Mines of Dalarnia Update : Satellite Lounge Multiplayer Beta

Bringing Mines of Dalarnia Online

Multiplayer has always been part of the vision of MoD. In our previous trailer we showed a future visualization of a space station bustling with miners. Ultimately, we want players to be free to meet, show off their equipment, holos and birds, advertise, trade, compete, and maybe even explore the system together.

The Dalarnian Satellite Lounge Multiplayer Beta is the first step on that path.

Situated in orbit above one of the Dalarnian planets, the Satellite Lounge allows players from around the world to meet up in a shared space for the first time.

Each Room contains up to 5 players, who can come and go freely. Players in the Lounge can run and jump, change their equipment, emote, hit a ball, beat up a target dummy, and generally goof around.

The Satellite Lounge takes place in an entirely new environment high above the planet surface.

This feature serves as the backbone of our upcoming larger multiplayer features.

Multiplayer Dev Diary

Mines of Dalarnia’s movement and character controller systems were largely designed to work online from the start. A few systems like mantling required custom web-code, but for the most part the process of bringing the Miners together was smooth.

Our initial tests took place in an abstract mine environment.

More challenging was getting Miners to interact. In our first tests Miners could smack each other around almost like Smash Brothers. This proved to be funny for a few minutes, and then extremely annoying, so we toned player-to-player interactions way down. We still want players to be able to interact on the satellite, but not to the point that it’s disruptive or annoying.

Communications such as emotes, emoji and maybe chat are underway.

The system will launch with 3 Server Groups : US East, Northern Europe, and Eastern Asia. These will be manually selectable from the main menu (not automatically assigned). Selecting a server closer to your home will reduce lag for a smoother experience. Ongoing testing will help improve performance and expand features as well.

Soon the Lounge began to take shape. Notice at this point the space skybox is not integrated yet.

Putting Names to the Numbers

In addition to the Multiplayer feature, once the Satellite Lounge Multiplayer Beta goes live players will be able to give their wallet a Nickname.

This will display in Multiplayer and anywhere else the wallet ID appears. For now nicknames will be non-unique and can be changed any time.

Explore the Satellite

The Satellite itself was designed as an orbital base for Miners to congregate before hopping into drop pods and rocketing into the dangerous mines below. It’s a small space that’s constantly under construction, attached to an asteroid kept in orbit by short corrective bursts from solar-powered thrusters.

So come take a break from the mines, join your fellow miners, and come rest your feet in the Mines of Dalarnia : Satellite Lounge.

Testnet Process

The Satellite Lounge Multiplayer Beta will be released on Testnet early in 2023. This will allow us to test the performance properly before launching the feature on mainnet.

For this testnet version we will onboard selected players via a whitelisting process, allowing them to test the feature and give feedback on the performance and functionality.

This will also be the kickoff for us using testnet more frequently with selected players before launching major features on mainnet.

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