Anyway, I'm from Denmark and therefore don't celebrate it - however, who says no to celebrate something with digital fireworks? That's what I thought!
Last year, we had a time limited open-alpha of the multiplayer version of the game, so all of you could try it out. I even did a live stream where we tried to stress test it - ahh the good old bean days - where you there?
Soon I will enable 4th of july in both the multiplayer-beta and the normal version of the game, to get into that epic mood - keep an eye out for updates when we get a bit closer.
I hope to see some of you in game around 4th of july :)
Status on default maps in multiplayer
The Town map is now almost fully working in multiplayer, which is a big thing. The thing is that these native maps have destructible objects, which I had to completely rewrite to make it work in multiplayer.
So far I have only worked on Town, but I assume Ranch and City will be easier (famous last words), as all the heavy lifting have been done as part of making Town.
When I say "also fully working" it's because there still are some tiny things. Some are technical that you don't see, but one that is visible is fire. Fire is not yet working synced in multiplayer, but it's something I will look into too soon. Well, there is some fire, but now really multiplayer-synced.
Anyway, getting into too many details here I think, just wanted to mention it, in case you were missing fire in Town. :)
Next step - settings UI & singleplayer
I haven't changed the settings UI at all in the multiplayer development, which is why it's starting to look at bit out of place as I have updated almost all other UI.
However, not only the UI itself needs to be updated, but also how the settings work internally. The reason is that there will be many more options and settings in the game in the future and we need a UI that can handle and scale with that need. I only just started on this, but here you can get an idea of how its going to look and work.
Singleplayer need to work too soon, as even though multiplayer is a very requested feature, a lot of players still like to just play alone in singleplayer. Therefore it of cause have to work too..
Change log
I have pushed the following updates since last Developer News. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1079260/view/4158592372457518434 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1079260/view/6211107361531204940 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1079260/view/4173227802713366883 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1079260/view/4173227802705954382 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1079260/view/4173227802702435500 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1079260/view/4157464570512522374 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1079260/view/4157464570508833981 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1079260/view/4179981934826362715
This is all for now - need to get back to work on the next update :)
I was actually planning on working on new settings ui this week, however, due to a bug in the last update, I ended up fixing that and a lot of other stuff now that I was at it ;)
Now all should be good with below changes, hopefully, so I can get back to the settings ui.
## Added - Added new "Very Slow Fuse" to the FuseConnectionTool, as we need a slower fuse now that we have mortars where things are placed very close. "Very Slow" is burning a 0.06 m/s (meters per seconds), in comparison the current "Slow" (green) burns at 0.25 m/s
## Changed - Generally improved the messages shown to clients if kicked, banned, disconnected etc. as I have seen a lot of players being confused, for good reason, about some of the error messages and behavior. It should be a bit better now. As an example, as a client you can now see the difference between if the host shutdown the server on purpose or if something else more unexpected happened - Reverted the "audio occlusion" or "muffled" sound effect to as it was before. The effect was very cool, in some scenarios, but really odd and annoying in others. Reverted it for now, but the audio system I'm using just released a new version with much better options for adding stuff like this, so it might come back again later, if I can get it to work better than it did here - Upgraded to Unity 2022.3.33
## Fixed - Fixed issue where the ignite tool would ignite a random mortartube if aiming at the mortar it self. Now it will only ignite the actual shell/fuse you are looking at (highlighted). If mortar is pickedup in hand, random mortartube will be ignite until no more left. This is so you can ignite while carrying it - Fixed issue where FuseConnectionPointIndicators (the yellow thing) wasn't shown on shell being loaded after you switched to the FuseConnectionTool - Fixed issue with SpawnTool where initial distance of a new selected object to spawn, wasn't reset correctly. Also fixed issue where you could actually scroll the object beyong the limits set by me :) - Fixed issue that resulted in a lot of errors on clients and missing objects in Town. It is now synced properly again
## Fixed - Fixed issue where error was logged when