A few questions about multiplayer

[1337haXXor]

This game looks really good and it's been on my wishlist forever, I just have a few questions I can't seem to find the answer to. I intend to play with a few buddies. How does multiplayer work exactly?

Is there a host and friends who connect? Are worlds/characters all saved on the server(host) side, or does each friend have their own character saves? And similarly, is world progression based on the host/world or character? Lastly, and most importantly, when playing online, can all of us do our own thing in different areas, so to speak, or do we all have to be on the same screen? Thanks!

[Marioalexsan]

One player hosts a server, and up to three others join as clients. You can either connect through Steam, or through good old IP via Lidgren. Connection quality depends on your hardware, network, and possibly the mood of Steam's relay servers.

In multiplayer, the host's world save is used. This means that quests completed, chests opened, and other triggers done on the server won't carry over in your own world save. However, your character save will keep the loot, EXP and other character things you got. It will also remember what quests you've done in multiplayer, and you'll get an option to skip those quests when you return to your single player world.

(In case you really want to have the exact same world file as the host, your game instance also saves the host's world as '100.wld' somewhere in your save folder.)

For the areas thing, you have to be in the same level as everyone else. Whenever someone enters a level switch zone, a "Gather everyone" prompt appears. However, you can definitely go off-screen in some of the bigger levels, or levels that have sub-areas such as house interiors.

[1337haXXor]

Perfect response, thanks!

[Sairek Ceareste]

Also if you want to test the multiplayer itself before buying, the game's demo supports multiplayer. Everyone will have to download the demo to test, but you can test all of its features, functionality, latency, etc.

[Ayaguna]

It's what people told about, but I want to add my view of it specially since I usually play with people that are very far away, this game dont have that great lag compensation it use authoritative netcode for many things when u just want play with a friend, i did some tests on it, if it was well coded it could support very high ping gameplay without major issues, but it cant even handle 150ms when it could have just trust the client to say if it took damage or not, the bandwidth usage is very very high compared to other games, my l4d2 server that runs at 60 tick rate and 8 players, still use less bandwidth than this game with 2 players. Not that bandwidth is a issue in today's network speed but again if it could be coded in a way to use less its better I remember one time it was using 1.3mb upload for just one player what the hell are they sending with that info when position and stuff can be just numbers?, terraria is much better well coded for example, the enemies work even without internet if you drop internet transferring data the client takes assumption of the enemy movment so the enemys still can take damage die and do they programmed routine of course when the internet stream resumes it will have teleports cause you game was no aware of what the other player did, but if you are alone and no players around it the game would resume perfectly without teleports since the ai is very well math coded in terraria a the client can predict the movment, terraria with some tweaks on the netcode can support good gameplay with up to 1000ms without any major issues only things it is authoritative is picking items in the ground and opening chests everything else is very well lag compensated.
My l4d2 server use less than 75kbps per player, devs nowadays don't know how to do good code anymore i hooe they improve it before release last time I tested it i was disappointed.

If you want play games with people from the other side of the world this game is not well coded for that.