Multiplayer

Since 2.0.0, TightBeam works in co-op. Everyone else’s flashlight is a cone, aimed where they are looking, with their own focus, brightness and colour.

What you get

• Cones instead of dots. The base game shows another player’s flashlight as a small point light on their body. TightBeam replaces it with the same beam you have, pointed the same way they are.
• Their settings, not yours. If they have TightBeam, their focus, brightness and colour come across live. Effects come across too, so a mod that flickers or blacks out their beam looks right to you.
• Late joiners see the lights that are already on. The base game never tells a joining player about a flashlight that was switched on before they arrived, so those players stay dark until the owner toggles. TightBeam carries that state itself and fixes it.
• Players without the mod still get a cone, drawn from your own default settings.

Needs a Steam lobby

The sharing rides on the Steam lobby the game already uses, so it needs one. In a session without a Steam lobby - a direct connect, a dedicated server, or single-player - other players still get proper cones, aimed correctly, with your default settings. What you lose there is their individual focus, colour and effects.

Not everyone needs the mod

Nothing has to match. If you have TightBeam and nobody else does, you still see everyone with a proper cone - you just see your defaults rather than their settings. If they have it too, you see exactly what they see. Nothing is required of the host.

Keeping a big lobby smooth

Lights are the expensive part, so TightBeam caps them rather than lighting everyone:

• at most MaxRemoteBeams at once (default 4), nearest first
• nothing past RemoteBeamMaxDistance (default 70 m)
• nothing that is not on screen
• no shadows on other players’ beams (RemoteShadowNearest, default 0)

If frames get tight, drop MaxRemoteBeams first, then the distance. All of it is in Configuration.

Turning it off

• RemoteBeams = false - stop drawing other players’ cones. You still share yours.
• SyncMyBeam = false - stop sharing yours (your notice comes down straight away). You still see theirs.
• RemoteBeamsForUnmoddedPlayers = false - only draw cones for players who actually have TightBeam.
• SuppressRemoteVanillaLights = false - leave their vanilla light alone, so you see both.

How it works, briefly

Where you are looking and whether your flashlight is on are things the game already sends to every player, so TightBeam just reads them. It never sends a position or a rotation and never writes to the game’s own state.

Only the beam’s shape and colour need sharing, and those go on a noticeboard rather than in messages: each player writes their own beam into their own slot of the Steam lobby, and everyone running TightBeam reads the others’. Nobody can write anyone else’s slot, so there is no host and nothing to desync. Steam hands a joining player the existing notices by itself, which is why late joiners just work.

Players without the mod are not touched by any of this. The game itself never reads or writes that part of the lobby, so nothing runs on their machine because of you - no messages, no log lines, nothing.

Modders: see Modder API for reading other players’ beams.