I've been working on Vektor Prix quite a bit. There are so many new features that it would take too much time to list all of them.
I've been refining each aspect of the game, as well as expanding on the multiplayer portion. There is now a lobby system that servers are in by default. This lobby allows for chat, voting on levels, gamemodes, and bot settings. The lobby also allows everyone connected to download the level (if it's a custom level) before starting the race. I've also got a dedicated server mode working, where the game goes into a low cpu usage mode and also skips all of the drawing portions of the code.
After I had the race mode working, I decided to create deathmatch. So health was added, players are now able to kill eachother and respawn (even in race mode). Deathmatch proved to be difficult at first, it just wasn't all that much fun. Most of the time spent was searching for weapons that you would inevitably waste on a poor shot. It was frustrating to say the least, but this all changed once I created some new levels and added a machine gun. The machine gun fires as long as the button is held, but its rate of fire decreases if you hold it for too long. This new weapon allows you to know that you are lined up with your target, as you will get damage indications on screen when you hit your enemy. I also adjusted the weapon damage to be twice as much in deathmatch mode, as well as the health regeneration (which only works if you are below 50 hp).
Deathmatch is pretty fun now, it takes some practice for sure but it gets exciting. After deathmatch was in, team deathmatch wasn't too complicated to add in as well. Now you can have 2, 3, or 4 team deathmatch. The best part is that all of these new features have been synchronized over the network and seem to be working online.
Speaking of which, hosting a server will now communicate with my website and broadcast your lobby to the rest of people playing. I finally figured out how to set up a 'master server' system, and its working better than I expected. I even have it broadcast the version so as to not list servers that you aren't able to connect to.
As for other progress, I've added more menus to allow the player to play in windowed or fullscreen mode. They can also set which keys do which game actions, or hook up an xbox360 or ps3 controller and control the game like that instead.
I'm thinking about opening up Vektor Prix for an early alpha. It would be good to get some feedback early on, and play a few more online matches. So stay tuned.
