Do you want to play a game? Well now you can with your friends because there are tons of online multiplayer bug fixes, and this combined with general multiplayer polish are the focus of this week’s update!
We’ve been making sure we spend some serious time on fixing things that have been affecting the online multiplayer for some weeks now - since we’re almost done with new content we thought it was the perfect time! but we’re not resting easy. We’ve been making sure we keep the content coming down the line (see below for more) and adding more and more rooms to the level generator for the newest addition to our world set - Ghoul Squad. They should be more varied, fun and better looking than ever before!
Because it’s a dry week for screenshots, here are some fun bits and bobs we’ve been working on for future updates…
Gordon’s terrified of something… but what on earth could scare a big burly manly man like him?!
This is The General. He’s a new character specifically for the story mode, and is very early indeed. In fact all of the art shown here will be redone by Ewan as soon as he gets a chance!
John Strong nattering away. It’s so exciting to see all our heroes and villains come to life!
That’s right! We’re planning a full on story mode for the game, one which will be full of action, betrayal, the world in peril and (original!) cheesy one liners. It’s going to be daft, it won’t get in the way of the action, and with any luck it’ll be chock full of not only references and cheeky nods, but some actual emotion. Story is only ever good when there’s some truth behind it. Tango Fiesta’s story is all about being a hero.
We can’t wait to see what people think - but suffice to say we’re not going to release it half-finished because that’d spoil it all. We may well drop in something to test the systems behind the storyline in the wild, but it won’t be spoilerific!
Enough with the talk about the future though, here’s the full changelog for this fortnight’s update…
ADDED
- Added 14 new rooms to level gen for Ghoul Squad
- Added explosive pumpkins to Ghoul Squad levels
- Added skulls on stakes to Ghoul Squad levels
- Added piles of skulls to Ghoul Squad levels
FIXED
- Enemies are now using the pathfinder again correctly and navigating around levels, providing more interesting gameplay and challenge.
- Fixed issue where the gun wasn't sitting in the correct location on the playercontroller (was over entire body)
- Fixed issue where guns weren't always aiming in the correct direction
- Fixed issue where lobby chat wouldn't appear/work for clients, if returning to the lobby from online gameplay.
- Fixed issue with incorrect weapon indexes being sent across the network in online weapon select
- Fixed issue where on confirmation of character, everyone elses character would be set to john strong
- Fixed arrow display issue with weapon select
- Fixed issue where lag, or potential crash, occurs in a rare case of killing enemies
- Fixed online pickup issue where clients would receive errors when a pickup is collected by anyone
- Fixed rare crash issue with the neutron napsack weaponry side effect (lightning chain)
- Fixed bug where game would potentially crash when joining an online game, and the lobby auto-refresh activates
- Fixed bug where the thrown weapon choice wasn't being sent over the network when setting up players online
- Fixed bug with weapon select where you couldn't re-confirm weaponry, if you back out of a choice and try to re-confirm
UPDATED
- Tweaked and polished the 40 or so existing rooms for Ghoul Squad
- Big performance and optimisation updates applied to the pathfinding system
- Updates to Enemy AI attack process
- Huge online performance and optimisation overhaul, specifically for pickups, enemies, bullets and objectives
- Updated the pipeline for hosting online games
- Increased interval duration for auto-refreshing the lobby browser
KNOWN ISSUES
- We’ve made big progress to resolving the big repro-able hosting bug, around 90% fixed while discovering remaining edge cases. If clients exit a game in progress, the the host follows and the same player tries to rehost, the game doesn’t get set up. A different host is a good solution. the perfect solution is to reboot the game at the moment. Sorry!
- Full Game Loop broken. Currently there’s a REALLY weird pathfinding bug that’s preventing the game from doing what we call a Full Loop. In other words, when you’ve beaten the Ghoul Squad boss, and the game tries to load Island-1 on New Game +, it will fail to load. We’ve getting a fix done, but right now the best thing to do is to just exit the weapon select menu after beating Old Ramishar.
So, what’s next? We're going to be focusing on multiplayer even more, squashing those last hideous bugs, introducing Bosses to the online co-op, making sure all the worlds and enemies work right too. And then... well that's a surprise isn't it!
Until next week, peace!