After introducing multiplayer in the previous sprint, Sprint 4 was all about making it personal. Connect 3D now supports real user accounts, secure sign-ins, and friend lists – and with that, the foundations of a social multiplayer game are in place!

Calilynx Accounts and Secure Sign-In

This sprint’s biggest challenge? Authentication and identity. I added support for Calilynx accounts: each player now creates a username linked to an email address. On top of that, I planned to integrate sign-in via Google (Android) and Apple (iOS), but during development I found that Azure – which I’m moving to in the upcoming sprints – has great support available for this, so it will have to wait a bit longer.

The advanced, secure implementation I did this sprint with password renewals, e-mail verifications, JWT access tokens and sliding refresh tokens can probably be mostly replaced then as well. Anyway, Calilynx accounts are all working now! You can:

• Register and sign in using your Calilynx account (email + password).
• Log in across multiple devices with the same identity.

This was still a huge milestone, and a major technical and security hurdle cleared. I learned a lot and some of the logic can surely be usable with the Azure solution as well. 🎉

Friend System

What’s the point of multiplayer if you can’t bring your friends? In this sprint, I introduced a friend system. You can now search for players by username and add them as your friends to quickly play new games with them and also keep track of your wins and losses with each friend.

Starting Games with Anyone

The “Start New Game” screen got a major upgrade. You can now:

• Pick a friend from your friend list.
• Search for any registered player.
• Invite the selected player for a new game.

This required more server-side logic to validate user identities and handling sending new game requests and let the other user accept or deny them. It was a bit tricky, but now it works and it’s fun to test – I’ve already challenged myself on three devices. 😄

Next Up: Deployment and Automation

For Sprint 5, I’ll be shifting focus from features to infrastructure. The plan is to:

• Deploy the backend microservices to Azure, using Kubernetes for orchestration.
• Set up a full CI/CD pipeline to build, test, and deploy automatically.
• Monitor cloud deployment performance and adjust configurations as needed.

This will be the first time Connect 3D truly runs in the cloud – and I’m excited to see it come alive at scale.

See you in two weeks!

– Elena