G'day Rat Racers, and welcome to the weekly report!
This one is a little late as I've been spending a lot of time making the game's upcoming online mode work, and work smoothly! This was also why last week didn't have a weekly report, as I was doing a lot of planning for how to tackle the online implementation.
For starters, it will be peer to peer. If your computer's internet connection cannot properly obtain direct connections to other players, a relay server will manage this situation for you!
The new network lobby system coming along with the LAN and Online update will also reflect this, displaying a warning if a player (or your PC) couldn't achieve a direct connection to your machine for whatever reason. (Pictured, this particular test was simulated)
In addition, the current planned menu flow is as follows:
As usual, you'll choose "Join Rat Race," however a new menu with the options "Local" and "LAN/Online" will appear.
Selecting the "LAN/Online" option will bring you to a screen, where you'll typically pick "Go Online," then "Enter Matchmaking." Matchmaking is completely random and will match you with the first lobby with open player slots and no race running, otherwise it will create a new one.
After a 30 second countdown, all players will be thrown into a race akin to picking "Quick Race," only it's just yourself vs the others in the lobby. First to finish the race wins and can add another win to their stats. ;)
In addition, the Matchmaking Server software will be made available for anyone to use, for free.
More details on how this will work will be revealed closer to the launch of Online mode.
This will allow anyone to run their own matchmaking server. The game will also have a private lobby option available at launch which will, instead of queuing everyone into a Quick Race, allow the player at the top of the lobby player list to pick the Race Course Environment or even enter a custom Track Seed, just like in singleplayer and splitscreen!
And that's this week wrapped up. Happy Rat Racing! This concludes this weekly report.