For those of you wanting to run a farm together, you now can! Stardew Valley now has an opt-in multiplayer beta on Steam.
Even better, is that it's cross-platform so everyone across Linux, Mac and Windows can play together! It works with current saves too, but it's best to back them up since it's a beta. Find your saves here "~/.config/StardewValley/Saves".
How to get it?
Right click on Stardew Valley in your Steam library, go to Properties and select the Beta tab. In the password box, enter "jumpingjunimos" and it will then allow you to select the beta from the dropdown menu.
It actually includes a bunch of new content too, however they're not going to tell us what until a later date, you need to find out for yourself! For those wondering, yes—you can marry other players.
Seems like the GOG multiplayer may require Galaxy though and since we don't have Galaxy on Linux, it might be best to pick it up elsewhere for now. There's also LAN support, but online multiplayer is Steam/GOG Galaxy.
See the full details here.
Don't own it yet? Grab it from: Humble Store, GOG, Steam.
Turns out one of the first troubleshooting steps I should have done ended up fixing my issues - the good old 'Verify Integrity of Game Files' button in Steam. It updated a single, ~780 byte file that was out of sync.
Probably a startup script. But hey, now I can launch it directly from Steam properly! And for the next hour or two last night, I didn't have a single lockup or crash-to-desktop.
ProTip: If you have problems with a game, try that button.
(also ProTip: To defeat the Cyberdemon, shoot at it until it dies.)
One game-related issue we did run into a couple times, unfortunately while I was deep in the caves, mid-monster-fight, is that if the host (or 'someone'?) triggers an in-game cutscene, everyone sees that cutscene as well.
...and gets insta-teleported to where that cutscene took place upon its conclusion. :><: So fair warning, there!
The only issue we've had so far is that one time my friend (I'm hosting) randomly got stuck in a loading screen between areas, something like 15 or 16 days in. He eventually had to just disconnect and I think he lost his progress he'd made that day (since it wasn't saved), but it's only happened once so far and we're in early summer now.
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