Sadly no, and probably not in the future.EoTU is already so much fun as it is but I thought it'd be great to be able to play with/against other players.
We've recently confirmed that this project, at least, will not have multiplayer.
We're open to the possibility in future projects but EotU is far too far along at this point, and we want to finish it one day!
It’s going to be hard, but I know that they could do it. We would have to wait a very long time though. The good news is that it’s possible.I don't know anything regarding the technical stuff required to be done to make it a multiplayer but I've played a lot of strategic games over the years and the ones that stayed relevant for many years (and decades) are the ones that had multiplayer in them (not all of them though, ofc)
EotU is way too good to be left out. Multiplayer would ultimately make this game always has something to look for, even if a player finishes all of the available levels. The difference between playing against people and against an A.I. is huge for game enjoyment and interactiveness.
(Apologize for stating obvious things)
Please look into this matter again, I assume it'll be decisive for the project later on.
Thank you
The game was not designed to be a multiplayer game, and developer priorities are now focused on what's listed on the current roadmap. Slug Disco has confirmed this project will not have multiplayer. Please understand that. EotU would require such a fundamental change to support multiplayer, it's practically starting from scratch.EotU is way too good to be left out. Multiplayer would ultimately make this game always has something to look for, even if a player finishes all of the available levels. The difference between playing against people and against an A.I. is huge for game enjoyment and interactiveness.
(Apologize for stating obvious things)
It’s going to be hard, but I know that they could do it. We would have to wait a very long time though. The good news is that it’s possible.
The game was not designed to be a multiplayer game, and developer priorities are now focused on what's listed on the current roadmap. Slug Disco has confirmed this project will not have multiplayer. Please understand that. EotU would require such a fundamental change to support multiplayer, it's practically starting from scratch.
This doesn't mean future projects by Slug Disco will not have multiplayer. In fact, the developers will probably start designing future projects with some sort of multiplayer in mind. Well, I would love to see a custom-map editor mod support feature, but even that probably would be quite difficult to get implemented.
I would ask anyone before posting to read the FAQ.
My best guess as to why Multiplayer has been confirmed to be not coming to the game would be a similar reason as to why Reassembly was never getting seemless multiplayer/co-op gameplay: the game and engine was never structured for it. Be it the 10,000s sector files in Reassembly being merged into a single file and having only one sector (+ extremely close neighbours relative to the players position in the sector) being active, loaded and interactable or (most likely/my best guess) the back end of the code for EoTU requiring a near total rewrite of the Engine preventing multiplayer being a possibility (complete engine rewrites or restructuring, while possible are more often then not inefficient. Not saying it hasn't happened in the past in other games though)I don't know anything regarding the technical stuff required to be done to make it a multiplayer but I've played a lot of strategic games over the years and the ones that stayed relevant for many years (and decades) are the ones that had multiplayer in them (not all of them though, ofc)
EotU is way too good to be left out. Multiplayer would ultimately make this game always has something to look for, even if a player finishes all of the available levels. The difference between playing against people and against an A.I. is huge for game enjoyment and interactiveness.
(Apologize for stating obvious things)
Please look into this matter again, I assume it'll be decisive for the project later on.
Thank you
(sorry for double post)I'm a little bit confused with why it is such a fundamental change is required to make it a multiplayer.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I know anything about development but logically speaking, the mechanics and everything related to the gameplay (such as ants behavior, insects, day/night, etc) is indeed ready, otherwise, we wouldn't be able to play the normal games we do with the A.I. (Unless I'm misunderstanding something)
So you're saying that various parts of the game aren't optimised for multiplayer, such as the fact that for every ant, that much data will have to be sent to other clients and it will have to be very fast. Except that even if this is the reason the game will require fundamental changes, I believe it's still possible to build multiplayer on top of this.such constant AI Updates on an unoptimised game (for multiplayer or in general) can lead to a myriad of problems like desyncing*, a very laggy experience
Quote the opposite actually, in P2P connections without checksums (like Payday 2) the hosts mods and clients mods all interact together generally without issues. A server, everyone would need the same mods in the same order.First of all, peer to peer communication is out of this discussion. Not only will this cause more stress on clients which could otherwise be handled by a server meant for the job, but it also wouldn't allow you to modify the game as easily.
Currently, the only solution would be heavily limiting how many AI can spawn and over optimising Ant AI (to make it very simple) and disabling AI Colonies. It would require a lot of work to get rudimentary multiplayer to work.Now, for the case against multiplayer, there is a pretty big problem: randomness. The server will have to do all of these calculations regarding randomness itself. This may seem simple until you realise that just ants pathing holds randomness, which is an especially difficult problem to handle since the server will have to be sending updates per ant as fast as possible which may not even be that smooth of an experience. Any thoughts on how this could be handled?
This thread is already getting longer than it should be. To answer your question, EotU will not be getting multiplayer. While I am not going to take the time to research all the technical bits of multiplayer, it's not an easy thing to get done. The game wasn't designed to be multiplayer game from the start, and it's not something that can happen in a week, it would probably take at least 4-5 months just to probably get some sort of basic multiplayer down. And even if multiplayer was added, balancing would be such a pain in the rear, and so it's just not practical.That's exactly why I'm hoping for multiplayer to be added, Slugdisco is already putting so much time, effort, and money into EotU.
But the moment Slugdisco decides it's enough for EotU, and no more upcoming major updates to be expected, I'll probably stop playing the beautiful game (I don't want to stop and I'm pretty sure many others don't want to stop as well!).