it will have online multiplayer, yes?
That's something we aren't promising yet, but hopefully so. That will involve a very new kind of networking for us, and if the project isn't gaining a lot of traction that's something we're likely to cut. Also, it's unlikely the multiplayer component would be there for alpha. But we are making notes in the code for places to go back and fill in networking code at, if we get to that point, so it's certainly something we're thinking about.
And we're specifically not doing anything to make the online networking impossible, or any more difficult on ourselves than it has to be. But it's definitely different programming an action game, which is something we managed to avoid with AI War and Tidalis. Most game developers seem to think that the strategy game way of network programming is vastly, intensely harder than the action game sort (one word: desyncs), but that's what I'm used to programming so it feels the opposite to me at the moment.
You know me, though: I love co-op in gaming. So it's definitely something I
really want to have there, and I know Keith feels the game. We'll just see if reality matches up with our desires. At worst, if AVWW has a similar amount of popularity to AI War, then we can probably implement the multiplayer as a free DLC addon in tandem with work on a paid expansion, or something like that. Who knows.
We're hoping that the game will be massively more popular than AI War, though, and in that even the multiplayer would be an absolute 100% no-brainer. Me being wary and without a crystal ball, I'm not ready to commit to that feature yet, though. If we have to make an amazing non-networked adventure game, it wouldn't be the end of the world. Though I'd have to find some clever way to get some form of local co-op in there, in that event (otherwise it would be network-only, not local).