Right Click erase with Erase Tool - Fixed issue resulting in "[Netcode-Server Sender=1] Destroy a spawned NetworkObject on a non-host client is not valid. Call Destroy or Despawn on the server/host instead." - Fixed null reference in DestroyOrDespawn method
## Changed - Upgraded to Unity 2022.3.32 - Multiplayer-enabled a lot more things in Town - meaning objects are synced between players so you see things in the same places - Updated "bad word list" used in chat and lobby names - Tweaked the audio occlusion (muffling) to be least "sharp" in it's calculation and muffling of sounds
## Fixed - Fixed issue where mortars loaded with shell(s) couldn't be ignited when hold in hand - Fixed issue where player ignite tool started at a wrong position
## Added - Add back Town map! It's not fully "multiplayer-enabled" so you will see some props not being synced, but destruction work - Added support for multiple player spawn locations in a map. Not in use in any maps at this point, but it's not possible - Added different footstep sounds in Town depending on ground - Asphalt, grass and wood. - Added some new logic to simplify player animation the further away the camera is. This is to save performance rendering detailed animation of players you can't even see or that are very far away
## Changed - Upgraded to Unity 2022.3.30 - Changed the sound occlusion cutoff frequency and timing. This is to deepen the sound if you are behind stuff.
## Fixed - Fixed issue where clients couldn't pickup debris from destroyed objects - Fixed issue where not all debris from destroyed church were network synced - Fixed issue with occlusion culling. However, it seems occlusion culling isn't working on clients for now, but there are no graphical issue as far as I know - Fixed issue where the DayNightTimeTrigger component wasn't in sync at start up/spawn - Fixed the leftover destruction objects I forgot in Flat map - it's not gone again - Fixed issue where player wasn't spawned rotated correctly in relation to the PlayerSpawnLocationPrefab. This fix might mean that you will spawn facing a different way than you are use to. Modders can update the rotation of the PlayerSpawnLocationPrefab next time they update their map
## Added - Added new (temporarily) map - Destruction Lab! This map is added to make it easier for me and you, to test out destruction. The thing is, as I'm working on making Town, Ranch and City playable in multiplayer, destruction is a big part of it. You might think that it already works, yes in single player, but making it work in multiplayer is a different story. This is why I added this map to easier test this in isolation and now you can too. Do go ahead and test those explosives on all the things you see in this new map :)
## Changed - Upgraded to Unity 2022.3.27 - Upgraded to new Vivox SDK 16.2.0 which forced me to rewrite a log of the chat system, as the SDK has been changed a lot. However, it's a good thing as the SDK is now much easier to use and figure out
(Simpsons characters are not part of the game, but from a mod)
Hey!
Its been another month and time for an update from the developer - aka me :)
In case you missed it, Public Multiplayer Beta is open! https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1079260/view/6242613536165636826
Town, Ranch and City maps
The overall main focus for me over the last weeks have been to try and make the "default" maps work.
It might sound odd and you are thinking - Hey the default maps already work, right?
Well, yes I could enable the default maps we know from the current version (also known as Singleplayer version) - however, very quickly you could see that it's not working properly. As you know in these default maps things can explode - this currently is made only to work in singleplayer, meaning these explosions will only be visible for the host and not for all client. Similar, all the things you can move around in these maps, are not yet multiplayer-enabled, meaning the position, rotation, state etc. is not synced over the network. This result in the experience is terrible in multiplayer and people are not seeing the same things.
Therefore this is what I'm working on right now. It might sound easy, but there are some technical reasons why this isn't super trivial - but I use to make things work :)
Already I have made good progress, even though its been pretty hard to do, as I basically need to redo the entire "destruction system" I had in place in the current version of the game.
If you wanna see how it looked and worked in the current state, I showed it off in the beginning on my livestream yesterday.
Change log
I have pushed the following updates since last Developer News. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1079260/view/4208127528905398460 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1079260/view/4163090898780467922 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1079260/view/4211503960793689203 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1079260/view/4211503960790923135 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1079260/view/4211503960779483061
This is all for now - need to get back to work on the next update :)
