The roleplay game Chronet has been building now has its player-facing name: Terrestrial, by Chronet Studios. It is the standalone successor to the Garry's Mod server, and this is the first devblog post written about it. Here is where it stands.
Key art, not a screenshot.
A native game, and still in the browser
Terrestrial now runs on its own C++ engine, with the game's behaviour written in TypeScript on top of it. That is the client you will get on Steam. The browser version is the same game compiled to WebAssembly, so there is one game to build rather than two, and it stays playable from a link at vps-0c524167.vps.ovh.net. The old three.js web client is frozen and will be removed once the browser build covers everything.
The server is unchanged by all this: the rules, jobs, items and economy live there, and every client plays by them.
What changed in the last few weeks
- Cars. A chase camera that follows the heading, first and third person views, steering front wheels, and a seat for every passenger (the number keys switch seats). Acceleration and turning were retuned, engines have an rpm and gear model with layered engine audio, and pumps refuel your car.
- Voice chat. Voice goes through our own relay on the game server, so that native and browser players can be heard by each other as the browser build catches up. The native client has proximity voice, radio and phone calls with noise suppression and echo cancellation.
- Steam. Start the game through Steam and it signs you in with your Steam account. Friends can see your server, invite you and join you from the friends list, and there are parties in the menu.
- Emergency services. Medical calls go out automatically when someone is down, police and ERU can be dispatched, and the phone has a panic button. Fires, crashes and alarms open calls of their own.
- Property. Properties are now rented by the game day instead of bought, and 55 named places across the city have been mapped by hand.
- Networking and speed. Snapshots now go out on every 30 Hz server tick, the client smooths out prediction errors, and we tracked down a batch of stutters that were showing up in playtests.
What is not done
Terrestrial is in development. The WebAssembly browser build does not have voice chat yet, performance still needs work and there will be bugs. Concept art and key art on this site are labelled as such.
Where to follow it
Terrestrial has a page on Steam, and a Steam Playtest is being prepared. The Terrestrial page here collects every post about it, and the Discord is where playtests are announced.