Covid Makes Things Slow Sometimes

I like to call COVID the double edged sword. On one hand, it's freed up most of my schedule to work on the projects I love working on. On the other hand, it's hard for me to know when to say "no" and rest myself for a change.

In the 11 days since the last blog post, not a lot has happened. I spent a lot of time on the main menu system that stores a limited previous state history. The initial testing of this menu system has proven to be successful and is now just waiting on skinning. With the addition of the main menu, comes the following:

• Change Player Name: You can set your player name here. This is your multiplayer name. Traditionally, you configure your name with your deck leader but due to the absence of many things including campaign, this is an options option.
• Remap Controls: Using ReWired's built in control mapper, you can remap player 1 or player 2's controls
• Singleplayer still not implemented. However, selecting single player will show you a message and tell you to stay hyped! B)
• Multiplayer will ask you if you want to play a LOCAL game (2 players at the same computer) or a NETWORK game (2 players at different computers over the network). 
• Menus are pretty much fully configured and working.

In addition, the following small changes have been made to the core game-play:

• The game will not officially begin until two players have connected.
  • Optionally for testing, you can override this behaviour on the DORNetworkManager.cs to start the game with only one player.

I haven't spent nearly as much on this as I'd like to, however my production team has been focused on creating a Sprinter Van Buyer's Guide. This was an important step to move my personal life in the direction I want it. If you're interested, check out Florida Van Man on YouTube

We're still some time away from a public net test, however I'm working diligently on ensuring that when a public net test does come out, you guys and I will all be able to enjoy it together. This is what's on my plate for bringing a public network release:

• Slight UI re-design to allow space for a chat box.
• Connected players list. Shows P1, P2, and any spectators.
• Re-implement player specific UI (lifepoints, deck, deck cost, summoning level, etc.)
• Allow spectators to join and chat, but not perform any movements in the scene.
• Ensure that local multiplayer still works after switching to a mostly server based architecture.
• Networked Battles are still not implemented.
  • General idea: Player 1 initiates a battle against player 2's monster, the server validates this and configures and shows a battle screen locally based on the animation arguments. Animation arguments are sent as an enum array (it will be packed into bytes eventually) with the arguments
• Win Screen
• Handling of any unexpected connection issues: dropped, lost, disconnected.
  • In the case of player 2 unexpectedly dropping, this will be considered a win for player 1. The inverse is considered true.