[b]Hello engineers![/b] Welcome to another Final Factory Update! We have tons of exciting news about Next Fest, the demo, and multiplayer progress, and of course some patch notes for you. [h2]0.16.3.20 Patch Notes[/h2] [h3]Balance[/h3] [list] [*] Marked the nearest planet with a breadcrumb during map generation. This lets players see where the nearest planet is, avoiding the situation we've seen many players encounter where they cannot find a planet early game. This is not a long term fix. We have some ideas for how exploration centers might function to aid players in their hunt for an early planet; until then, we don't want people bouncing off the game at this juncture. [/list] [h3]Misc[/h3] [list] [*] Updated to Unity 2022.3.17 [/list] [h2]Coming up[/h2] [h3].17 Content Update[/h3] Alongside the multiplayer implementation, .17 introduces new exploration options and avenues, a reworked obelisk rewards system, upgradeable weapons, a new organics puzzle for late game, and more. [h3]Demo and Next Fest[/h3] Next fest is right around the corner and the demo will be made available again! We will be putting .17 on the experimental branch very soon, which will have all the refactors from multiplayer (and all the multiplayer code behind a feature flag), and a portion of the new exploration content. I'm expecting the demo version to be .17, and for .17 to ultimately be the release version of the game (after sufficient playtesting!). [h3]Multiplayer[/h3] Huge strides continue to be made in multiplayer. [list] [*] We've hardened the code handling joining and leaving games, accounting for all the various edge cases that arise when clients connect and disconnect. [*] We've completed the refactor for inserters and placeables, and have made huge steps in mobile station logic to eliminate floating point errors that would cause non-deterministic behavior. [*] We've began implementing player controller actions as RPCs to update the game world [/list] Currently, players can load into each others maps, see each other moving around, and mine asteroids. We'll soon have the ability to place blueprints in the map, which will give us a basic MVP multiplayer experience. There's no smoke and mirrors or other magic at this point. The game now really works over the internet using Steam lobbies and all the rest! As soon as we feel like there is a basic stable MP experience, we will be opening it up for testing.