Alright, here's the first October update.
The alpha test has been postponed.
As you may or may not know, I aimed to get an alpha out so you guys can run around a scene and help test things. I had hoped to meet a soft deadline of end of September to get the test up and running. However, this unfortunately did not bear fruit mainly due to the fact that IRL work spiked up and while I try to time slice, when things get very busy, game development has to take the back seat and make way for clients that want their devices fixed, etc etc.
I also had to shift gears and work on updating my network code that I contribute to Mirror, which drained me of sanity a few days in a row due to Visual Studio saying there's 6 errors in the transport when Unity happily compiles and runs the code. I've tried all possible fixes that I know of, but it still throws in the towel inside Visual Studio for some reason.
Anyway, since the Photon add-on is the only asset that actually has networking support so far, I've had to look at the code in that asset, interpret, and then figure out how it translates into Mirror code.
This is not an easy job and even if I emulate the PUN add-on itself, PUN is very client-authoritative, and this combined with some things that Justin's add-on does sent me into a spiral of confusion, especially since some of the API is poorly commented.
I'm not trying to bash his hard work, but it can be confusing at times to figure out what the PUN add-on does, then figure out what the Mirror equivalent is. Then I have to test it, make sure it works, etc.
I've had to make contact with a few experienced PUN developers and ask what certain functions do. One of the developers who has also been reporting a lot of PUN bugs have preemptively warned me about them, so I can
hopefully avoid them while Justin patches his PUN add-on.
Anyway, on the subject of client-authoritative, some parts of the Mirror add-on will not be fully client-auth. Some things like shooting and attacking will be server authoritative, even if you're expecting the client to say "yes I hit him for 90 damage".
I will be doing a video showcasing the current state of the networking add-on, it's basically doing things as I expect but there's a few things that I've had to contact additional people and ask for assistance.
So basically this update is to reassure you that no, I'm not giving up or abandoning it. I just need more time.