This Part of the Game Dev is Killing me. please help. somebody! anybody!

Hi

Thanks for attending to my desperate call for help by the way. Now im working on a game that was merely an idea a couple of weeks ago. The game is good. But now i have another idea that i wanna incorporate in it. I want to make it a real time game for the VS modes. Where the players can both see each others movements in realtime. Im talking maximum 2 seconds delay. I just dont know how. I used tutorials to create the game from sctratch. From the model to the physics and everything so im not really glued up with the actual real time part. How do i go about doing this. Video tutorial links if you cant explain it. Any help would be appreciated. Android and iOs game by the way. Think “8 ball pool”, “clash royale” or any of those games. Something like that. Please help me. What do i need? What do i need to know ?

Hmm. You’re typing as if you’re being chased by somebody with a chainsaw, so I apologize if I misinterpret what you’re asking.

If I gather correctly, though, you’ve made a single player game, and now you want to add realtime multiplayer. If this is right, continue reading. If not, you can skip the rest of this post and respond, although doing so coherently while breathing slowly will help dial me in on the right direction.

Sadly, if you’re nearly complete with the game and are only now addressing multiplayer, then I regret to inform you that you’re nowhere near finishing your game. Ideally, a multiplayer game is built from the ground up with networking in mind. I added turn-based multiplayer into a game that was very early in development and it still took a good bit of rewriting.

Luckily, it sounds like you followed a whole bunch of tutorials, so the good news is you probably learned a bunch of stuff, right? So don’t be too sad if it’s easier to throw everything away (figuratively, never delete projects!) and start over from scratch again! I’d even wager that if the game were built exclusively from tutorial guidance, it’s probably not too big of a loss to the industry if that game doesn’t get released. :stuck_out_tongue:

For multiplayer, you’ll want to look into a framework like UNET or Photon if you’re not familiar with networking code yourself (and I assume you aren’t, from context). Photon seems to be a popular choice, but as with anything quality, there’s a price tag involved.

If you don’t mind a bit of extra effort, your platforms have native APIs available to handle networking code. A fellow by the name of @prime31 has some great plugins to allow you to interface with those APIs easily. Again, you get what you pay for, and with prime stuff, you get A LOT, so save up some cash.

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If you need multiplayer, look into UNET: Learn

Also I started on this series a while ago, can confirm it’s pretty good:

If you need 2 players 1 keyboard, perhaps this tutorial is for you: Learn game development w/ Unity | Courses & tutorials in game design, VR, AR, & Real-time 3D | Unity Learn

Finally, don’t bite off too much if you’re new to Unity. I ruined my most ambitious project because I wanted to add multiplayer, didn’t know what I was doing and it got so out of hand I just rage-quit the project. Also, many people like to use Photon for multiplayer. I haven’t used it so I have no opinion on it, but it’s worth looking into if you don’t like uNet for some reason.

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Sounds like feature/scope creep to me. Consider releasing what you have now and making another game with this feature.

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Doesnt clash royale happen in real time?

Is that what’s going on here? In which case I would suggest getting out of game development. It’s not known as a useful skill for driving away chainsaw wielding maniacs. :stuck_out_tongue:

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The chainsaw is just for motivation to keep working. Some people need more motivation than others. :slight_smile:

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I need someone with a chainsaw to keep me developing. As soon as something gets busy in life I just quit Unity for a while so I can deal with 1 thing at a time. Perhaps that’s why I still haven’t released anything yet, but have made about 20 prototypes that are mostly abandoned but half-functioning games :frowning:

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Ha ha. I am the same. It’s odd ya know. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of creating and exploring these virtual worlds in games even just the tiniest arcade action games. There is something almost magical about it.

Yet at the same time as much passion as I have for games and game dev other things in life must come first. Relationships must be nurtured, always “busy work” of life to do, exercise & fitness is important to me, etc. It has kept me from really forging ahead in game dev due to acknowledging the amount of time I have to focus on this and the amount of time required to do it.

I keep streamlining workflows and otherwise minimizing workload as much as I can. And finally think I might just be able to tackle something bigger than I have tried in a long time. Maybe you’ll soon reach the same point! :slight_smile:

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Maybe you guys should consider collaborating on a project to make a multiplayer game about game developers being pursued by a chainsaw-wielding maniac. You could call it “So I Work For a Chainsaw Murderer” or “Just Another Day at the Office”.

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Or “Working Next to the Chainsaw”

EDIT: DAYUM. Ok, this idea is mine already. I’m gonna make my Dead by Daylight clone in Unity xD