DEV BLOG # 2 - There is animation

Hello dear community!

These last days we have been very rich in experiences and development! We worked hard and managed to make our first playable version!

Animations

I had to give meaning to this blog title 😂. I finished the animation of the 3 characters who will be present on the first versions of the game, it was not without difficulty because I am neither 3D artist, nor 3D animator, be indulgent 😅

Scenes that come to life

We started to work on decorative elements as well as environments to set the tone of the design.

Moreover, for information, we use Unity 3D as a game engine, this allows us several things, it facilitates the task of setting up scenes (it is almost enough to click / drop), the many internal libraries allow us to gain a considerable time (no need to re-develop hot water).

And above all we benefit from all the tools to port to different media, such as the Nintendo Switch, or iOs and Android. We really win

Controls

Regarding the controls, we tested a version where the joystick was floating; finally not conclusive we tested a more classic version, and frankly more efficient.

The first game servers

During our testing phases, I set up the start of a network architecture in order to confront the code with the reality of the network! And thanks to that, a lot of adjustments could be made this week

The holy Netcode 🙏

Netcode is a generic term most commonly used by gamers for anything related in one way or another to networking in online games, often referring to timing issues between clients and servers. . Wikipedia

To put it simply, without this Netcode, there is no synchronization between the players and the server.

If for example you shoot a bullet with a pistol in an online game, and the time that the bullet crosses the map the player on the other side shifts a bit.
If the Netcode is not good, its avoidance measure will not be taken into account by the server, and therefore the ball will hit it.
Except that the player who avoids the ball will have the impression of being touched while it will have tapped next to its screen.
But since the server is the master of the game, the player will therefore be affected. And will have a feeling of loss of confidence in his part.

The difficulty with that is also that we are not all equal in terms of connection, and therefore, you have to optimize the exchanges between your device and the server to the strict minimum to be sure that the basic information arrives. (movement, key press, number of lives, etc.)

Conclusion

Conclusion of this dev blog? We are really confident about the evolution of the project, we have also internally written a roadmap, which we will share with you when it is confirmed :)

Thanks for reading me !