Aigilas will support LAN multiplayer in addition to couch co-op
Aigilas has evolved from a simple development exercise, into a full-fledged Xbox 360 indie game, and now into an open source game for the desktop. In the migration to the desktop ecosystem I felt that two major changes needed to be made to Aigilas. I rarely play local co-op on my PC, but LAN multiplayer has enabled me to sink hundreds of hours into adventures with friends and family. Therefore, Aigilas needed to make the leap from couch co-op to LAN enabled play. The second largest change was a desire to broaden support to Mac and Linux.
Some time ago, I branched the code base as a test to see if MonoGame could support the multi-platform goals. That was a relatively painless and straightforward procedure, and I hope to fully migrate the mainline once some GamePad issues are resolved.
However, taking a game that was never intended to utilize network infrastructure to support multiplayer gaming was a seemingly more complicated endeavor. Thankfully, the way SPX abstracts away input made the first prototype fairly straight forward. SPX is now leveraging the popular Lidgren networking library for C# to power its multiplayer communication. LAN play will need some work done to sync clients if they diverge, but it is barely playable over LAN at the moment.
Over the coming weeks, I will be working to smooth out the LAN experience and then move onto a proper migration off of XNA.