Within the last month I have begun development on my most ambitious personal project, with the goal of a steam release by Christmas. The goal of the project is to create a multiplayer island builder, borrowing heavily from Islanders, TFT and other competitive online games. I want to keep the gameplay simple, with only one currency, and where building placement is the only way to score points. When I began the project I had to think carefully about which multiplayer networking solution to use. I ended up settling on Unity’s Netcode for GameObjects as it was up to date and had easy integration with Unity’s other game services (UGS) such as Lobby which was also required.
Although learning the architecture of a multiplayer game was difficult, I quickly got to grips with the tools to solve the problems, such as RCP’s and network variables. Within 3 weeks I had completed a working prototype with online play with the basic gameplay loop completed. More recently I have overhauled the visuals, whilst working hard in blender to create low poly art, and adding a perk system as shown below.
All clients are fully synced up over the internet between states using one user as the game host to avoid unnecessary dedicated server costs. The users may join a lobby and when all players are ready the host may start the game. This uses Unity’s Lobby system. I then use the Unity Relay system to connect the clients over the internet to the host's game. Most of my development time so far has been spent creating the systems to allow easy scaling of gameplay assets in the future. To do this I have created many Scriptable Objects as I believe they are a powerful way to hold data.
Future Plans
Soon I will work on game feel and polishing to give more user feedback on building placements. Additionally, I need to also create some low poly building models to replace the current placeholder assets. I also need to improve the gameplay loop as the player needs more impactful decisions to help gain the upper hand against other competitors throughout the game. Finally, I am working on fully randomised islands to keep the experience intresting. If I continue at my current pace, I should have a finished version for release by December.