About Multiplayer

[Alex, Master Penguin]

Edit 24/08/2018

After a lot of consideration, discussing internally and with the community, we've come to the conclusion that multiplayer does not fit in the current design. I've watched countless of let's plays, streams and recordings; and after studying your playstyles, it would be extremely tedious to force you guys down a path just because there's other people on the same map. I really doubt you'd enjoy it.

After all, only a small part of the community really want it (spoke with many other devs of similar games, and showed me some numbers). The fact development should focus exclusively on this for the sake of 10-25% of the community, preventing for the other 75-90% to not receive content, is a bit absurd. Needs of the many, and all that. We really just think that the amount of time required (over half a year) and effort (3 coders full time) would be better spent in giving everyone more content to play with.

On the other hand, now that modding is live and we opened up a lot of the code, it would be possible to add multiplayer as a mod. This has been done in many other games with many more limitations, so not all hope is lost.

To counter this decision, we started designing a competitor AI. Entities that have the same powers and rules as the player: tech tree, budget, permits, etc. They will react to the player and you can trade with, or sabotage them. I know it's not the same, but I really feel that it's the best direction. Hope you can all understand.

All that said, here is the updated roadmap, where you'll see some new things planned: https://trello.com/b/tlk9W9LJ/new-roadmap

Edit 26/08/2018

Look it this way:
- You're forced on a speed
- Cannot pause
- Cannot undo
- Events play even if you're not playing
- Cannot use mods, or you're forced to use the same as others
- Server downtime
- Unavoidable desyncs
- Different patches
- Etc

I wouldn't wish any of this on anybody. Next project will be oriented towards a very competitive multiplayer, to contrast with this, but please understand it was terribly hard decision to make.

Edit 28/08/2018

Many thanks for your calm and constructive feedback, I appreciate it. Please know that sales don't matter to me much, as what is important is people enjoying the game. I don't want RoI to be "meh" or "good", I need it to be "great" or "excellent", even if that means being a hidden gem. With the power of marketing, absolute garbage games top the sales scores, so cannot use that as a metric. Look at RimWorld: an amazing indie game, without MP. It just wouldn't work.

Note that I said it's "not planned", but maybe, once we reach and pass release, it might go back on the table, or we work in tandem with modders to make it happen (this happened many times before).

Just... right now I think it could be very detrimental to the design, and will impact very negatively on all the single players (which are the grand majority), at the cost of selling a bit more, with a much lower userscore.

Edit 19/01/2019

This topic was beaten to death. All that had to be said, was said already. If you wish to continue this conversation, you can find me 24/7 on Discord. If some talented modders add it, that would be awesome, but understand that this game will not have an official support for Multiplayer.

Hate to do this, but it's necessary at this stage: locking thread.

[luckz]

Please keep in mind to keep things MP-able later as you build systems for the SP.

[bAshTi]

It looks awesome. Me and a friend of mine will buy it as soon as multiplayer is implemented.

[peon|Banjo]

Nice to hear. We also will buy some keys as soon as multiplayer is implemented!
Looks promising :)

[Ft RAGE]

Будем ждать русский язык! спасибо.

[Alex, Master Penguin]

Escrito originalmente por ШКВАЛ:

Будем ждать русский язык! спасибо.

Translation: "We will wait for the Russian language! Thank you."

English please on these forums.
And you're welcome :)

[Peats]

Hey there, I'm interested in the game because it reminds me of Anno (which I play a lot).
Is Italian planned? I would have no problems playing in English, though I was wondering if you would consider the possibility of allowing users to help with localizations.
I would be glad to help with Italian, for free.

[Alex, Master Penguin]

Escrito originalmente por Peats:

Hey there, I'm interested in the game because it reminds me of Anno (which I play a lot).
Is Italian planned? I would have no problems playing in English, though I was wondering if you would consider the possibility of allowing users to help with localizations.
I would be glad to help with Italian, for free.

Heya! Italian is possibly going to happen (I'm Italian myself), but if not, you can always mod it in!

[Peats]

Escrito originalmente por Alex, Master Penguin:

Escrito originalmente por Peats:

Hey there, I'm interested in the game because it reminds me of Anno (which I play a lot).
Is Italian planned? I would have no problems playing in English, though I was wondering if you would consider the possibility of allowing users to help with localizations.
I would be glad to help with Italian, for free.

Heya! Italian is possibly going to happen (I'm Italian myself), but if not, you can always mod it in!

Meaning that Steam Workshop will allow users to post their fan translations? That would be great!

[Alex, Master Penguin]

Escrito originalmente por Peats:

Escrito originalmente por Alex, Master Penguin:

Heya! Italian is possibly going to happen (I'm Italian myself), but if not, you can always mod it in!

Meaning that Steam Workshop will allow users to post their fan translations? That would be great!

Yup! Italian, Elven, Klingon...

[Peats]

Escrito originalmente por Alex, Master Penguin:

Escrito originalmente por Peats:

Meaning that Steam Workshop will allow users to post their fan translations? That would be great!

Yup! Italian, Elven, Klingon...

Nice, I just put the game into my wishlist and will probably buy it as soon as it comes out. I'll be more than happy to work on the Italian localization!

[Rudolf Fischer]

Yeah!

[FeralZ]

yay! thanks for pt-br(portuguese-brazilian) i cant wait to buy this game, and later with my main language! *-*

[Hagiss]

Will the game have cross-platform multiplayer ? it would be nice to be able to play with Mac friends.

[BernyMoon]

Will people playing it on gog and steam be able to play together?

[Alex, Master Penguin]

Escrito originalmente por BernyMoon:

Will people playing it on gog and steam be able to play together?

We're definitely going to try and make it happen, yes!
As for cross-platform, we are still figuring out the technical details. Of course, if possible, we're also going to do that! No discrimination!