Lightspeed Dating releases today! It's been a long and tough road to get here, but I could not be more excited to finally share this special little game with the world. It might not be the most stable and bug-free game out there, but I can assure you that it is absolutely one of the most fun and unique experiences that you can have with your friends.
If you find yourself enjoying Lightspeed Dating please consider giving us a Steam review! It helps us out a lot :)
Problems & Solutions
Having spent much of the last two years testing this beautiful mess of a game I really hope that I caught most of the bugs and quirks that would make this game Not Fun, but due to Lightspeed Dating's use of voice chat as gameplay, and the inherently fickle nature of audio, there are unfortunately some things that are out of my control. Here are some issues you might encounter when playing Lightspeed Dating and how to possibly fix them:
Wobbly or Hard to Understand Voice Filters
This one I've been fighting since the beginning of development. It's come a long way, but unfortunately it still comes up sometimes. Here are some things you can try to fix this problem, or at least make it less of an issue:
- Change your Microphone - Low quality microphones seem to be the number one cause of this issue. If you have any other microphone lying around, be it in a headset or maybe even the in-built microphone in your laptop, I'd encourage you to try it out.
- Move closer to your microphone - If you're far away, or if your microphone's volume is too quiet, the voice filter will have a hard time transforming your voice. Please try to either turn up your microphones volume or to move closer to your microphone when speaking.
- Enable Low Quality Microphone Mode in the Settings - This is something I added specifically to combat the problem of wobbly or hard to understand audio, but it's more of a last resort than a guaranteed fix. I'd recommend the first two options before this.
The Voice Chat servers are unavailable. Please try again later.
This error message either means that the Epic Online Services Voice servers are offline (our voice chat provider), but sometimes also just means that you have to restart your computer. I have no idea why this happens, but it does, so there you go.
Mayhem is too much... Mayhem
The Mayhem game mode is still fairly new and still in active development. Trying to figure out all of the different combinations that make this mode too chaotic is a bit challenging, and you can be assured that it will get better as time goes on. Here are some things you can do to combat its extreme chaotic energy.
- I would recommend absolutely everytime enabling the Judgement Room, as this will make the final round much less obvious. I've been toying with just making this a default setting when you enable the game mode, but I'm still deliberating on that.
- Think carefully about who you disguise yourself as. Did you just watch as another player killed someone? Maybe don't disguise yourself as them in the final round if that player is the only one left alive.
Replays are out of sync, or not playing at all
The replay feature is at the same time the feature I am most proud of, but also the most ashamed of. Through some wonderful programming magic, I am able to provide this without saving them on my servers. This simultaneously protects your privacy, while also saving me a whole lot of server costs. However, this programming magic also makes the replays a bit fickle.
Sometimes, the replays might be out sync, other times their data gets lost in the aether. I hope you'll bare with me while I work out the kinks in this system, and I also hope you don't give up on it, as one of the most fun parts of this game is listening to the replays together after a round.
Future Features
There are a lot of things I'd like to have added before releasing Lightspeed Dating, but at some point you just gotta pull the lever. Here are some things planned for the immediate future (next couple of months).
- More settings, particularly a full screen mode
- An additional character for the Deluxe version
- Overhaul of the Mayhem game rules
- Overhaul of the menu UI (Particularly the close button has some pretty terrible UX right now)
- A who-is-speaking indicator for the replays
- Better Steam integration, particularly being able to invite friends and join servers through the Steam overlay
Also some features that I might want to add soon, but am unsure about when:
- More game modes
- More characters
- Echo cancelation and better noise filtering
- More questions
Do you have any question ideas? Come over to our Discord channel! We have a specific channel for question suggestions :)
Final Thoughts
Overall, I am very happy with what became of Lightspeed Dating. Even now, after continuously playing and testing this game for two years, I still have a ton of fun whenever I play it with my friends. When I first came up with this idea it wouldn't let go of me, simply because I wanted to see what it's like to play, so all of my initial personal goals for the development of this game have been met. However, I would still love it if as many people as possible have as much fun with it has I do. If there's anything I can do to make this experience more fun, don't hesitate to write me bug reports, feature requests or general misgivings to my Twitter account @LightspeedDatin. I will be glad to hear from you!