SILENT ANDROID PUNCH-OUT
As part of a group exercise during my second year at AIE, my group was assigned with providing a proof of concept based on a randomly generated name. We had one week to develop it, and due to this limited time frame, I went with using UE4 blueprints for its efficiency in prototyping. Our group utilized Perforce for source control and Trello for task management.
Silent Android Punch-Out is a 1v1 multiplayer game with online and LAN functionality. We utilized the online subsystem offered by default and built the game to work with Steam. Along with the core experience, punch out comes with a server browser and text chat in the lobby.
My main focus in this proof of concept was my ability to create a fully networked game. I was sure to only replicate and set reliable RPC functions to variables and events required for the game to work, while small effects like particles were left as unreliable. All validation checks are run on the server to prevent cheating.
Actors and aesthetics that don't directly affect gameplay and are event based were not replicated. This was a choice in order to reduce as much bandwidth use as possible. The crowd in the stands are randomly spawned each match, but only exist on the client and not the server.
Since play testing was essential with our game, I developed the game to track stats for the game and player using the Game State and Player State classes provided by UE4. I also set up the game mode and robots to be designer friendly by exposing most variables, which allowed our designer to create derived blueprints that tweaked values for testing.
