Steam coop high latency and desync FIXED!

Soooo :) Yesterday was a great day :) the approved game build, followed by the early access release, was awesome. I was happy to let you test the game, but I found the harsh fact that the Steam online coop was broken due to my implementation mistakes. The invite process received some love, but the broken parts were inside the multiplayer architecture and the way how the clients communicate with the server, which was too much for Steam P2P, and it started queueing into gigantic chunks of data >> building increasingly higher and higher latency, spikes and desync and just pure chaos :D The good news is that everything is fixed now, so we have this small update :) I will most probably focus on reworking the whole Steam host > invite > play flow so it has better UX for you :) I can spot multiple things that I am not happy with. But it is at least somehow working for now.

See you next time :) L.

Full list of fixes/improvements

Area of interest (steam coop fix :D)

• RemovedEnabled Steam Co-op hostingPlayers can now host multiplayer sessions directly via Steam P2P (it was turned off yesterday when I found the bug :)) - AOI Multiplayer: Clients now see all mobs; removed ghost-cleanup that deleted AOI-spawned mobs. - AOI Multiplayer: Arena mobs are now always visible to all clients regardless of distance. - AOI Multiplayer: Removed old full-sync retry timers that conflicted with AOI late-join. - Steam Multiplayer: Complete rewrite of enemy sync to Area-of-Interest (AOI) system — only mobs near each player are synced, reducing bandwidth from ~1.2 MB/s to ~5-10 KB/s. - Steam Multiplayer: Position data now uses compact binary encoding (PackedFloat32Array) instead of Dictionary serialization (~6x smaller per mob). - Steam Multiplayer: Enemy HP/stun updates are now event-driven (sent on change) instead of periodic polling. - Steam Multiplayer: Late-join players now receive mobs via AOI enter events instead of multi-delay full resyncs.

Help/tutorial + small gui improvements

• Help overlay now only shows for truly new characters (level 1) to avoid popping up on existing heroes. - Removed global "Show help on start" setting to prevent conflicts between different characters. - UI: Latency display is now shown directly below FPS in the top-left corner for better visibility during multiplayer. - Character select: replaced Steam Wishlist with dynamic Steam News feed (fetches 2 latest posts via Web API) - Character select: news are displayed as interactive cards with Title, Date, and Subtitle - Character select: added fallback image (news_fallback.png) when offline or no news available - Added tooltips to stat distribution buttons (+1, +5, +50, +100 points) - Tooltips now dynamically show "cmd" on macOS and "ctrl" on other platforms - Create New Hero dialog: fixed overflow, swapped button order (Cancel left, Create right) - Mage: status panel now shows "Auto-cast" immediately on load (was "Auto-attack" until toggled)

Mage improvements

• AddedAdded "Priority Spell Queue" for MagePressing a spell hotkey now queues it to be cast immediately after the current action, overriding autocast for one cast. (this is helpfull when you let your mage autocast and farm, but you don't want to toggle the auto-cast off and then cast some spell of your choice :) and then turn auto-cast back on) - Added yellow glow highlight to spell slots in action bar when a spell is queued in the priority slot. - Added "Mana Bonus" to character stats in inventory (both in detailed stats panel and equipment overview)

Other improvements

• Fixed pet disappearing when teleporting to/from Arena or moving long distances (added automatic teleport to owner) - New characters now spawn in Iron Town instead of Steel Town (0,0) - Character selection preview now correctly centers on Iron Town for new heroes