Shout out to BlitWorks for their tireless efforts to make this possible!
As Always, Thanks For Your Patience
We really appreciate that so many players have stuck with us as we worked on online multiplayer. Trust me when I say that we always feel frustrated ourselves when something doesn't work as planned or we're forced to delay a release. I wanted to spend a little time explaining why the delays have been so long, for those that are interested. If you're not, just accept my apologies and my gratitude and then feel free to skip to the next section! ːspel2cavelː
I think I've said this before, but it bears repeating that Spelunky 2 is pretty complex for online multiplayer, despite "just" being a 2d platformer. At it's worst (for online, I mean!), there are four players running around a double-layered level with destructible terrain, liquid simulation, and high interactivity, where nothing in the level can be disabled temporarily, even when it's out of view. On top of that, it's a fairly fast-paced and detailed arcade-style game. So there's a lot to keep track of at any given moment.
Being multiplatform also adds many challenges - not just technical ones (and those are significant, of course), but also communication ones. Often, resolving a problem, even if it seems minor, can take days or weeks as people communicate back and forth across different companies, departments, languages, and time zones. Every platform has its own unique way of handling things, so getting everything lined up is tricky. This was particularly true for cross-play.
That being said, you may wonder why we don't simply take all of this into account when we give our release date estimates and pad them out more? The truth is that when we give our estimates, those are our actual internal estimates, and it may seem hard to believe, but we do pad them out! So those dates are the dates we're genuinely aiming for, with confidence. Game development is so hard to predict, though, and a lot of times it's not one thing, but many things that add up, and X gets delayed long enough that suddenly Y takes priority. And then Y has its own unforeseen delays, etc.
So it's tough - we need to be optimistic and ambitious to get these things done, and we want to let you know what we're thinking and planning, but it doesn't often line up perfectly. Some developers adopt a "when it's done" attitude, which makes sense, but can be frustrating for players in a different way. For me, personally, I've been thinking about how to handle release dates in the future, and I'd like to continue giving estimates, but probably less frequently, and definitely with a more neutral (i.e. less excited) tone and some clear warnings that they are estimates only and players should only purchase the game as-is.
FAQ
Are you planning more updates after this one? As I said above, yes! Our next steps are to collect feedback and continue improving the online experience now that the basic features are all in place.
Will you add more singleplayer content? No, our focus will continue to be on multiplayer and online. That's a personal preference for me as a creator, to try and preserve the singleplayer experience as much as possible after release. Of course, fixing bugs and any game-breaking problems is still on the table (although "game-breaking" is open to interpretation haha).
(EDIT: My wording here made it sound like we chose online multiplayer and cross-play over new singleplayer content, but actually, adding new singleplayer content would require more work from more people, so that's not actually the case. It's a different process.)
It's taking a long time to sync between levels when I'm playing online now! Sorry about that. It's part of our ongoing quest to create a smooth experience between players on systems that are very different in terms of power (including within Steam). From the feedback we've already gotten about 1.26, some players are having a much better experience online, while other players that were able to play fine before are now having to deal with the syncs. We'd like to start by releasing a workaround for the latter group ASAP and go from there.
If you have further questions, please let us know! Happy Spelunky-ing! ːspel2ankhː
1.26 Patch Notes
(Courtesy of NW*DD!)
- Added missing developers and QA to credits
- Network synchronization improvements
- Schrödinger's ushabti when playing Daily Challenge
- Server-side latency improvements for low-latency sessions
- Steam/XB1/XBX/Switch players can now cross-play with PS4/PS5 players
- Fixed abrupt rollbacks when a player disconnects from the game
- Fixed input replayed on a client's new game after a host leaves the game
- Fixed multiple desyncs in Arena Mode that led to playing different arenas
- Fixed multiple crashes and a deadlock that could happen when playing online
- Fixed multiple desyncs in Volcana that caused different world generation
- Addressed clock-drifting due to heterogeneous hardware performance in loading screens through bound deterministic clock sync
- Fixed multiple issues that happened when completing the game when playing online
- Fixed constellations
Known issues introduced with this patch:
- Player gating of players playing with old builds is not in place, sessions with mismatched versions will cause frag on sync.
- "Cross-Play" filter on leaderboards is not present on Steam
