I do not want Steam required for MP. It shouldn’t be needed. Steam is too intrusive as it is and just adds overhead and reduced security. If the game can be direct download and run, MP should work that way too.
Multiplayer is possible without steam, just search the forums here and you’ll find it.
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I did and it looks uncertain at best. I don’t consider a community hacked json settings file to be a ‘supported option’. I backed this dog on kickstarter FIVE YEARS AGO and it’s still a bug-riddled alpha full of unrealized potential with ever more features that almost work.
MP without Steam is supported - see Multiplayer without Steam?.
Guess what? It’s just now entering beta, which means the bug-squashing will commence in earnest, now that the engine and core features have been added.
You must not have played Minecraft back when it was good lol ;`)
But on a serious note, how else would you connect? The game - needs- -to know the hosts addres etc. Though yes, the in game menu could do with a “manual connect” gui where you type in the hosts adress, maybe.
(with a remember this address function)
Which, let’s be fair, will cause you to alt tab somewhere to look it up anyway. So it might as well be in a file.
The game could poll for connections on the local net, but there is no excuse for not having this in the settings as another set of parameters. That would have to be MUCH simpler than hooking into the Steam API.
So, five years for Alpha. How long for Beta? I’m not holding my breath.
Make a service that acts as masterserver and host it somewhere. That’s the way the good ol’ games did it back then. I might tackle that as well once I get the httplib going.
As for your complaints, @pwb, which seem to be the focus of every thread you’ve created in the past 48 hours: Yes, it’s been a long while, but they’re working on it. For something that was released literally less than a month ago for the first time, it’s fine. The alpha likely took much longer due to all the engine shenanigans (and rewrites) - making pure content is usually much easier and therefore faster.
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Fair enough, actually. Good idea!
“every thread” is 3. And yes, I tried the new alpha with MP and found it wanting. This isn’t a fan club, it’s a forum for feedback from the user community that I’ve been a part of from the beginning.
The most basic mechanics of the game - resource gathering and path planning - have never worked correctly. They got better with some releases and then fell apart again. Instead, most of the energy has gone into adding features. That’s why we are still in alpha five years later. I have started over with new releases countless times because I believe in the potential for the game. Even my patience is wearing thin.
BTW. No. Don’t implement a master server. There are reasons no one does that anymore, starting with who runs it and what happens when they disappear. The game should remain playable long after the ‘masters’ have moved on. When Steam goes belly up (and it will, eventually), there will be quite a few pissed off people. Keep your walled gardens if you like. I’m not interested. Implement MP with a mature point to point comms architecture that is appropriate for a small group game. Or, implement a lightweight server that anyone can run (a la Minecraft)
i have to say that your way to write the last feedbacks sounds somehow agressive and half of them are complains
your tiltles looks like you wrote them angry and frustrated so as your answers
(i do that too sometimes)
don’t try to force your ideas but propose them.
something like “i believe this could work this way…” will do the trick
yes, there are bugs everywhere and yes, development takes time. but the propper word do better (also for team morale) than just being mean
last, we are not a fan club… just players, testers that have choosen to play the game before completion and help developers in their work and the joy to see the game grow up 
(at least me for 
)
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There’s a thing called constructive feedback though. Complaining about how long it’s been and that there’s no progress whatsoever, and so forth… It isn’t really helping anyone.
All issues that have been overcome in the past, too. Make it a dead-simple protocol - for all I care, make it public, too - and allow configuring the masterserver in the client (i.e. each client may use whatever masterserver they want).
In case the official one dies, somebody in the community can spin up a new one and with a small config change, that new one will be used. If there’s nobody left to host a new masterserver, there’s likely nobody to play it anymore anyway.
I’m not talking about sophisticated matchmaking servers or anything, I’m talking about something that could - in theory - be done with a few hundred lines of PHP in a single file and a database (if you truly wish to go with PHP; of course). Like I’ve said, I have experience with that technology, as a pretty old game I’ve used to play ran on exactly such a setup, and did so quite well.
It’s not called “masterserver” because it’s hosted by the “masters”, it’s called masterserver because it’s the main server connecting players with each other. We can call it “matchmaking server” or “Frozzleblargh”, there’s no difference. Term I’m known with for that is masterserver too, and if I’m not mistaken, Valve/Source’s terminology for that was that too.
Eh, I wouldn’t hold my breath for the next few years, or even decades. It’s certainly reasonable to think about such scenarios, but I don’t really see Steam dying any time soon. They can probably pay the bills with crate keys alone.
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