Welcome back to another week of ‘State of the Game’!
This week I have been tackling the multiplayer game modes, and specifically the Arena game mode.
This required a re-factor of how I had the multiplayer system set up, also making it much easier to add new game modes. It also exposed that the current method of handling multiplayer games is not sustainable for the final game, so I will be continuing to explore new options.
After getting Arena mode working in multiplayer (which broke it for single player) I started working on turning it into a full working game mode, which will be a free for all death match. This means putting in the kills tracking, respawn timers, scoreboard UI, and level switching in-between rounds.
I also had to fix everything back up for single player, which was a significant effort. In the future, I would like to have the server be very lightweight and just treat all game modes as multiplayer games, with single player just being a local, private, multiplayer game. This would drastically speed up the development time and allow me to focus on adding more game modes, instead of creating every game mode and feature twice. I do plan on having the new update available to the snapshot builds within a few more days and available to everyone once it’s been deemed stable.
Much more work will be going into the multiplayer systems in the coming updates. I will be supporting a full multiplayer experience, with ranks, friends, matchmaking, and achievements. All of this will be coming as a way to unify the game and make it more cohesive and bring it out of a ‘in-development’ state.
So stay tuned!