The Network Play feature is now available in Rivalry’s base game allowing you to now play a game with anyone, anywhere around the world.
Over the past two weeks I worked on both getting peer to peer to an acceptable state, re-structured the server back to using containers, disabling and fixing broken network game modes and added a new Steam invite feature that allows you to invite your friends to an online game of Rivalry.
Soooo.. Networking is going Live!
Although now the client can restart its Peer to Peer connection, the success rate of this restart is currently very low. It will usually take 4 tries for a peer to peer connection to form taking around 30 seconds. However I feel that this success rate can be improved with further investigation. I have asked the developer of the NAT traversal plugin I’m using what could possibly be going wrong and methods of improving it.
The server has also been restructured back into containers. This means that all the components of my server are now deployed as Docker containers.
The game mode “Players” which allows for network games with more than 2 players has been disabled from the network play feature as there were still a lot of game breaking bugs. For example if more than one person were to drag a limb at once as their turn ended, the player would stay floppy allowing for players to fly around the map with ease. So because of this I have decided to remove it until I have managed to remove these game breaking edge cases.
However, on another note I have re-added the “Weapon Choice” mode back into the network play feature as I now believe all game breaking bugs have been fixed. Previously if you were to choose the “Quick” mode, (which randomly selects a weapon combination that will be given to both players). While both sides did get the same weapon combinations, the combinations would be different on each player's screen. For example while the host may see both sides wielding a sword and a knife, the client would see both sides holding an axe and a shield. This always ended in chaos as players would be seen with certain weapons that they didn’t necessarily have. However, the mode has now been fixed and re-added into the network play feature.
The final feature I added was the ability to invite friends to join network games. All you have to do is change the filter below the network games list to anyone of your Steam friends and click on their name. In its current state I do believe it is too easy to invite someone to a game and may prove to be irritating without a text prompt of some sort to ask whether you truly do want to invite someone to a game. If the person you invited accepts then they will be automatically sent to the network lobby. This could be improved by instead of taking you to the lobby, it then took you into the network game itself.
If anything strange happens during a network game, don’t be afraid to tell me, as I would greatly appreciate bug reports and feedback to further improve the game!
This is a brilliant Review. Thank you very much :)
Pending tasks are now
- Complete network game lobby UI (make pretty and complete all network game modes).
- Complete network game restart UI (make pretty).
- Research player skins.
- Research different arenas and backgrounds.
- General bug fixing, tidy up and enhancement of look and feel..