Golf Rush

A multiplayer Unity game | 2022

Role | Networking · Gameplay

Overview

Me and a friend had already made multiple smaller games together in game jams,
However we wanted to build something bigger.
That's where we got the idea for a multiplayer golf game where your goal isn't to get the least strokes but to get to the hole as fast as possible.
We were planning on releasing this on steam, however because of studies we did not have enough time to polish and make it release ready.

My Role and teamwork

Because i worked together on this project I of course didn't do everything, our roles were mainly split into me being the main programmer and my friend as lead in art.
However sometimes we would do things that overlap.

For this project I've used trello for planning and to make sure I prioritize the most important features.

At first I was using unity's build in version control to sync our changes however after struggles and a lot of bugs with unity switching collab to plasticSCM. I switched to running my own perforce server which worked great!

The main features I worked on were, Networking, The car, Game logic, Golfball system, Player model with IK, UI (and syncing of UI) and Powerups. While Boris mainly focussed on the graphics.

Networking

For this game I made the networking and game logic. This was a pretty daunting task because I had not done a lot of networking before this apart from some simple prototypes we made to test out networking. I ended up using the open-source Mirror package for handling the basics and build on top of that because it has good documentation and also works with Steam.

First I made a lobby system where players can join together and vote for a map (and I later also added gamemodes). This was already a challenge since I had to learn the basics of networking and making sure that the game correctly counts the players and those who are ready/voted and furthermore making everybody load a level.

For the gameplay itself we have 2 gamemodes (later more on this) 1 where everybody has their own ball and one where everybody shares one. For the first I made clients have authority over their stuff and send everything to the host. For the latter it was a bit more difficult as I run most calculations on the host and send requests from clients to do something like hit the ball.

I've had a lot of difficulties making everything work for every situation for example: a car hitting a player from a client to a client might work but not from a client to the host player.

In it's current state I am very happy how solid the networking works. Almost everything syncs correctly and the first gamemode works without game breaking bugs, there are still some bugs we find with every playtest however almost all of these are easy to fix because I made a good foundation.

I've learned a lot about syncing systems and checking all edge cases from working on this games networking and I am very happy about that.

Arcade cart physics

As part of the "rush" aspect of the game I wanted to add golf carts that you could drift around. For these carts I first opted for a physics based approach although I quickly found out that would be way too clunky for the speed of our game.

Then I opted for a more arcady feel for it. To achieve that I took inspiration from Mario kart. I used unity's animationcurves (that are based on bezier curves) as variables for acceleration, turning speed and braking. This made it easy to tweak the settings and get the best feel.

I split the car into 2 parts, the ghost part which runs the script and does the actual movements and a visible part that is attached to that ghost part with physics constraints. I did this to allow the car to collide and form around the terrain, objects and players. While there are more performant ways to do this, this solution works for more complex terrain and also collides with objects in the way.

Gamemodes

After getting a base of the game running we started our first playtests with friends. However I found out that while the golving and driving was fun the game didn't feel multiplayer because the players do not affect each other enough, I added a powerup system to try to reduce this but that was still not enough. So I added a new gamemode wherein there is only 1 golfball for all players and you get score for distance shot. This transformed the game into something way more fun.

Golf system

The golf system is made out of different parts,
The golf ball which samples the terrain (unity default terrain) on its location to determine how bouncy the ground should be and the friction.

I also made the golf ball increase in drag when it has spend too long on the ground to avoid players having to wait a very long time for the ball to slowly roll of a hill.

The second part is the golf club, which also samples the terrain to determine which club to use to make it easier for the player. Then when you want to hit it goes along different stages, first you choose a direction and power via a "bouncing selector" so for example the power level goes up and down until you click and then it selects where it was when you clicked.

To make the player able to hold the stick and move his arms correctly with the procedural animation I made use of an inverse kinematics system that blends with a pre-build animation to give a smooth hit effect.