• Fixed exception while trying to edit creature stat multipliers.
• Fixed exception showing engram control settings.
• Fixed exception when double-clicking the Start button in a Nitrado server view.
• Fixed exception while right-clicking a blank space in the editor list.
• Improved language of Omni notice bar.
• No longer tries to use the wrong document editor to open an ASA project.
• ASA projects will appear in the Cloud projects list.
• Setup Guided Editors tool will finish again.
• Setup Guided Editors tool will update the editors list when finished.

Beacon 2 Alpha 3

• Ark: Survival Ascended Support!!: This is still early alpha. The game hasn't even been out for 24 hours, and we still have a lot to learn, but this should get you started. At this time, mod content and templates have not been updated with ASA support.