Is there an online co-op gameplay available?

MikeSlugDisco

Community Manager
Staff member
Community Manager
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!
 

Nanami

Larva
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!

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
 
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
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.:)
 

MedinB

Colony
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.
 

Nanami

Larva
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.

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)

However, I'm not saying it is easy. Otherwise, they would have already done it.

I have huge respect for the insane amount of work the developers put into this game, each level on its own is insanely detailed and it's hardly believable that only so few people are actually participating in the making of this masterpiece. (I just got to know that a single person was behind all of these great Osts which play during the gameplay, WOW)

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!).
 

Scyobi_Empire

Colony
Extremely Helpful Person
Ecosystem Beta Tester
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
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)
 

Scyobi_Empire

Colony
Extremely Helpful Person
Ecosystem Beta Tester
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)
(sorry for double post)
Multiplayer games are single player games in disguise, each "player" is just an AI which gets extremely frequent updates from a server/connection (in Peer-to-Peer cases). Humans are tricked into thinking the AIs are actually the human they are playing against and 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 and/or removal or heavily altered game mechanics**


*One player stops sending updates to the AI, generally this is handled by another AI which studied the players past moves throughout the match and tries its best to guess what the Player would do. However, these can be highly simple (like if the player was moving forward, continue to move forward, not being able to guess that the player was going to interact with an object they were running towards so the player continues running into a wall) and if the player takes a while to reconnect to the AI, they could teleport to where the host last had the AI pretending to be the player at. If the player takes to long to reconnect to the AI pretending to be them, they are often force kicked from the game or the host (in Peer-to-Peer connections) is warned about which player desynced from the game (this is fixed by having the player leave and reconnect).



**Look at Plague Inc multiplayer, 2 plagues fight over a population where symptoms are altered to be less powerful and people can become uninfected to let the other disease infect them
 

WaffleGuy

Colony
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
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.

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.

Secondly, more calculations than you think can be done on the server. Each player will have their own client, along with the server, which will recieve updates from players and then send the rest of the players that update, and also send the players its own updates whenever the queen dies, stuff like that. This is so that the server has to send significantly less updates to the players.

This form of communication allows a much smoother experience during times when the server can't send updates fast enough, because clients can keep doing their own thing until the updates can be received, which allows for the time to keep going like the disconnection wasn't there at all, all the way up until the updates are actually sent, where you may experience a bit of a change for some variables.

To lessen lag spikes, ants and other things can be updated not together, but depending on when they spawn. And this updating for ants, other than the problem that will be mentioned below, will only occur during a change of pheromones.

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?
 

Scyobi_Empire

Colony
Extremely Helpful Person
Ecosystem Beta Tester
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.
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.

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?
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.
 

MedinB

Colony
That's exactly why I'm hoping for multiplayer to be added, Slugdisco is already putting so much time, effort, and money into EotU.
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.

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!).

The game will leave access when tier 5 arrives. I'm sure that will be the last major update the game will have. By then, the developers will think of moving to a new project. The game won't receive any more major updates, but it will be receiving smaller ones, and it won't happen often. I would love to see a EotU 2, or a sequel to Empires of the Undergrowth. And in fact, one of the Slug Disco employees, Dan P, recently announced if a sequel to EotU was made, they'll most likely make the project with some sort of multiplayer base down.

So multiplayer for EotU? No. For future Slug Disco projects? A 'maybe'.
 
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