New new multiplayer hero. 🎲

Our two previous multiplayer heroes were quite subtle and the presence of others wasn’t always obvious enough, we wanted to focus on that with this one.

As everything old is new again, we came back to something similar to our first hero in the end.

But this time using “real” 3D, as I’d been meaning to explore @⁠react-three/fiber for a while.⁠ In fact, my first-week project at Liveblocks—roughly two years ago—was already about 3D cursors with R3F.⁠

After a few visual explorations and some technical dead ends, we started exploring multiplayer physics while trying to stay simple and not run them server-side—here’s the first time it “worked”.

We use @⁠react-three/rapier client-side but instead of also running physics server-side, we elect a single user per room who has the final say when things get out of sync between users.⁠

Going back to my first-week project, the new 3D cursors are similar but only “attach” themselves to the scene when it makes sense visually, to avoid weird movements and sudden jumps.

Another aspect we wanted to improve was how many people could experience the multiplayer version at once. Instead of falling back to a solo version after hitting a hard limit, we now create rooms on-demand, always aiming to keep things balanced.

Finally, I feel so grateful for the @pmndrs and @threejs ecosystems, communities, and contributors. We’re definitely standing on the shoulders of giants here. 🙏

And, ↑↑↓↓…

Our new hero is outrageously good, amazing work!