Hi everyone!
I’ve been making great progress on the next big update, and have some news to share, Sapiens 0.5 will come with full multiplayer support!
Sapiens 0.5 will be available to everyone in 2-3 weeks time, on the unstable branch, with the full stable release coming in July.
We’ve been running a private test with members of the community playing together on a persistent dedicated server for the past few weeks. Initially things were a little rough, with a number of bugs and performance issues to iron out. But despite this, it was clear early on that multiplayer was amazing.
I still enjoy just sitting down and playing Sapiens from time to time, but these multiplayer sessions have been by far the most enjoyable for me. Watching other tribes grow, checking up on their progress, stealing their ginger roots when they were offline, just general good fun.
Multiplayer adds a whole new dimension to the experience, and so I felt it was worth spending a little longer to get in and fix those bugs and optimize it now, and ditch the “experimental” disclaimer.
The main result of that extra time is that we’re now able to support more sapiens, and more players. These optimizations benefit single player too, so I have now doubled the sapien population soft-limit in single player, and I’ve removed the camera restrictions too, so you can freely move and explore as far away from your tribe as you like.
This work is just about complete, and so I’m moving back to finishing off other 0.5 features, fixing a few bugs in the new sleds and AI tribe trading mechanics, things like that. Overall it’s really coming together, and I can’t wait for you all to be able to play, even more so now that I’ll be able to join some of your worlds and see what you’re creating. Not long now!
-Dave
