This is the August edition of the monthly technical update for Digital Extinction (GitHub).

Here is a summary of the changes since our last update, consisting of commit range 91d9321..752bd8d. In total, there were 69 non-merge commits.

The most notable updates include:

• License of the source codes was changed from GPLv3 to AGPLv3.
• Spatial sound effects were introduced for construction, manufacturing, destruction, and laser fires.
• Digital Extinction was migrated from Bevy version 0.10 to version 0.11.
• The godmode feature flag was introduced; players can control enemy entities when the flag is enabled.
• Further progress has been made on multiplayer.

License

The game's license was transitioned from GPLv3 to the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL).

Digital Extinction is a community effort. The promotion of free software gaming is one of the main objectives of this project, which originally influenced the selection of the GPLv3 license.

DE Lobby (providing game lobby REST API) and DE Connector (providing low latency in-game player connections) function over a network. In the era of cloud gaming, the entirety of Digital Extinction might also be accessed fully remotely. This prompted the transition to the AGPL license, which safeguards users even during software interactions over a network.

Audio

We transitioned from Bevy's native audio to Bevy Kira audio due to its more versatile configuration options for sound.

The initial version of spatial audio supports both panning and attenuation. Attenuation is determined by the distance and direction of the sound source relative to the camera.

Multiplayer

Since the last update, several fixes and improvements have been made to DE Connector and DE Lobby. The initial connection to DE Lobby during game creation from the multiplayer menu, the establishment of the game server, and the management of the multiplayer life cycle have been implemented.

The creation of multiplayer games is almost finalized. What remains before the release of the PoC is game joining and in-game inter-player synchronization. The latter is likely to be a very challenging task.

Also, see last month's update on multiplayer.