While there are many online multiplayer games, UMeFate wants to bring people closer and have fun together, while sharing the same game experience directly. There is nothing more fun than chatting together about things that are actually happening during the gameplay. 😊
We want to bring more socialising elements to the game on many levels. Not just to let players immerse themself into the world of lonely rangers, when playing alone.
However, the outcome is very unclear yet, where this will lead us to. But we are committed to experiment with this.
Challenges Ahead:
Saying All that this isn’t without its own challenges.
As part of the devlog discussed in UMeFate Map Editor And Creating Floors #43
Review UI design. As the effect of previous work related to various core mechanics, which are discussed in older devlogs, UI had to be fixed, updated, or reworked.
Initial UI design had certain design choices, which wasn’t as scalable as initially intended. Also the effect of refactoring and iterating on the prototypes. While UI is not final and will most certainly change in the future, especially artistically, there is a need for a minimum functional UI system for now, for UMeFate to be interactive. But aiming for consistent cohesiveness with the current style choice.
That led to the requirement of completely refactoring the UI. And actually redesigning its core, to be more scalable. However, with that there was an opportunity and the consideration, that if UI is to be rebuilt, while also the roadmap for this development Pre-Alpha stage includes splitscreen support, it would be a great occasion to implement these two in one go.
With the deep research and extra helpful hands, a decision was made, to put higher priority and to proceed with the Split-Screen system.
Split-Screen Requirements:
Split screen should support from up to 4 players.
It needs to support a keyboard and mouse in the single player mode.
It needs to support a keyboard and mouse in split-screen mode, in case of shared keyboard. This changes default WSAD to numpad keyboard controls configuration. Assuming the mouse is on the right hand side of the keyboard.
It needs to support a shared keyboard, for a second player. Controls are on WSAD side of the keyboard. We understand not everyone has gamepads. And sharing the same keyboard was very common in the 90s and 2000s. So we want to leverage that past experience.
It needs to support optionally up to 4 gamepads. Currently 2 gamepads setup are tested, together with keyboard + mouse.
Consequences:
Result of choices had various consequences.
Since various game mechanics already did support in the core multiple players on the same computer, certain required work was already done. However, the input system had to be completely reworked, as well as the UI.
Both UI and input systems had to support the split screen with multiple players. But the challenge came from various angles. Specifically gamepad support, keyboard and mouse in various configurations. Which wasn’t that obvious and easy to implement as it was initially estimated. On top of that, the UI was rebuilt from the ground up, with decoupling in mind. And that is still in the progress, as can be seen on the video. Which led to pushing back in dates other planned tasks from the previous devlog.
But a critical aspect is, if wanting to work on the split screen later down the road, as initially planned instead of now, it could lead to unintentional design choices, which could make difficult, or perhaps even impossible with current resources, to implement the split screen.
So there are definitely some sacrifices here. But nothing out of the initial scope, which is the most important.
Regardless of above, we are excited where we are and we are committed to deliver life sim experience from different angles.
Is Online Multiplier Beyond The Scope?:
While working on the split screen, there may be questions, if online multiplier is even considered at all.
UMeFate focuses on the single player and split screen experience on the one computer. That is already a stretch for the available resources. There are no future plans for multipliers. And may be out of the scope for the whole duration of the project. Especially due to design choices. However, if the right opportunity ever comes in the future, this may be reconsidered, as long it won’t result in the sacrifice of project vision and single player experience.
- Test split screen mechanics.
- Refine keybinding.
- Finish UI redesign and refactor, supporting split screen and gameplay functionality.
- Ensure that saving loading works for constructions on land plots. I think something broke.
- Be able to build and load constructions with characters UMes in a play mode (not in map editor).
- Fix furniture placing.