Techblox is a free to play game! We are in pre-pre-pre-Alpha and if you want to try the game out, you can download it right now either from IndieDB or via our website at techblox.com
We’re working hard to bring you the next update which will be the first time we’ve ever let anyone play with their player-built creations on our online physics servers. Our aim is for the physics to work as well in online multiplayer as it does in offline single player. We’re working to try to get this to you before Christmas but time is tight so everyone on the dev team has their heads down.
There are some new features coming with multiplayer:
Display Names
We rsquo;ll be adding display names above the heads of characters when you’re on online servers so you’ll be able to tell people apart. You’ll be able to edit this display name via the Epic account services website here
Spawning and Respawning
The multiplayer servers will be persistent, so you’ll be able to jump in and out of them as you wish without having to queue. We’ve had to think of new ways to allow you to spawn your machines to ensure you can always spawn them in a desirable place.
In the new spawning system, when you arrive on a server your character will spawn with a ghosted blueprint of your machine in front of you where the crosshair is pointed. Much like a blueprint, it will go red if it’s intersecting something and if it’s not red you can hit LMB and it will appear in an instant.
You can also hit R at any point and that will remove your machine from the world and turn it back into a ghosted blueprint for you to replace. This is useful if you ended up upside down for example. In future, you’ll be able to choose different machines from your collection to spawn each time you hit R (if you wish) without having to leave the server.
Initially, this new spawning will be really simple with no fancy special effects, but we’ve been experimenting with different ways we might make spawning look cool in future. Here’s a quick mockup of one of the ideas. What do you think?
Community Content
With the multiplayer launch, we’ll be extending the Game Portal to include more game options. We’ll be adding an indoor Go-karting track and also at least one of the community created maps, both of which we hope to have running on online servers.
