Hello! The netcode beta is finally out. I'll explain some more of what that means in a bit, but for now, lets talk about whats coming.
Oh, in case you don't know how to access the beta, here is how:
Right click the DEEPWATER Demo in your steam library, click Properties, find the betas tab, and opt into the netcode-beta branch. Wait for the game to update, and enjoy.
Alright, whats this for? Well, this beta is meant to help me find every single issue with the new version. Sure, I could keep it private and slowly find issues and fix them, or I could involve you guys to speed things up. I would rather speed things up, and I think you guys would like things to move along faster too.
The beta is starting small, with less content then the main version. When I know everything works properly, I re-add content. Once I'm sure that the content works properly, I re-add even more.
We do this until the game is back to normal.
Whats coming once this is done? Well, I promised a major content update for the demo, and a major update is what your gonna get. I've been planning an update for multiple months now, and I wont say much, but this will change everything. Each major update will be like this by the way, I'm not gonna slow down and barely add anything and pass it off as an update. Each major update will be game changing.
After that content update comes out, I'll give it some time, and then release the game as a paid product.
The demo will probably close once the game goes live, but if enough people really want it, I will create a special demo version of the game to stay forever.
Alright, enough yapping about the future, whats all this netcode stuff I keep talking about? Well, the netcode is what makes the game multiplayer. Each multiplayer service provider provides netcode for me to use to make my game multiplayer. The old service I used was pretty bad. I only used it because it was what I was familiar with. I've made many tiny multiplayer games with their service, and they've been great. Keyword TINY. DEEPWATER is not a tiny game.
DEEPWATER just had so much going on that it couldn't keep up, and that caused tons and tons of bugs. It didn't help that all of the servers were located in the US, so if you were far away, you automatically were going to have a bad time. From horrible lag, to some things not showing up for some players, it was horrible. I wasn't able to catch these bugs during development, since me and most of my playtesters are close to the US.
So I had 2 options. Stay on the old system and continue with what I am comfortable with, and turn many people off from the game, or switch to a completely new system.
I chose to switch.
This involved completely rewriting all of the games netcode, and changing how many game systems work. As you can imagine, this isn't a one-and-done thing, bugs will slip through. That's why I'm doing the beta.
Alright, enough from me, thank you to anyone who tries the beta, and reports bugs to me. If you don't know how to report bugs, you can join my Discord server, and I have a dedicated channel for bug reporting. Also happy new year.