This week saw the completion of implementing new monsters and the wrap up of planning the prototype version of the co-op quest. So we will almost certainly test it out this week. That’s about 2 months from start to finish to implement co-op mode. At this point it’s blatantly obvious that I probably won’t be able to hit finalization this year, most likely I’ll go well into March with it. Not ideal, but not much I can do about it.

On the bright side I am pretty excited about testing this update with other people. I don’t like to say too much about my personal feelings about an update to the testers since it likely influences their opinion, but so far the lane system is on par with the monster den system in terms of “this was a good idea that is turning this project around”. My initial personal testing was basically the first time it felt like I was actually playing an RPG with this game. It’s also incredibly confusing to test by playing as all 4 players yourself since there’s no visual indication of what each class everyone is in-battle yet (and names are just numbered). That won’t be as big of a deal in multiplayer since everyone will be familiar with their own class and will associate the other players as needed (though even then we’re going to need to add some visual indication).

If this test works it will then be a matter of fixing up PVP to use the new systems from co-op (mostly just new classes), and then doing my best to improve the map aspect of the game. I feel rather silly spending 2 months mostly just fixing up the battle system when the world map is the most in need of attention, but it had to be done.