After weeks of tough development and an endless supply of your patience, Gristmill is proud to announce the release of XenoMiner version 1.4: The Multiplayer Expansion! Starting today, space will get a little less lonely as you bring friends into your worlds to see what you’ve made and build together.

The full change log is available on our forum, right over here.
If you don’t have an account there, please make one. The forum is a great place for long discussions with other fans and the developers about features, updates, requests and your builds.

We have pushed the update, so it should be showing up on your Xbox soon. Microsoft controls release, and it isn’t instant for everyone (especially outside the US). So if you don’t get the download immediately, just hang tight.. it will show up soon! Please share this and get your friends playing…

Thanks to all of you for playing!

XenoMiner Version 1.4 Release Notes

Important:

When you first load up an old world there may be a delay as it changes over to our new format for saving. The more changes you have in your world, the longer this could take. This should only be in the first load, subsequent loads should be faster.

Auto Saves should be faster, but please let us know if you see any problems.

Change Log:

Multiplayer released in Beta (notes about this)
Gravpads will give you an impulse, at the top you will now bob up and down.
Autosave was decreased to every 3 minutes.
Containment Units are only usable by the player who placed them.
Containment Units can only be removed by the player who placed them.
Containment Units drop items when picked up.
Slight Hud Bob while looking around.

There is an error catching screen. If the game has a problem, you will get a message about what happened. If you can try to take a picture and post it with your bug report on our forums.

Multiplayer Beta:

Activate this by selecting Multiplayer Beta in the options menu.
Only the host can acquire and control the bot.
You can make your world Public, Friends-Only or by Invitation.
Host will have the ability to Kick and Ban.
You can choose to see Avatars or the current very-beta Gristmill Voxel model (select in Options)
There are currently no animations for either model type.
There are currently no effects for either model type.
Make sure you quit to log out so the host is sent your final state information.

Bug Fixes:

The “invisible” door frame bug no longer occurs.
Reclaim fix for stacked items.
Invisible block “black hole” should be fixed.
Switches no longer take up entire voxel.
User options save as intended.

Well, it’s been a hard couple weeks of intense testing and bugfixing. It’s incredible how many issues crawl out of any update, but MP has taken the cake.

We’re getting close. You’re going to ask when. “When it’s ready” or “Soon” or “Very soon” – take your pick

After a 12 hour sunday jam, we finally smashed three of our biggest, longest lingering bugs that had been really slowing us down. Unless some unseen issue comes up, we’re down to minor bugs and quick fixes.

We’d like to re-iterate that the MP coming out is a work-in-progress. We’ll be labeling the button “Multiplayer Beta” in the menu for a reason. It should be solid code, just not polished. By not polished I’ll mention again that we won’t have any animations for the player models (avatar or voxelized), any special fx outside of rotating the model if they grav boot, and that the voxelized player model is very rough and first-pass. We’re really pressing full-court on getting something playable out first, then we’ll come back and make it pretty.

As has been mentioned in other threads, I’ll consolidate here:

Containment Units will be private. Only the person who placed them will be able to use them (and also remove them, again for now).

The bot will start as Host only.

Relays, Cores, Centriforges, Gravpads etc will still function for all players.

There is no trade window or public containment, but you can exchange items by Dropping them (the other person can pick them up). Drop is X on a stack in the inventory screen.

There will be a Public, Friends-Only and Invite-Only multiplayer mode as currently planned/implemented (subject to testing feedback).

The host will be able to Kick and Ban unwanted guests.

You will be able to use a mini-voxel model for players, or Avatars. The choice is client side for now, so you choose what you see (each player in the same game can choose differently).

It is really fun to run around with several other people building massive structures.

Multiplayer is a gamemode you can turn on (or off) for ANY world. While playing a world, in the pause menu, there will be a new Multiplayer Beta button, which leads you to the selection screen for activating MP.

Containers will not longer be allowed store containers with things in them. You can store containers, but they will have to be empty. Containers will empty their contents when dug up to ensure this. (There are a host of serialization and networking issues that come from infinitely recursive storage, as well as the fact that from a gameplay stance, it is pretty game-breaking. It was intended that this would never be an option to the player, but alas, it’s taken this long for us to get around to fixing it). We highly suggest that if you are using containers to store containers (with things in them) that you take the time to empty them out and sort your things as you’d like.

We’ll be doing another heavy round of testing and debugging tomorrow night, which should get us pretty close to being bug free unless something nasty rears its head this late in the game.

Alright XenoMiners.. In order to save your Xboxes from becoming Exboxes, we’ve pushed out version 1.31!

Fixed the container bug for all your old school worlds PTL!

We modified the conduit texture to be less wire-y.

Updated the textures for copper and silicon and xenotech walls.. No more squinting at the screen and then raging at us on Facebook 😀

Fixed reclaim screen bug

Fixed bot memory issues

Fixed spawning inside the world

So make like that proto hominid in Act I of 2001, raise your bone high in the air and carpe diem with a barbaric yawp!