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Thanks for enduring the 15 minutes!

Yeah the UI is ass, I really spent minimal time on it just to get the game functional ASAP.

If you had to let the timer hit 0 to proceed, that could be because the other player wasn't ready, was that the case? Not letting you reject an Automon is also strange, I'm assuming the button is there but just doesn't do anything?

I didn't dare to touch GM netcode, it's actually an external server that manages the whole game, clients can just send their intent, ask for info etc, but the actual battle is really a replay, the Automon objects themselves have no permanence.

At some point I will add a "bot mode" or a visible lobby system so there's no need to juggle windows (or the game will get HUGE and there will always be someone to play against, one can dream). Eventually the plan is to have matches be 4 or 8 player FFA so you'll be more likely to run into someone by accident (but I will not ask people to test the game on 8 windows at once lmao)

Making it a single player experience would indeed be easier, that's why I released that in 2022 as Automon - if you enjoyed this game, pirate the first Automon, you might like it and it'll five you some idea on how this game might play when finished. This new one is meant to literally add multiplayer to the first game

Dam. I mean, I remember you mentioning there being a previous Automon title somewhere, but I assumed it was a WIP project that you had merged into this one and I kind of phased out the fact. I didn't expect it to be a finished game, already released on Steam and all.

Well, do you plan Arena to be a sequel or spin-off/expansion (e.g. Don't Starve Together)? I guess there must be a reason why you won't add the multiplayer function as a patch to the original game. Whatever it is, success in your endeavors.

Pirate? Brah,

I'll play it... at some point.

Not letting you reject an Automon is also strange, I'm assuming the button is there but just doesn't do anything?

Yep. I forgot the exact wording, but I had options to catch and refuse catching; neither would respond.

I didn't dare to touch GM netcode, it's actually an external server that manages the whole game

That's impressive regardless.
I myself have a pipe dream of adding online multiplayer to my project. Probably can't do it though

(+1)

I consider this game to be more of a sequel than a spin-off, though mechanically it won't change a lot. So Don't Starve is a very appropriate example.

The reason why it is a separate game, and why Don't Starve Together is a separate game, is that multiplayer is a completely different beast and unless a game is coded to eventually have multiplayer from the beginning, "adding multiplayer" is rarely a thing. Because now instead of "you click this defeated Automon to add it to your party", it's more like "you click this Automon to tell the server that you would like to capture this Automon to your party, the server tells you if you're allowed to do that and updates the game state accordingly, then tells the client what his new party is". The game objects themselves have no agency or permanence, and the battles are just replays of the story that the server told you.

Also, I want to redo the visuals and change some mechanical aspects of the game, like areas and how legendaries show up, but didn't want those changes in the original game.

I think I know what happens with the reject/capture bug you saw, the server probably checks if the party is full and refuses to act, before it checks if the request is actually a rejection. Will look into it.

Your game seems turn based, if you are early enough in development then it's probably not too late to look into multiplayer development. The way I structured the multiplayer system is probably not even optimal, so you might figure out a way to do it without even going beyond Game Maker - the reason I didn't bother is that I think GM is only peer to peer, and I'm not sure if there's a way to prevent cheating from the host client if you do that (by modifying data in memory through Cheat Engine or something).

If it's your first game, I wouldn't bother though, you'll spend a lot of time coding the network code instead of actually making a game