Welcome back folks! Hope you had a fantastic holiday and new year. Got a few things to show and a big question regarding multiplayer. Won’t keep you too long though. Nice easy one to get us into the new year. Got your tea?
So I’ve done some more work that’s moving us towards having biomes. First it was the weather effect in the form of snow, now we’re moving towards building forest areas and creating a distinction between that and flat farm land.
You can see around the base of trees the grass is much longer now and contains wild flowers:
Even this small change is bringing a bit of dynamism to the landscape! I’m going to make it so that you can’t plant crops on this long grass, only flat farmland. That will then lead to tools which enable you to cut grass etc. but they’ll come later!
Couple of other small things I’ve worked on. Crafting icons now have tooltips! It was basically just an error that they didn’t! I’d added them to one set of icons and not the other. Now we have this! It makes things a bit clearer.
We’ve also gone back to pre-Christmas graphics I’m afraid! No more snow, Christmas trees or presents, we’re back to greenery for the time being.
I get asked about Multiplayer quite a lot. Quite rightly, it’s a huge part of the game that’s advertised and isn’t yet here, so I want to clarify its state.
The Samphi client you download through Steam contains MOST of the code for multiplayer already. It used to work, I used to play with a friend who lives at the other side of England to me, but it’s a bit decrepit now and will need touching up, but it’s mostly there.
There is also a separate game server client that’s coded. This is a separate app and it’s all setup in Steam to go whenever it’s ready. I’m almost certain I’ve showed it before, but here’s what it looks like:
As it currently stands multiplayer is handled though that server client that’s written in GameMaker. That means it requires you to use Hamachi and means public servers are a nightmare. But, on the flip side, a lot of it is already done so the turnaround on the first implementation of multiplayer would be fairly short(ish).
Now, another option is for me to code a new client from scratch, outside of GameMaker. It would give me full control, mean you wouldn’t have to use Hamachi, and mean that there could be public servers easily. Downside is I’ve never done this before and I’d be starting from scratch.
So what would be the best way to go for you guys? Would you rather a quicker, more restricted multiplayer, or have me bite the bullet and start on a better version from the start? Any feedback here would be greatly appreciated. I’m currently leaning towards the ‘start from the beginning’ so it’s right the first time and easy as possible to use.
Food for thought as multiplayer moves its way up my priority list. I here you, and we’re not far from sticking out teeth into it.
It’s been two weeks since 0.2k was released, and since there’s no bugs reported it’s now moved to the stable branch. Here’s a reminder of what it contains:
- Fixed issue with chests not opening/closing correctly
- Added a new tree* (See breakdown above for more info)
- Added a few more tips to the main menu screen
- Fixed some inconsistencies with textures when custom_textures was enabled.
Not sure really! In the last update I identified player animations, sounds, and a background update as priorities, and they still are, so I’ll likely start one of those to some extent. Multiplayer is steadily working its way up my priorities list as I don’t want to get too far into dev before trying to implement it. It’s a tough decision balancing everything! Let’s leave it open ended. :)
Many thanks for reading! See you back here next week. Please do leave feedback on the multiplayer options, It would be really helpful! Until next week. Ciao!
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