Hello everyone,
After many delays the multiplayer extension of Sandbox Apocalypse is finally going to be released this week if no dramatic last minute bugs turn out to be show-stoppers.
It has been a 4-month long endeavour and therefore took me almost 50% of the time needed to develop the initial single player version published in November 2024 (from March till November 2024). The complexities of state management and networking in general were slightly underestimated by me. I had to write many special "tools" so facilitate the testing process, otherwise it turned out to be almost impossible to pin down desync errors etc. But it was worth it. Because switching the game to a Client-Server architecture later would only have increased the difficulties. So I'm happy I did it it now. This also is the reason why I decided against any releases based on the old version in order to focus 100% on this major update which is not backwards compatible. So please do NOT update if you wish to continue your single-player campaign.
You will soon be able to play Sandbox Apocalypse with up to 3 friends (4 players in total) by opening up your local game to your Steam friends. You can continue to play your game in single-player mode and then switch on/off multiplayer at any time as you wish. A player who joins (Join Multiplayer) a friend's game will always keep her/his single-player campaign (Start New Campaign, Continue Campaign) which can be played/continued independently from any multiplayer game played on a friend's computer.
The downside is that there is not much new content because I solely focused on the multiplayer engine. A few things have been added to the game though, for example a new and larger backpack (with better properties), a nice green beret and most imporantly a totally new Zombie phenotype system. Before the zombies were basically randomly equipped each time they were spawned. That is no longer possible in a distributed game, so there needs to be a certain "phenotype" that always looks the same and by which the Host and all Clients can spawn the same Zombie. Ah, and by the way: Zombies now have names! I like this feature a lot (you can switch it off though in the options). Maybe you want to let Chad live for another day while he is walking slightly desoriented across the parking lot... ?
In order to make up for the lack of new content I promise to focus now for the next 2-3 months on new POIs, features and visual improvements. Besides bug fixing of course. So game updates will now become more frequent again.
The screenshot above shows me testing with 3 clients. Also many thanks to all my friends who helped me with multiplayer testing. I could not have done this without you!
Ben