In keeping with my rule of trying to do one thing with my game every day, today I began experimenting on adding monsters in a multiplayer environment. The end goal is to have a spawn manager running on the server which will, in its most basic allow enemies to spawn in at a given co-ordinate set when called. The logic for this is pretty simple, I can query where on my level’s tilemap a given object (say, a player) is, then pick a spot nearby, see if it’s a sane place for a monster to spawn (there’s a ground tile, no solid wall etc) and there you go.

The fun part here is adding some extra logic to make the server spawn monsters in a fun or challenging way. Perhaps you turned your back on a dark room or maybe you’re just about to turn a corner you haven’t explored before… You get the idea.

By next week I’m hoping to have these things accomplished:

• Functioning monster spawner (fancy logic not required, a simple button to spawn an enemy nearby will suffice)
• Multiplayer combat (maybe even pvp combat)
• Rudimentary dungeon generation
• Finish porting the requisite underlying systems to multiplayer (player health,  xp/level gain)
• Figure out multiplayer UI (just show my own health, not other players etc)

This looks like a scary amount of stuff, and it kind of is, but I want to push myself and see what I can get done in the time remaining. If all goes well I’ll basically have a workable game prototype!