Regarding Multiplayer
I spent all day trying to tie up the last loose ends for the first public multiplayer patch today, but the dedicated Amazon EC2 server I'm working with is having a problem somewhere. The server <-> client code works fine when run locally, but EC2 servers are generally sort of "bare bones" and extra secure. Tests on the same server have worked fine in the past, so there's just some little problem I'm trying to track down, but have run out of time today.

Once the dedicated server is up and running, still, please understand this is just the first patch of several needed. In regards to multiplayer only there are a number of known bugs, a number of missing and/or disabled features, and one yet unsolved problem.

Disabled features:
- Caves, floating islands, towns, terraforming, and ley line teleports have been temporarily disabled in multiplayer (not in single player).

Known bugs:
- Towers haven't been thoroughly tested, though monoliths are working well.
- Bags, buckets, and watering cans have not been tested.

The unsolved problem:
Floating point precision errors are cause by players travelling too far from the physics engines point of origin. This happens because computers are highly tuned to work through large quantities of 32-bit numbers. A 32-bit float, or an unwhole number, carries only 7 digits of precision. That means that if you travel over 10,000 meters away from the origin you can now only calculate to the nearest millimeter (10,000.00). Traveling further eventually you will only be able to calculate to the nearest centimeter, meter, and so forth.

In single player this is accommodated for by shifting the game world back towards the physics engine's point of origin ever 8192m (a power of 2). In multiplayer however, there are multiple players running around in different directions, possibly thousands of kilometers apart. The normal method of shifting the world does not work. Instead a system of "dimensional pockets" needs to be designed and handled in real time. It's not an easy thing to wrap your head around, but I understand the concept and will be implementing it once everything else is working better.

In the meantime, there is now "world shifting" going on in multiplayer. So if you travel too far, things will start to jitter and shake. If you stand still at 20km it is noticeable, and if you make it out to 100km it's quite annoying, but it is ultimately a cosmetic issue up until around 1000km, and again, only in multiplayer until I can fix it.

Missing features:
Multiplayer means, everyone might be super friendly, or they might not be. Griefing is a very real and unfortunate part of online gaming. In this patch there are not yet permission settings, server passwords, and a number of small features like that which will be necessary to ensure sportsmanship-like play is not only encouraged, but enforceable. That doesn't mean that we will never let anyone make a PvP server, if that's what they'd like to do, but for the most part this is a PvE game, in a VERY big world. Player "claims" and protection will be built-in once things are working more smoothly.

Having said all that, it's a solid first step!
Please join us in Discord: https://discord.gg/ktAPeCe if you're going to try multiplayer to help me debug and improve things and also because the server will most likely not be up 24/7 as I continue development.

Running a dedicated server
Not particularly recommended this early, but should anyone be so inclined the dedicated server executable can be downloaded via the beta branch "dedicated server beta".
"Solace Crafting.exe"

Single player patch notes

v 0.5.0c 2019.05.13
- Added multiplayer host and client choices to the start menu
- Town building placement now snaps to the world grid by default allowing positioning with the wasd+qe+zx keys similar to building. This can be disabled to return to mouse based placement with the "snap to grid" toggle, or temporarily halted to allow movement with the right-mouse button.
- The starter "Core Shard Platform" will now be aligned to the world grid on new worlds
- Fixed world creation preview
- Fixed boats
- Fixed monoliths and champion/hero bound chests throwing errors
- Added building hit points (wip)
- Demons now use an "attacker" specific navmesh attempting to path towards the solace
- Demons will now attack buildings in their way when the solace cannot be reached (wip)
- Moved the mouse over information display to the bottom middle of the screen
- Mousing over buildings will now show their hitpoints (wip)

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin.

To opt into Beta you only need to go to your Steam Library, right-click on Solace Crafting, select Properties, click on the Beta tab, and opt-in to the beta. This beta version is only available to Windows 64-bit users.

Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting?
Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!