Roadmap

Current modernization

• Complete the include/ark/, src/ and src/plugins/<name>/ layout and snake_case API migration, including Protobuf source naming.
• Release native single-node MySQL and Redis clients in arknet 0.2.0.
• Replace ark database plugins’ legacy drivers, with Asio coroutine entry points, native arknet owning results and module-thread completion.
• Integrate the remaining independent official plugins with optional builds and tests.
• Review Nimbus documentation locally while preserving existing articles and entry points.

Hot-update discussions and implementation are deferred. The original planning list below retains its historical checkbox state; it is not a current API or capability list. Use the current items above, source code and acceptance records to determine implementation status.

High priority

• Put all schemas in one Excel workbook and keep other configuration tables separate, while remaining compatible with the existing format.
• Unify code style.
• Connect to logserver before process startup and fail startup if the connection cannot be established, so logging is available from the beginning.
• Upgrade spdlog.
• Add a dirty data layer that batches changed data after each client request, instead of sending every change separately in small packets with repeated protocol headers.
• Complete documentation for concepts, design principles, server architecture and usage examples.
• Align all basic data structures with C++ containers.
• Add service registry support, considering etcd or consul.
• Use timers for periodic logs and heartbeats instead of update and HeartBeat.
• Update configuration packaging: edit in Excel and generate csv files for the project to read. Use contributor-specific suffixes such as Item.A.xlsx and Item.B.xlsx to reduce collaboration conflicts.
• Control plugin loading order through configuration fields or configuration order.
• Use the AFXml wrapper instead of accessing rapidxml directly.
• Simplify interface class design.
• Generate repetitive code (plugin and module classes).

Low priority

• Update protocol and client handling for Map and Layer (the concepts have changed; client integration is pending).
• Use a different approach to sorting and swapping entries in inventory tables.
• Reduce data synchronization traffic: remove repeated strings such as NodeName and TableName, send index-to-name mappings at login, then use indices for updates and names for persistence.
• Extend DataTable to support more complex structures, such as items containing gems with experience and enchantments, or weapons with random attributes. The existing fixed two-dimensional structure is difficult to extend.
• Add network library and performance benchmarks under benchmark/unittest.
• Add kcp.
• Use SWIG for the scripting module.
• Evaluate ECS: represent all objects as entities and use GUIDs to identify their group and position for fast lookup. Research references include Overwatch, ET and ECS-unity.
• Add coroutines, referring to libgo.
• Introduce tcmalloc.
• Add a monitoring web page using vue-admin.
• Add a Deployment web tool.
• Add message queue processing.
• Add operations tools (tcm & deploy).
• Use multiple threads for selected CPU-intensive work.

Partially finished

• Add spdlog sinks that organize files by directory and rotate by size or hour (partially changed; further changes are needed for the tlog format, /data/binlog/1001/20180627/game1_hour.log).
• Add consistent_hash_map (added, not yet enabled).

Finished

• Implement the new architecture.
• Configure connection relationships instead of setting them manually in code (bus_relation, server_settting). Detect IP addresses and generate ports dynamically instead of specifying them, and express network addresses as URLs such as tcp://0.0.0.0:9001 and wss://0.0.0.0:9001.
• Place Debug and Release binaries together under bin, with separate Debug and Release settings so they can share one configuration set.
• Change guid to an internal pointer type to reduce memory use for other non-guid types. Changed to int64_t; the memory concern no longer applies.
• Add a network plugin to separate network modules from application logic (NetClient and NetServer are still too closely coupled to application logic).
• Add endpoint to the net plugin.
• Merge the kernel and config plugins because kernel depends heavily on config.

Bugs

• ClearRow shifts subsequent row indices. Either preserve the indices and clear only the row contents, or have the client update subsequent indices when it receives DeleteRow.
• Fix ConfigPlugin data loading.
• Fix the return values of AFMapEx First and Next.