This update is about twice as big as most updates will be, with almost a full chapter of new tasks unlocked including the first multiplayer mode (Castle Battles). 3 new premium buildings added, these are 3 of the 4 total buildings that can only be upgraded with diamonds.
This new PVP mode is for 2 players, and at this early stage of the game is setup peer to peer which means the player defending the battle also hosts it as the server. In 2 player modes peer networking seems fine, and makes sense that you are actually visiting the defender's kingdom.
Early Access is also about to end, and we will do our official launch in about a week, mostly me waiting for some marketing sources. This game is free and worked on by just myself so I do need your help in getting more players by spreading the word and good reviews.
Expect some bugs in the new content as always when it is first released. I do what I can to fully test it but I can not see all the different types of little (or sometimes big) bugs that happen under normal play. My own play and testing is significantly different than your game experience. Some small code breaks may look much bigger or break the game are often easy to fix once I focus on it.
Known Issues - Multiplayer: (There will be minor updates this week with fixes)
1. Attacker siege weapons - attackers get 2 siege weapons. The X button on keyboard or joystick switches from one to the other. This has a conflict that I am working out, so the 2nd siege isn't used (but appears as it should)
2. Smooth transition in and out of lobbies - This issue is also related to #3 below, and shouldn't be too bad for castle battles, but if you win/lose a match, make sure you have left the last lobby. If you see any timer with a cancel button, that is for the lobby and click cancel if it doesn't disappear automatically.
3. Random queen breaking - there are many different situations this can happen, I generally switch to my king and back to queen to fix it but I'm adding a "Reload Queen" button (next update). It's difficult to detect when it breaks to auto fix it, so while I fix the real bugs that cause the problem, the new button will fix it without needing to reload the game.
4. I have fixed some spell locking issues where it freezes, I was adding a lot of new code to this for multiplayer, and it breaks with the smallest thing, but I added some monitoring of it so the game can fix itself automatically, but I expect to find a few more places to fix before it totally stable. Once stable though, it shouldn't have any more issues for the rest of the game.
Lastly, a note about the game development and what to expect. This update marks about 25% (chapter 5 of 20) of the story content and features. It's easy to assume that means the game is 25% written but programming wise, its closer to 75% written as to make even 1 chapter available requires most of the underlying systems to work. The cutscenes system for example took about 1/3 of total development time so far, but now adding even a long cutscene takes 0 programming. So once we get past a few parts that I literally couldn't test by myself, like the multiplayer, adding future content gets easier and easier reusing the same systems (like monsters, siege, soldiers etc).