Devlog #9: New Player & New Places

I did say the next devlog was to be a YouTube video, but this one is a little important.

For starters, the simple stuff! (I talked about this in the changelog but it's going here as well) At last I can be rid of the silly looking placeholder player model, and replace it with a proper model made by an actual talented artist. Introducing Recon, the first of a cast of three classes to be playable in-game. He's basically just a little guy that likes digging tunnels, but I'm super excited for how the characters are going to develop with the game.

Anyway, now for the important news.

Until now, I've been frequently uploading all builds to itch with changelogs/devlogs, depending on the update size. However, this update exists in a weird sort of situation. The update itself is pretty small, but it has a lot of ramifications in terms of the future of the project:

Steam integration.

Previously, the netcode in Build Fight worked using Unity's own built in systems, meaning anyone could freely connect, join a lobby, and play a game. However, as the game starts to take shape into an actual project, I of course need to make it work with Steam since that's the platform it's going to be released on. Behind the scenes, I had been working on the Steam backend to get things setup. Then I finished that, and it looked like the only logical thing to do was to get the Steam integrated with the game. However, that had some implications. Primarily, once Steam was integrated with the multiplayer as an actual network transport it would require players to have the game to log onto Steam, connect to lobbies, and actually play. What this means is that I can no longer continue to develop the game and have builds uploaded to Itch and be playable. Instead, I'm going to use this page just for devlogs and hope to funnel people through to my Discord where you can get a steam key to keep playing the game.

TL;DR: Game is going on Steam. If you want to play the game, email me/join the Discord and I'll probably give you a key for beta testing.