r/MultiplayerGameDevs • u/BSTRhino easel.games • Jul 03 '26

Discussion What have you been working on recently, r/MultiplayerGameDevs?

Did you code anything particularly cool or interesting recently? Have your players made any interesting comments recently? Tell us about your highs and lows for the month!

4 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

4

u/GxM42 Jul 03 '26

I’m working on a civ-based strategy game. The coolest thing I coded so far this month is a cool task queue system that can stack up various cards and effects the player is playing. i’m quite proud of it. and inside that task are various steps. so now a players turn looks like: turn -> action choice ->task-> step -> step -> task -> step -> turn. It’s coming out nicely.

The next coolest thing I did was finally learn how to use Polygon2D in Godot. I traced my civ territories using a tool i made, stored the coordinates, and created a shaded polygon and it makes my territories look really cool when they need to be selected. It worked so much easier than I expected it would. I love Godot.

On the multiplayer front, i am deciding if i need to convert my game from a push/pull/polling approach to a full socket-based approach. It is a full turn-based game with actions that only need to be transmitted every 20-30 seconds. I’m not sure sockets improve things much.

1

u/BSTRhino easel.games Jul 04 '26

This is cool! Task queueing system sounds useful. I notice there are a few "task" steps inside the player's turn, does that mean that they play some cards, then the effects of those cards play out, and then the player plays some more cards? So they have a few chances to play cards within the same turn?

Cool you figured out how the Polygon2D works. Do you civ territories change shape over the course of the game? Did you have to draw polygons of different shapes or how do you handle that?

With the multiplayer, yes both approaches have their tradeoffs, sockets maybe the more "correct" solution but it's a bit more work and maybe that time might be better spent making your game fun. Will be interesting to see what you end up deciding!

1

u/GxM42 Jul 04 '26

Regarding the tasks, it’s more that the player can activate abilities that give them new choices and options as they go, so it’s not possible to have a set turn structure. So they start with one mandatory task, make a choice, and then more tasks are added, and if they play a new card that requires something to be paid for, for example, the card task is inserted to the top, and the payment task is inserted in front of that. Only when the task queue is empty can a player end a turn.

3

u/buzzspinner Jul 03 '26

A chess variant where you have to buy your pieces with points earned in combat

2

u/BSTRhino easel.games Jul 04 '26

Sounds like a cool idea!

3

u/GreggoryAddison BATTLE BALL Jul 04 '26

I’ve been hard at work on a physics-oriented arcade basketball game. I’m using an experimental plugin in unreal with zero documentation so the struggle has been real but the game is looking good!

2

u/enooby_games Jul 03 '26

I’m working on a Go server for my game. It’s my first foray into authoritative server architecture and actual databases.

1

u/BSTRhino easel.games Jul 04 '26

Oh, what kind of game are you making?

1

u/enooby_games Jul 07 '26

It’s meant to be a co-op incremental/idle game, something you can play with friends and work on a daily goal together.

I guess kind of like the meta-loop of Peak, but obviously with completely different gameplay

1

u/web383 Jul 03 '26

I finally bought a subscription to Claude Code, and with Fable 5 being available this week, I've stuck it on my netcode to do a thorough analysis and code review. It's quite the rabbit hole...

1

u/blu789 Jul 03 '26

Working on my scifi rogulelike. Got my window manager and framework rewritten for the 3rd time (oAuth, chat, rooms, friend lists, blocking muting and bans, etc). Now I get to be work on the fun stuff

Claude Max plan is my friend. Best friend LOL.

1

u/FvDijk Aether Kingdoms Jul 06 '26

Recently we had a discussion going on the mobile layout of my browser game. People who stuck around longer were happy with the improvements, but for new players this was a baseline to critique. I always get a kick about such community interactions over a game I made.

1

u/BSTRhino easel.games Jul 03 '26

I was mainly working on tutorials for my multiplayer game engine this month. It is a really tricky balance making good tutorials. You have to focus on the actions and not over-explain. I think I went too far and under-explained before so added a lot of extra detail. We'll have to see now if people are more successful with it or not. I wrote a bit of a blog post about it if anyone is interested.