The time has finally come as we are in the final stages of developing the new version of Disinfection, on the brand new engine. Almost all of the core features are there and we've started work on implementing multiplayer code.
Multiplayer:
We are no longer using Steam for all the networking, rather we use the new engine's internal networking capabilities. This means that if we ever want to release and integrate Disinfection on other platforms, we can! However we will still be integrating Steam into the game so players can connect with each other through Steam itself, just like on the old version of the game.
It also means that until Steam integration is implemented you will have to directly connect to the host via their public IP. The game automatically fetches the host's IP and shows it to them to make things easier and we've added some basic instructions to the team create and team join menus to make things easier:
The multiplayer functionality is currently very basic still, but progress is made at a good pace so we're hoping to have all the core functionality working very soon.
The Testing Beta will be updated a lot the coming weeks, with the new multiplayer functionality being phased in step-by-step. Keep in mind that things may be buggy and feel free to report issues you encounter on the Steam Discussions or on Discord.
Player Skins:
New options have been added to the General settings menu for player skins. You can now choose from 4 different spacesuit skins and 4 different character faces:
This will be build and improved upon further at a later stage in development but we wanted to get this basic feature out of the way to make things easier later on.
Weapons:
Weapons are mostly complete and functional, but we are still working on the Reprogrammer as we are looking to improve it and are still experimenting with some approaches. The other weapons are fully working.
Tutorial:
The Tutorial is being working on, we are busy porting the map over to the new engine, polishing the existing assets and making new ones to upgrade it to the standard we've now set with the Lobby.
The Tutorial will mostly stay the same, but will get a lot of general polish and slight adjustments to improve it.