Multiplayer Improvements Update (2/?)

Today's patch will be continuing the focus on multiplayer improvements, as well as some general game optimizations not related to multiplayer specifically. With this patch I'm officially taking multiplayer out of "Experimental" and putting it into "Beta"! There will of course still be further improvements and tweaks to the net code but I think I'll be comfortable with calling multiplayer an official feature no longer in testing if this patch holds up well enough for a few weeks or months. I'd like to thank everybody who has helped test multiplayer with me, both friends and the few players who have purchased my game and supported me to this point. The game would not be in as good as condition if it weren't for everybody's fantastic feedback!

Unless there are game breaking bugs that I've missed in this update that needs to be addressed, you can expect the next update after this to be a content update to add new and fun features! Don't forget to head over to the official Discord to post your feature requests (and bug reports)! I'll be looking out for any suggestions and brainstorming new ideas in the next coming weeks.

Tweaks

• Item/Gear/Inventory changes under the hood.

  • Significant changes have been made in attempt to optimize and more accurately replicate client side changes to items, gear and inventory.
  • Placing items using left click (e.g. setting the camera up on the tripod) have been moved into local space, only updating the position server-side once placement has completed. This makes placing items more responsive, even when there is connection latency, at the expense of other players not being to see you actively place the item in the world.

• Client Authoritative Movement

  • Moved away from Server Authoritative movement in favor of Client Authoritative movement. As it stands, the game is early in development, but for the foreseeable future I don't see Cul-De-Sac being a PvP competitive game, nor are there any meaningful statistics/competitive leaderboards implemented, so for now I'd like to focus on making the game fun and smooth for everybody instead of worrying about people cheating their location in game while they're playing with their friends. The current Server authoritative system for movement is in a good spot, mostly just having issues with less-than-ideal connections and high latency/packet loss so later down the line when the game matures, I may reimplement it back in, or allow an option to turn it back on when/if public lobbies are introduced.

• Misc.

  • Turned off player collision with other players. No more blocking doorways!
  • Fixed an issue with the backpack collision on client side when dropping.
  • Fixed an issue with being able to sprint when running sideways or backwards.
  • Disabled 3rd person camera mode.

UI

• Added a basic UI for the death screen to make it more clear that you can spectate other players.
• Removed "Experimental" from the multiplayer button on the main menu.
• When you receive a new note, you'll get a notification ping and info box in the top right corner.
• Updated developer notes in-game.