Much of the last few weeks have been spent in the ever more convoluted maze of trying to fix multiplayer issues, but today’s update should get that back to (mostly) working. I also want to introduce the more interested new contracts to you.
First of all, let me get some of the fixes out of the way: I both managed to optimise the game a little more to make up for the instancing issue we are still having, and I managed to circumvent a problem with the game’s networking solution disconnecting on load.
The latter fix has made it much smoother to start the game in multiplayer mode, but unfortunately, loading a saved multiplayer game was a completely different story. Depending on connection times and computer speeds, instructions could arrive with various off timings while loading the game, leading to a whole page of bugs I needed to figure out how to avoid (while not breaking the single player game either). It has taken a while, but I think the current version should address all of the issues we found - and hopefully we already found most of them. Do let me know if you find any more.
On to more interesting things, I also added a new feature to the game: contracts. Contracts are now offered with each ship, and should be an incentive to A) not just sell all of your goods straight away and B) go down a sprint toward specific resources every so often. Contracts can be found in the port, just under the seed offers, and generally ask you to sell a certain amount of goods within a certain time. If you succeed, you are given an additional reward beyond the sales price, which could include coin, random goods (including medicine for player respawning), or seeds. Should you fail, you are penalised by a certain amount of gold.
You don’t have to accept any of the contracts offered, but once you view them, they will disappear if you don’t accept. At this point, you can have 2 contracts active at the same time, but I am thinking of adding research to increase that in the future. I have also added an “active quests” area to the economy tab of the book, in which you can review active contracts, and decide which one you want to have active in the objectives area of the HUD on the right.
At the moment, the requests of contracts are balances for the early game, but as I get more feedback and expand its features, there will be more mid and late game requests and rewards as well.
Until next time!