With a ton of new people showing up, I thought it would be a nice idea to fill you all in about what I am working on, and what my plans are for the near future of Allumeria. Over the past week, I have started working on multiplayer support!
Testing the chat system and building a small parkour course in a very early build
The biggest priority for multiplayer is getting the peer to peer system set up. What this means for you is that it will be incredibly easy to play Allumeria with your friends! The goal is to allow players to seamlessly go from playing singleplayer to having their friends join the game. There will be a button in the pause menu that allows you to host your game, and anyone in your Steam friends list will be able to click "Join Game" and start playing.
As for dedicated servers, this is a lower priority and will likely be done later in development. For now, the primary focus is the simpler peer to peer gameplay, as I imagine that will be the easiest method for most players.
Joining a multiplayer game via direct IP connection
Right now you can connect through Steam or a direct IP address. The world state is synced, so you can build things with your friends. This is very early days though, so a ton of things are missing. Right now I am working on getting entities to match up over the network. This means things like monsters, projectiles, bosses. It's a very time consuming process getting things to match up, especially in a sandbox game where everything can be modified and updated at any time.
So I expect this to take a little while, but my goal is to try and get it done before Christmas. Will see how reasonable that goal is when I get there, as it's always easy to underestimate how much time something will take to develop.
Originally, the plan was to start working on NPC's, housing, and beds before I started multiplayer. But this plan changed after I studied the October Next Fest, and saw that all the games that did well, were all multiplayer. So it made me realise, if I want Allumeria to do well, I'm going to need to start on Multiplayer ASAP, and make sure it becomes a core part of the game.
Right now players just show as a blank bounding box holding a pickaxe. Hopefully these will be swapped out for full character models soon
After I am finished with entities, then I will need to focus on syncing inventories, syncing damage, events, effects, special systems like fishing, then I need to implement player models and player customisation. It's a lot of work. Since it's so time consuming, there probably wont be any content updates over the next month, and that's one of the reasons why I wanted to make this post, to assure everyone that the game is still moving forwards.
Once multiplayer is done, whats the plan?
The next content update I have planned will introduce NPCs. These NPC's would each have unique requirements for moving into your town. NPC's will request specific furniture, and have comfort levels that need to me met. For example, a wizard npc may request a crystal ball, a room in a high place (like a tower) and have furniture requirements like a bed, lighting, and an enclosed space.
I wanted to do it this way to encourage building and give people a reason to build things in specific ways. If I give every npc different requirements and preferences, it also shakes up the formula and requires you to be more creative with where and how you make rooms for your townsfolk.
Mockup of what an NPC may want their bedroom to look like. (This is not yet implemented)
These NPCs will then offer services or sell items to you, with discounts depending on how well you have met their needs.
Now to clarify, this next bit is something I would like to do but has a low chance of making it into the game (at least within the next few months). I would like to allow townsfolk to do tasks, like farming, fishing, crafting, forestry, maybe even mining. I think it would make the world seem more dynamic and would encourage people to create walkable towns and connect things together so their townsfolk can walk around and do their chores. To me, this is the ideal outcome, but I know I won't have time to get this specific feature done before Early Access starts, so the simpler implementation is what I will be focusing my time on.
Beds will be arriving at the same time, because I wanted to re-use the comfort system that I will make for NPCs. The goal would be that sleeping in a bed will check your environment to see if it is comfortable or not. If you are sleeping in a well lit, well decorated room, the night will pass quickly. However, if you place a bed out in the open, in a dark forest, it will be very uncomfortable, and the night wont pass at all. This would be in an effort to encourage building a small base anywhere you would like to sleep. I want to avoid the phenomenon of carrying a bed around with you so you can sleep anywhere.
Originally I wanted to finish the desert content before early access, but I think I wont have time to give it the care and attention that it needs before the game releases in Early Access. So now, I have stripped the plan back to focus on the two essential elements. Multiplayer and NPCs. I feel like these two goals are achievable within the time frame that I am working with.
I am thinking that my plan is as follows:
Finish working on multiplayer
Introduce multiplayer in the first Demo version of Allumeria
Public playtest will be closed at this point, but players with access currently will retain access
Freeze the content in the demo and work on polishing it as much as possible before next fest, fixing bugs and doing some marketing and outreach to get more people interested in the game
Participate in the first Next Fest next year
When the demo has reached a stable, polished point, start working on the npcs, beds and housing
I would also like to rework some structures in the game and add some more content in general to make it worthwhile for people who played the demo to get the full game.
Once all this new stuff is done, then I get to push the big, scary, green button and release the game into early access.
Releasing into Early Access will be a very nerve wracking moment for me, I am sure. There is a lot riding on it, and the reception to the game and how it performs will likely determine what I can do going forward. I will of course be updating the game regardless, as it is early access of course, but it will determine the scale and frequency of updates I can put out. I've had developers, composers, and artists all reach out to me asking if they can work on the project, but I've had to decline so far since I have been making Allumeria on my own with a budget of $0. Once the game is up for sale, I am hoping I will at least be able to afford hiring a composer to make a full soundtrack for the game.
As for now, I have opened a Patreon account if you wanted to financially support Allumeria's development. https://www.patreon.com/cw/Unomelon
But just to be clear, I don't expect anything, and I would prefer if you donated based on the game I have already made, not what you hope the game will become. It's important to me that I don't over-promise and under-deliver, and this is especially important when there is money involved. So please, if you are going to donate, do so based on the game that is available to you right now, flaws, bugs and any other annoyances included, not what the game may become in the future. The Patreon perk is just access to an exclusive channel in the game's Discord (https://discord.gg/V63tUpTj6g), and nothing else. You don't get access to the game or anything, its just there as an avenue for support.
With that being said, the best way to support Allumeria is completely free. Don't spend any money if you can't afford it, because you can help a lot just by spreading the word about the game. So, so many people have found out about Allumeria both from word of mouth, and YouTube videos that other creators have made about the game. Anything I have put out myself pales in comparison to the videos made by Dialko, Mongster, and now OrangE. So if you know a creator who you think would love Allumeria, please let them know! Videos about the game genuinely make a difference, whether big or small.
I am very active (maybe too active) in the Allumeria Discord server. I'm constantly discussing the game, its features, bugs, and suggestions with players like you. If you wanted to come and give feedback, maybe you have a great suggestion, or something you really don't like about the game and you want to speak your piece, all feedback is welcome.
Wishlisting the game means you will be notified of both when the demo comes out and when the demo enters early access. So if you don't want to keep up with development but are still interested, it will ensure you won't miss when the game goes live.
And that's it! Please let me know in the comments if there's anything you would like me to talk about next time I make one of these posts. I'm looking forward to hearing from you, and thank you everyone for playing Allumeria! You are amazing!