The long awaited online multiplayer beta has arrived! This means you can now play Story & Arcade co-op modes online with friends. To give it a try, right click 'properties' on Dual Core in Steam, go to the 'Betas' tab, and select "publicbeta".
To start an online game, you should proceed as if you were going to play normally (currently 'Versus' mode isn't supported), but select "online (beta)" from the character select screen. This will allow you to browse and/or create online games.
There was a lot of work involved in this update(!), so it's very possible that there are still a few bugs present (hence it being a beta). I'll be fixing these as I find them, or as you report them, but the ones I'm most interested in hearing about right now, are issues with being able to create or connect to games. Let me know of any problems! (and watch out for pesky firewalls blocking internet access to the game)
Network lag/latency is always going to be a tricky issue with an arcade-y game like Dual Core, but hopefully I've been able to minimise its effects.
Once I'm sure everything is reasonably reliably, and I haven't introduced any game breaking bugs(!) I'll bring the new features across to the main version.
In addition, this beta version includes some udpated mouse controls, which hopefully imrpoves the use of inventory when using keyboard/mouse. You can now use RMB to bring up an inventory popup.