Alright, so production of the game is underway. My main focus for the past few days has been on setting up the networking and making sure everything is properly synchronised. I'm using Photon for the multiplayer, which is very similar to Unity's built in networking. I've used Photon before on previous projects, so using it here would be the obvious answer.
In the above GIF you can currently see movement synchronisation and client-side hit detection. I'm controlling the player on the left, yet my on the right looks quite weird. The movement looks floaty and not rigid at all. This is due to the clients sending data 20 times second and setting that directly will make the movement look very choppy. So what we need to do is lerp towards the sent position data. This is why in some parts of the game to the right, the movement "jumps forward", as the lerp needs to catch up to the newest position recieved.
I've also been working on the menu flow. This being the process of which a player gets from being on the main menu, to being in a game.
When players are in a lobby they will be automatically be placed in either red team or blue team. Only in the lobby can players change teams. They can only change teams though, if their current team has the same amount or more players than the other team.
Also in the image you see "When start conditions are true". These are the conditions for the game to begin. They are:
- There must be at least 1 player on each team.
- All players must be "Ready" by clicking the ready button.
Once that is done, a 15 second countdown will begin, allowing for more people to still join, or for players to "Unready".
In the last post I mentioned a couple different game modes, yet didn't really go into detail about them. At the moment I have 2 that I want to implement and another in my mind, just so that the game won't be stuck to one game mode that will get boring overtime. There are a few similarities that all the game modes have, these are:
- Each game mode can have a minimum of 1 person each team, with a maximum of 5 people each team.
- Each game mode will run for a maximum of 5 minutes. This number might change in the future, yet this is in place because I want quick games. Similar to Rocket League, which allows people to play short, yet numerous amounts of them.
Now that that's done, here are the game modes that I have in mind for the game:
Deathmatch
Your traditional team deathmatch where 2 teams battle it out to the death. After 5 minutes, the team with the most combined kills wins the game.
King of the Hill
2 teams fight to claim ownership of the center piece. When a team's ownership reaches 100%, they win. Ownership can be increased by having a majority of your team's players on the pad. There is also a 5 minute timer, which at the end, if no team is at 100% ownership, then the team with the most wins.
Free For All (not sure...)
At the moment a free for all game mode is iffy in my mind. I would like to add it, yet I don't believe that it will fit in with the style of game. For example, playing as a support character like the Cleric would be very weak in this gamemode.
That's all so far. In the next update, I will focus more on what has been done on the game, rather than ideas for the future. If you have any suggestions or questions, ask away.