How to make Easy Multiplayer "Playback?"

Questions & Answers
1

Hey guys, I made a game recently for Android on the Google Play Store named Relentless. I want to expand to Multiplayer but have no money for a server, and lack knowledge about multiplayer in general.

I believe that the easiest way I could put “multiplayer” would be to record a play session of the game, and all the while record the movement of the player. Then the Movement of the player is presented to their friend in which they begin to play a session with a translucent replay of the other friends past movements, and ultimately how far they got.

This game uses the same method so I know it is possible:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.boombit.Spider

I ask if there is anyone out there who can better explain how to go about this technique?
I am new to Developing games, and no money for coding classes, so I can only hope on the people who do know how to go about things like Multiplayer or Mathematical Formulas.

2

I would never use Easy and Multiplayer in the same sentence :wink:

Now I am not an expert, but personally I would start by recording movement in a simple text file, at fixed time intervals. Depending on your game, you may be able to reduce filesize by just recording spots where rotation changes with the time. For example:

sec1 - 0, 1, 0 - 0, 90, 0
sec5 - 0, 5, 0 - 0, 0, 90

This type of text file yields extremely high compression rates. If your game has complexe “natural” movement, then just record the transform + rotation every second or so and try interpolation.

Finally, events would also have to be recorded (gunshots etc). This is a quick brainstorm of something that is fairly easy to implement and test out. I hope this leads you to the right answer. But not Easy & Multiplayer :smiley: