Castle Crashers MP patch coming soon

By Tom Bramwell Published 1 September, 2008

"As fast as possible", says The Behemoth.

Castle Crashers developer The Behemoth is "working with Microsoft to get a patch out as fast as possible" to fix multiplayer connection problems.

"When we went through testing, Microsoft approved all our network code and we had no problems at all. There are those things in real-world scenarios that we couldn't account for," art director Dan Paladin told Joystiq.

Castle Crashers launched last week on Xbox Live Arcade, but connection problems have been rife - and despite giving the game 8/10 we admitted that the inability to get a co-op game going for more than a couple of levels was a drawback, particularly as Castle Crashers is clearly designed to be played with friends.

Lead programmer Tom Fulp said the problems were unforeseen. "We had six-hour play sessions and nothing ever came up," he told Joystiq.

"Yeah, there are certain network settings where, if you're in a very specific network environment, it won't work with another person's connection and that's what's happening. But that's something we're already addressing by working with Microsoft to get a patch out as fast as possible," said Paladin.

Paladin and Fulp were also able to tease about the game's performance since launch. "As far as we know we're record-breaking, because we aren't sure of anyone else selling as many copies," said Fulp, pending confirmation from Microsoft.

"Although," said Paladin, "we do have leaderboard totals to go off of and the last time we check, it was at about 103,000 players."

One of Castle Crashers' August predecessors, Bionic Commando Rearmed, has sold more than 130,000 copies across multiple formats. Connection problems or not, then, it was a decent month for Live Arcade.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (16) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Ignatius_Cheese #1 4 years ago

    Hooray!! \o/

    This will make it a much much more enjoyable experience, even though it is extremely good in its current form :o)

  • LeeroyJenkins #2 4 years ago

    Loved it. Played it through yesterday in a 3 player local co-op session. We completed it in 4 hours. 4 hours of gaming goodness no less.

  • optimusprym8 #3 4 years ago

    Hurrah! Been having a frustrating weekend of dropped sessions with 2, 3 and 4 friends after having convinced them to buy it for online MP co-op :(

  • asphaltcowboy #4 4 years ago

    Good to know they're sorting this out :)

  • ZuluHero #5 4 years ago

    ive not had any problems so far - but increasing the chances of none happening in future is great news! :)

  • Gearskin #6 4 years ago

    I haven't been able to connect to Quick or Custom Matches but was able to set up and play through the game in online coop when I made the room myself.

    Excellent game, absolutely love it. Finished it with Orange Knight at around level 30. Insane mode is now unlocked. Bring it on!

  • Kazzahdrane #7 4 years ago

    Awesome game, but a mate and I kept getting kicked out of our private game every few levels. Frankly the fact that we kept playing after that just shows how much fun CC is!

  • ccfb #8 4 years ago

    Speed of deployment and community contact are definitely benefits to smaller development teams.

  • ZuluHero #9 4 years ago

    i wouldn't say this was a particularly fast development though.. i was waiting for this game for aaaagggeeesssss....

  • Gearskin #10 4 years ago

    They announced it over 2 years ago, and it was playable back then. Saying that, at the time I don't think it had weapons, RPG elements or unlockable characters back then. Just 4 knights.

  • Dusk777 #11 4 years ago

    I lost ALL my weapons and animals after a marathon online session with a mate! Also one time when our connection dropped out I was put back three XP levels and about 4 map levels!!! Hope this will stop that happening ever again! Now to re-find all my animals!!! =] Still it's an awesome game, if it was shit i wouldnt of completed it again to get most of my weapons/animals back! =]

  • Freek #12 4 years ago

    "Yeah, there are certain network settings where, if you're in a very specific network environment, it won't work with another person's connection and that's what's happening."


    Sounds like they are underestimating how wide spread the problem is, but a fix is a fix.

  • Gearskin #13 4 years ago

    http://www.britxbox.co.uk/index.htm?ref=... Plug

  • DAN.E.B #14 4 years ago

    i must give the demo another try!
    all these positive opinions are making me curios?
    is it really as good as everyone is saying?

  • wellzy4eva #15 4 years ago

    i must give the demo another try!
    all these positive opinions are making me curios?
    is it really as good as everyone is saying?

    No, it's better :D (Goes back to his rampage with Alien from Alien Hominid)

  • iter #16 4 years ago

    My experience was that it worked for 2-player games, but as soon as we introduced a 3rd, all sorts of dropouts - mostly immediately. We tried doing so many things, believing it must be one of our DSL connections / routers having a bad day! I can't believe it made release like this!