Mercury roadmap – Mercury 3 release

[Heliodex]

This issue outlines a plan for all components of the Mercury Suite (not just Mercury Core) that need to be completed before the release of Mercury 3, the hosted version of Mercury Core currently at mercs.dev. Of course, launching Mercury 3 isn't our actual aim; it's improving the tools in the Mercury Suite, however Mercury Core's previous development processes have proven that launching a live revival platform is a good indicator for our actual metric and allows us to attract more testers.

This timeline is in roughly chronological order from now to public release, is not final, and excludes items we don't plan to complete before the release.

• Proxy gameserver connections to prevent IP address leaks by hiding addresses from Studio
• Launcher fixes to allow launching as non-root user on Linux
• Fix site forms on the forms branch and merge
• Re-introduce landing page for logged-out users in production deployments
• Finish implementation of the new Economy service on the ledgertests branch and merge
• Script loading fixes to prevent injection or other vulnerabilities due to find-and-replace/regular expression issues
• Finish implementation of Studio Site service on the client branch and merge
• Database reset to prepare moving of assets and currency to the new Economy service, reissuance of registration keys to beta testers
• Testing of advanced economy systems including trading
• Implementation of system for uploading of audio and script assets
• Improved group features, fixes for joining and management, allow groups to act as owners for assets/currency
• Implementation of user direct messages
• Open-source release of Mariner DLL hook
• Relaxation of registration restrictions, either by implementation of a hierarchical key-sharing system or removal of registration keys entirely
• Database reset
• Initial platform release

I'll edit this issue to add the relevant sub-issues soon.