Generated Warzones

Generated Warzones is a high intensity multiplayer third person shooter game with a battle royale game mode made in a low-poly art style, featuring precision gunplay, dynamic pickups, and procedurally generated island maps for endless variety and unpredictable matches. Customise your character and fight for the most kills!

Full-Description:

The characters in Generated Warzones are made to be fully customisable avatars, allowing players to express their personality through creating unique combinations of fun and colourful outfits, hats, and hairstyles. Next, the user will enter a lobby selection menu where they can either create their own lobby or join an existing one. The two lobby sizes consist of up to 8 or 16 players, depending on what paced match the host wants. The lobby itself is a basic, pre-designed staging area with scattered targets and props where you can run around freely and pickup weapons, keeping players engaged while they wait for others to join. When every player has ‘ready-ed’ up, the host is then able to start the game. Each match begins with a newly, procedurally generated warzone (hence the game’s name) filled with hidden loot and unexpected challenges, ensuring that no two matches are ever the same. This environment forces players to adapt, testing their strategic thinking and combat skills in a way that a static map never could. Whether it is a desert island, or a half-submerged oasis, each match gives players a fresh opportunity and a new set of obstacles. Players start by being dropped onto the map by jumping from a plane. Players must quickly gather weapons by searching through buildings and containers across the map. Over time, the map shrinks in stages forcing players into smaller areas increasing the likelihood of encounters. The shrinking area is represented by a ‘zone’ or ‘circle’ that closes in, and anyone outside of it will take damage. Upon death, players respawn at a random location within the safe zone but are stripped of their weapons. The players with the most kills will be crowned the rulers of the warzone.

Controls:

• SPACE to drop from the plane
• WASD to move and SPACE to jump 
• TAB to toggle menus
• Hold LEFT SHIFT to sprint
• RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON to aim
• LEFT MOUSE BUTTON to fire

Skills I learned:

Generated warzones has definitely been my most challenging and largest game that I have worked on so far and a significant step up from some of my other projects. The hardest part of developing this game has been the multiplayer aspect of it as it was my first attempt at a multiplayer game and I definitely was overly ambitious in my criteria. From the get go, it added a world of complexities dealing with two versions if the game – the server (host) and the client. I decided to go for a P2P (peer to peer) approach due to the reduced server maintenance, ease of setup and lower latency. Using a series of network constructs embedded within Netcode for Gameobjects (unity’s in built multiplayer solution) including Network Variables and Network Lists combined with Server RPCs and Client RPCs I synchronised animations, terrain and pickups across the network. After working with Netcode, I found I gained a deeper understanding of a new topic area of computer science that built up my skills for further applications in the future.  Additionally, I explored animation rigging and inverse kinematics to create realistic, physics-based weapon-holding animations needed in a third person shooter. This project also allowed me to delve into procedural generation for the first time. I used Perlin noise maps blended with a fallout map to generate realistic landscapes that mimic the shape of an island with gradual elevation changes, further expanding my technical skills.

Future Plans:

In the future, I want to create the full range of weapons I had originally planned, such as a machine guns, sniper rifles, and RPG’s, which would add more variety to the gunplay. Furthermore, I had also intended to introduce grenades and an armour system to serve as rarer pickups that would enhance strategy. Technically, I want to implement client-side prediction and server reconciliation to reduce latency as well as adding host migration to ensure continuous gameplay even if the host disconnects. Additionally, a feature I think would be cool to include would be the availability of vehicles (such as cars, motorbikes, and boats) to allow players faster and more varied types of movement across the map, adding depth to both exploration and combat.

 I would love to hear your feedback and questions in the comments below, and will try to reply to them in the discussion thread!