So yesterday I finally got a chance to work on some networking code.  Luckily I planned a little bit ahead and the engine already uses a client/server architecture and passes messages back and forth, so there is a good foundation to build multiplayer on.

Well even with no real testing on the network code before yesterday, I now have at least some minimal multiplayer working.  I now can have 2 (probably more) players running around on the same map killing things.  There is still lots to do to get it working well or even correctly, but it's a nice start. 

One of the cool things is the Mac networking works even though it has never been tested at all.  All I did for the networking when I ported Depths of Peril over was to simply get it to compile correctly.  I didn't need to do anything further because, until now, neither game actually used any of the networking code even though it was there.

As a side note, I did run into a bug because someone had the receiving message buffer hardcoded to 2000 bytes.  It kind of has to be a fixed length because of the external api it has to call, but really, only 2000 bytes?  Who on earth thought 2000 bytes was ever going to be big enough?  Sigh.  Too bad there aren't actually any other programmers but myself to blame. :)

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What happens in a game if you try to break into a house, when

1) It has an alarm system
2) It has a big dog
3) The owner is home
4) and you make a huge racket because you try to kick in the back door

You hope you have saved recently and curse yourself for being a moron.

Yeah, someone tried to break into one of our neighbors' homes like this the other day.  For some reason he wasn't very successful.  If he had played a few more games, he would probably know better.

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If you want to participate in our fantastical creature reality show now is your chance.  For the rest of the week you can vote for which female characters you want to be in the show. 

The poll is on the right side a bit down on each page of the main website.  You can vote once every 24 hours, so vote multiple times if you want.

You can get more information on each of the female characters here.

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I have been thinking more about what I want to do for our next game.  I have tossed around a lot of ideas and have even blogged recently about some initial ideas.  Just a few days ago I thought I had it narrowed down to a hardcore dungeon crawl or maybe a short diversion with a port of Kivi's Underworld to the iPhone.  Apparently things can change quickly for us small indies. :)

I think I have finally settled on a line up for possibly most of this year.  The current plan, in order, is a multiplayer expansion for Kivi's Underworld, a multiplayer expansion for Depths of Peril, and then a hardcore dungeon crawl.

This isn't an official announcement and I might very well change my mind next week, but that's my plan at the moment.  Any thoughts?

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