Greetings Terrarians!
Earlier today, we conducted a community livestream direct from Terraria Mobile 1.3 running on one of our phones! While that is certainly plenty cool - and we really appreciate everyone that stopped by to hang out and chat with us - we wanted to share the big piece of news coming out of that stream for anyone that was unable to attend.
Terraria Mobile 1.3 will launch with Online Multiplayer!
That's right - for the first time ever, Mobile Terrarians will be able to connect and play with their friends regardless of location. Of course, local multiplayer (over the same wifi network) is still very much included, as you can see from the screen above. We know this is one of the biggest things that Mobile Terrarians have desired - well, that and 1.3 - for a long time, so we are beyond excited to see this come to fruition.
Of course, there are lots of details behind the scenes here that you should know, so let's dive in!
How will this work?
- Online multiplayer will work much like non-Steam PC multiplayer does. This means that you will need to enter the IP address from the host, along with the port and any password that the host sets.
- Once you enter all of that information and tap "Join", then you are in!
- We chose this method to ensure that Android and iOS players can play together, rather than sticking to the device family specific systems. It's a bit more complex, but opens up way more possibilities - and players.
- Do remember that performance and the like will be dependent on device specifications and your network. Connecting via a lower-end supported device on a 3G connection will obviously see more potential issues than a top end device over blazing fast wifi.
What about hosting online multiplayer sessions?
- The most stable hosting environment is made possible via a standalone Mobile Server App for PC. This runs similarly to the dedicated server exe that PC Terrarians have been using for years. Simply run the program, enter a few choices, and you are all set up to go!
- You can also host via your mobile device - again, you will need to make sure that you have your port forwarded on your wifi/router.
- Once you do so, you can start a mobile hosted game and provide your IP address (What Is My IP Address? IP Address Tools and More) to your friends
- Reminder once again that hosting MP sessions is a demanding task - so make sure the person with the best device and network is hosting - and we cannot promise that a 4 year old device is going to be able to host like a modern one can.
- See Limitations section below for more details.
- Share your IP address with your buddies (along with any password that you set) and you should be playing together in minutes.
- Hosted online servers are HIGHLY RECOMMENDED be on wifi for the host device/PC (clients can be on whatever connection). The reason for this is multi-faceted, but primarily it falls to mobile/cell data not always being stable and fast enough to handle host & play duties coupled with the potential for shifting IP addresses as the host device pings different cell towers (which would immediately kick everyone at the very least... lots of issues there!)
- Use of mobile data hosting works as well, depending on your connection speed and stability - but is generally less reliable, so caveat emptor!
- The team has found personal hotspots can also work quite well.
- We know this may be daunting for some folks (but really, once you have port-forwarding done, its a breeze)
- That said, the team is looking into doing some professionally-hosted servers that would be available for rent by anyone that wants to pay a monthly fee to a server host in order to remove the hassle (sort of how Minecraft Realms operates) - we will share more details there when we have them. This would be purely optional, of course.
What are the limitations?
- The team targeted and has done extensive testing with 2-8 players. However, we are looking into expanding that to as much as 16 in the future - no promises though!
- On local connections (same wifi), remember that the hosting device will be shouldering a lot of the load - so older/less capable devices will struggle more with performance and may not be able to host as many players as a newer device. There are too many devices out there to be able to pinpoint which device can do what (especially in regards to Android), so some experimentation may be needed.
- It bears repeating that performance and the like will be dependent on device specifications and your network. Connecting via a lower-end supported device on a 3G connection will obviously see more potential issues than a top end device over blazing fast wifi.
We are sure that you all probably have TONS of additional questions - so we will do our level best to answer as many of those here as possible. Fire away!
That said, we hope that you are as excited as we are to finally see online multiplayer come to pass on Terraria Mobile! The team has some other very intriguing potential plans in this space and others... so we would encourage everyone to watch this space very closely and stay tuned for more juicy details!
Cheers - and here's to Mobile Terraria 1.3 coming very soon!
