Syncing Sanity: Decoding Networked Gameplay as a Single-Player Developer

This session is not exactly a masterclass in textbook game-networking, but more a walk-through of how a developer who had never built a multiplayer game before navigated the complexity of building and maintaining a PvP shooter like Indus, a 60-player Battle Royale.

In single-player, the entire state of every entity is accessible at all times. In multiplayer, syncing a lot of data between peers isn't always feasible, hence it is crucial to be selective about what data is sent, keeping it as compact as possible and derive as much information from it.

The session will explore the design of pseudo-networked game-play systems in Indus, like the 'Spatial Player Awareness System' to present some interesting techniques of game-play state synchronization. How it's possible to dodge your way around 'passing data through the pipe' and work with a minimal synchronized state if you are brave(or coward) enough! In simpler terms, it's very much possible to work with minimal networked data and derive primary secondary and tertiary game-play states.