[Sep 28, 2013] 2nd birthday party and the march to Alpha! (#terasology on Freenode IRC)

Cervator

Org Co-Founder & Project Lead
Contributor
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About a year ago we celebrated the first birthday of our project with a Minecraft server challenge. This year we do it with Terasology multiplayer!

With The Great Convergence coming to a close the next big milestone is ALPHA, and in addition to playing some for fun we also need to sort out what's left before we can consider Terasology an alpha-level project. Keep in mind that Alpha is nowhere near feature-complete and will still be lacking loads of content - but most the architecture should be stabilizing.

For multiplayer particularly we need to find out how well several players and long-distance players can play together, although without a headless server yet the hoster may need a beefy machine. For the codebase restructure effort we need to make sure the new line-up is stable enough for any developer to pick up and run with.

I will try to be around for the majority of the listed event time and might even try out streaming on Twitch.tv to see how that goes (might not go live right away though). But pretty much that whole weekend would be good for any sort of multiplayer hangout and testing.

Players:
  • Help test multiplayer with other players and research network performance over long distances
  • Build up a solid world with several others to see how it goes
  • Find and log any issues remaining before multiplayer could be considered alpha-stable
  • Suggest other areas that need focus before alpha-ready
Developers / modders:
  • Learn about coding for multiplayer - what changes?
  • Check out the new structure and see what's different
  • Find and log the remaining issues before content development would be easy
  • Point out exactly what items would need resolution before final merge of The Great Convergence
Issues
  • The Great Convergence milestone - stuff that should or could be done before TGC can be considered complete
    • Restructure milestone - a subset of TGC specific to the codebase restructure, at least some of these are important for making development on the new setup easy
  • Alpha milestone - issues that when complete will bring us to Alpha state
We'll meet on IRC in #terasology on Freenode (just click that chat tab in the top of the forum site here) and coordinate multiplayer games there. To highlight in case forum calendar makes the time look funny this starts on September 28th at 9 am EDT
 

Cervator

Org Co-Founder & Project Lead
Contributor
Design
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Quick bit of additional info
  • To get started with multiplayer download the lastest multiplayer build
  • Start the game normally - there is no headless server yet
  • Host a game or Join an existing server
    • You have to use the "Add" button on the join screen to make a server entry
    • The entry will have a red X on it - that's okay, latency checking isn't implemented yet
    • If you need to do a port forward for your router when hosting forward port 25777
  • Play!
Note that new builds may come out any time, especially over the weekend. Best way to coordinate is getting on #terasology on Freenode IRC (can use that chat tab on our site). There'll probably be somebody around who can help, I might get a slow start in the morning as my internet went out for part of my evening - but really I hope to spend the whole weekend focusing on all this :)

I also posted a game balance/longevity discussion thread I hope to get some activity in over the weekend
 

Cervator

Org Co-Founder & Project Lead
Contributor
Design
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First round of multiplayer testing went exceedingly well! We fixed several issues during the event yet gameplay was surprisingly smooth already. Had at least 5 people online at once (from 3 continents), but more monkey heads could have been hiding - no player counter yet :D

We were also able to play with the organic tree growth contributed by Marcin (you start with a few saplings in your toolbar) but they should be used sparingly until we do some batched light update stuff :)

Screenies:

2yaDByppH.pngGrowingOurOwnTrees.pngHappyBDay.pngHappyBDay2.pngHappyBDay3.pngHappyBDayWorld2.pngHappyBDayWorld2_2.pngHappyBDayWorld2_3.pngHappyBDayWorld2_4.pngPrettyLights.png

I'll be around on IRC this weekend whenever possible and will happy to host again. Might not make it up quite as early tomorrow morning ;)

One important note if you're having trouble getting the multiplayer build to work: Make sure to delete any old game data directory! If you're running from source you might also want to clean any compiled code out of your workspace and do a full rebuild.
 

Skaldarnar

Development Lead
Contributor
Art
World
SpecOps
Aaaah, I'm so sad I missed the event :( but hopefully I can get back to some coding... can't wait to meet all you guys in the game ;)
 
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