Session Abstraction
We're working on a lobby system to break up the multiplayer and the game world. This will allow players to join a game before the world is created. The next step will be the preserve this lobby/player data even while cleaning up the world, then once we support being able to transition into a new one with the same set of people then round-based play is just around the corner.
Optimization
While we're trying to leave the bulk of optimization until more of the core features are into the game, occasionally certain things stand-out as being strong candidates for optimization. We've identified a couple of these in the last week or two, so it's too soon to speculate on how impactful they'll be - keep an eye out on the beta branch patch notes.
Audio
As mentioned above, the team now has a dedicated audio tech/programmer! The focus in the immediate future will be sounds local to the character (ie. suit noises), with additional movement sounds to go with the just-added footstep ones.
Remember these are only intended plans and we go into them considering if they are possible. Where they're not, we will have to change and adapt, dropping what we can't do or what isn't fun. Don't consider these absolutes!
What does this allow us to do? This allows us to offer much, much bigger worlds to the players. Allowing them to explore beyond the current limit before things break, which is 5km³. We need this for vehicles such as rovers, drones, air vessels, etc...
What does this allow us to to? Potentially tremendous performance improvement, not just for multiplayer but also for single player if game objects are virtualized. This means better frame rate and order of magnitude amounts of game objects that could be supported.
What does this allow us to do? In addition to cleaning up the game setup and removing many pesky connection bugs, this allows us to restart the game while clients are connected, as well as support advanced gameplay modes such as round-based play.
What does this allow us to do? Away missions, basically. It allows you to continue game sessions over many worlds. Build a ship, fly it somewhere new, fly back to your old place. The main caveat we're likely to make is requiring everyone in the play session to migrate at once, rather than splitting the session into instances.
CAUTION: Back in September a change had the unintended result of canisters no longer taking damage when over-pressurized. This update includes a fix for that.