Evolve

Introduction

Caspertech has operated in Second Life since 2009. While many other systems have come and gone, we've remained serving the Second Life business sector with enthusiasm and passion. Over time, we've improved, upgraded and adapted our technology significantly, and introduced a wealth of new features and upgrades.

While we are absolutely proud of our legacy and our accomplishments, the many years brought with them increasing amounts of technical debt, making maintenance a growing problem. It's time to evolve!

Evolve is a complete rewrite of our entire ecosystem. It's been in progress for a number of years, and is nearing completion.

What will change?

Internally, everything. This project is a complete rebuild from the ground up. The new architecture will be significantly faster, more reliable, more maintainable, and will give us the flexibility to introduce some very exciting new features across the board.

Externally, we are working hard to ensure that the new framework is largely functionally the same - your devices will continue work the same way that you are used to. That doesn't mean that things won't change, but change will be gradual, so that nobody has to re-learn from scratch.

Why is this taking so long?

Caspertech is a collection of very big systems. We have millions of devices in-world, and millions of USD worth of transactions are processed through our systems every month. Even minor changes need thorough planning, testing and thought before deployment - a large-scale project like this requires that to be escalated to another level.

What has been done so far?

• Stabilisation - We've done intensive work to diagnose the causes of stability issues and address the underlying causes. Prior to May 2024, we didn't have a great track record for uptime, and while our failover systems ensure that we don't lose transactions, we absolutely understand that any disruption harms your business, and so this was a top priority. Our customers will have noticed significant improvements in this area of late.

• Database unification - we've merged our distinct systems (CasperVend, CasperLet, CasperSafe, CasperUpdate, Rental kiosks) together into a single "entities" database, allowing us to develop a single framework for everything.

• Refactored legacy code - As a stepping stone, we've fully typed and linted our legacy PHP Code, which gives us the advantage of well-defined data structures permitting an easier transition.

• Developed an entirely new, robust, fast back-end system for handling in-world requests.

• Modernised and re-written the CasperVend scripts to take advantage of modern LSL features, using the new back-end.

• Started to migrate our web services to the new framework. Thus far, the ticket system and redelivery site are migrated, with much more to follow.

• We've already added a bunch of new features made possible by the above work, like managers, store credit control and rental credit, with much more to come.

What's happening now?

• Testing and rollout of Caspervend v2.80, with freshly re-written scripts to use the new framework. This will be gradual, starting with some expansion packs and eventually moving to the main vendors.

What's to come?

• Moving the transactions processing system to the new framework

• Migrating CasperLet, CasperSafe, CasperUpdate and our other products to the new framework

• A fresh, unified, responsive web user interface for our control panels

How long will it take?

We expect the Evolve project to reach completion in 2024 or early 2025. However, it's only a small part of our road map for the future, and we have much planned beyond that, and many exciting new features and innovations for merchants will follow.

Thank you!

We'd like to thank you for being on this journey with us. There have been rocky times, for sure, but we remain steadfast in our resolve and passion for our products, for our community and customers, and for Second Life business in general.

~Casper