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That's a pretty interesting challenge. I can cheat by using the UDK (Unreal Development Kit), and all I'd need to do from there is make the actual game. I'll see if I can cook something up; no promises though as it'll be hard to make the time to do it :D

As I say, anything goes really, it's a pretty tight time frame, I'm working in Unity3D.

Challenge accepted! We shall see the games in due time!

I started a port to bring XMP (Unreal 2's Expanded Multiplayer) over to UDK. Here are some images...

An interesting challenge indeed. If I can think of a suitable concept, I might try to throw togethera web-based multiplayer game, possibly with a back-end running on Google App Engine - if so, I'll host a server using the SDK's dev appserver, and possibly eventually upload it to App Engine and release it to the public!

Started with the menus and lobby so I could get to grips with Unity's networking. Got that up and running now so I can move on to the fun part, actual game play .

I'd try too, but eh, effort. Had some holidays earlier, should have used those for it.

I'd post a screenshot but I can't figure out how. Not that there's much to see anyway.

So far I have

• Main Menu - Host/Join/Exit
• Host Menu - Game mode toggle.. might not end up doing anything but I have grand plans, name entry, timelimit entry and a Start Server button.
• Join Menu - Name and IP entry + the obvious join button.
• Game Lobby - Shows the hosts name, game mode, time limit, player list with ready status. The usual basics. Start game button for the host, ready/unready buttons for clients. The host can force start even if people aren't ready as that's one of my pet hates in many games, having to wait for people who forgot to ready :p.
• And the actual gameplay screen. Gameplay currently consists of each player having a sphere (or "ship" if you're feeling generous) they can move around the play area. However these ships do collide with each other and the surrounding walls so that's something. Areas near the walls apply a slowing effect to ships, not a good place to be! Hold Tab for scores during the game (clearly i started with the important stuff ).
• The server is authorative, disconnects mid game are handled gracefully (by the server or clients. Server disconnect will end the game though, no handoffs here, way to complicated in the time frame available), mid game joins are not (yet) handled properly, will probably have them sit in observation mode till the next round.

On the immediate task shortlist

• Weapons and the associated application of damage to things and the scoring that comes with this.
• Then finish off the flow of the matches so that there's the usual "3,2,1,fight" type warning at the start -> *the actual fighting* -> showing scores -> returning to lobby.
• Once that flow is there and it's actually possible to play a game through the whole process it'll be time for the real fun, making more wacky weapons and gameplay.
• And hopefully somewhere inbetween as I go making some effects that look better than boxes :p.

More progress

• Death and destruction. Missiles hit things, health falls, score is kept and ships can die.
• Game flow - about 80% done. The things I mentioned in my last post are working. You can play a single round Last Man Standing game. Death Match timed round works fine, but there's no respawning yet so when everyones dead you're all just sitting around waiting for the round to end. Once respawning is implemented then Death Match will be sorted. I also want to add support for playing multiple LMS rounds in a series with overall placings at the end.
• There are some nice explosion prefabs for Unity, figured out how to use those, so things now explode at appropriate times.
• Added colouring of players ships... much less confusing trying to figure out which ship you are. Still want to add support for allowing players to chose a different colour. At the moment you get what gets automatically assigned.

Can't see much in a small screenshot, you're going to want to be a reasonably high res to see what's going on .

Closer shot

That looks really awesome Eagle 32! I've been struggling to find time to continue working on my game at the moment. Hopefully, I will find some time this weekend (well, my weekends are Monday and Tuesday).

Guided missiles

Fadey, Floaty, Pointy number things

Bigger explosions!

Looks like your project is coming a long really nicely. I have to admit that I haven't made much time for the XMP project. Although I did import more content from XMP the other day.  I look forward to playing your game!

Unfortunately, I just haven't had time to get stuck into this, so I'm going to have to sit this one out.  Hopefully, I'll have enough time to put something together in time for the next LAN though - I've got some ideas that I'd like to turn into reality!

Maybe next time. Or better yet in a few lans time.  That would give a proper amount of time to develop something.

In the meantime...

Joining games in progress now works! Which took three times as long as it needed to due to a series of incorrect assumptions by me about how Unity handled buffering of RPCs. Resulting in me having to write my own buffering solution to wrap around Unities non-buffered RPCs to get the behaviour I wanted. But it's now done and working.

Did some quick online multiplayer testing with cryo tonight, seems to be working quite nicely.

There's one key gameplay feature missing that I'll try and get added before the LAN, but I have a list of bugs to get through first. And now the networking is working the way I want it needs a bit of a cleanup so I don't think anything else new is going to get in.

i put together a pacman style game (based on Fruity Frank) but never went as far as making it MP able.
Not that any one would want to MP it :P
I mainly stopped cuz my gfx skills are nothing better then a few lines/circles in paint.

I would be interested in getting a group of people (gfx, programmers, etc) and spin some idea's and make a small simple game, who knows maybe we can make some thing quite fun. It's amazing what some people can do in a few weeks.

http://unity3d.com/unity/ sounds pretty good, although i will be taking a better look

It might be hard to form a group unless you have specific skill sets that can contribute directly to the game. I've been in the mod scene for about a decade; I've seen a lot of mod groups where the team leader was just an "ideas" man and they almost never work out.

If you're interested in learning, there are talented people at L3 who do it. People like:

• Eagle32 (obviously in this thread)
• Orillion
• Myself

Don't know about the others, but feel free to PM me or respond to this post if you're interested in learning a game development skill if you don't have one.

i am only really a programmer, i myself have been in the mod scene since late 2002 and join in with(2 - 3 games), I have no interest in been a team leader or just an ideas man.

What i was saying above is i have attempted a few small games (~2 - 3 weeks work each) myself (one as a group, was a 3d mmo type) all 2d but have never completed them (just lacking gfx) due to my lack in decent graphics design, so if any one was keen to form a group i would put my hand up :P

And yeah ideas men tend to make it sound easy but have no real idea about the amount of work required, they tend to demand along with users and end up ticking off the only people that can actually make it work and when getting some thing for free you should never demand..