GHOST BATTLE

A one versus one ghost battling game to the (extra?)death.

Designed in Bevy game engine initially based on the following game design tutorial series: https://johanhelsing.studio/posts/extreme-bevy Project for me to learn the basics of the bevy ecs system as well as: peer2peer deterministic synchronized game states utilizing ggrs rollback, wave function map generation, deterministic random generation, and other novel game design concepts.

LIVE DEMO

Features

• peer to peer networking
• non authoritative deterministic net code and game logic
• desktop, mobile, and web (wasm) support
• two player versus mode
• deterministic pseudo-random map generation (WIP)
• game music
• retro sound effects
• fun competitive gameplay

Building

Setup

• first install cargo and rust using rustup
• then add wasm target: rustup target add wasm32-unknown-unknown
• install wasm server runner cargo install wasm-server-runner
• install cargo watch cargo install cargo-watch
• install matchbox server cargo install matchbox_server
• run matchbox server in another window for dev testing: matchbox_server

Build and run

• build with cargo build --release --target wasm32-unknown-unknown
• run with cargo run --target wasm32-unknown-unknown
• auto compile and test for development with cargo watch -cx "run --release --target wasm32-unknown-unknown"

Deploying

• Requires wasm-bindgen-cli cargo install wasm-bindgen-cli
• optional wasm-opt: cargo install wasm-opt --locked
• then run the commands from deploy.bat

Matchbox Server config

use the following service definition after installing matchbox_server for user matchbox on ubuntu 20+

/etc/systemd/system/matchbox.your-domain.tld.service

[Unit]
Description=matchbox_server service
[Service]
User=matchbox
Group=matchbox
WorkingDirectory=/home/matchbox/
Environment="HOST=0.0.0.0:3536"
ExecStart=/home/matchbox/.cargo/bin/matchbox_server
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then run: sudo systemctl start matchbox.your-domain.tld.service

cargo build --release --target wasm32-unknown-unknown
wasm-bindgen --out-dir ./out/ --target web ./target/wasm32-unknown-unknown/release/wasm_battle_arena.wasm

TODO

• apply more aggressive size reduction techniques to bevy

  • wasm-opt on deploy
  • LTO and opt-level in cargo
  • prune some bevy features
  • apply aggressive wasm-opt profile
    • add more optimize options
  • profile un used big functions and hit them with the wasm-snip tool
  • tried wee_alloc and it ends up adding to file size funny enough
  • serve compressed with brotli or gzip

• add a main menu and settings gui

  • default matchmaking mode button
  • manual ip connect mode
  • sync test option on dev build
  • player settings such as:
    • name
    • color
    • cosmetics
    • sfx and music volume control

• auto generate the map with wave collapse or perlin noise

• add more map tile types

  • create a pretty asset for the basic wall type and all of it's corners
  • make a pretty ground texture
  • some kind of out of bounds area texture to make it less boring. Or just make it black.
  • special block types such as: traps, or items pickups as tile types

• polish sound effects and music.

  • add more sfx
  • add more music (battle theme)
  • tweak death sound effect

• fix literal corner case on collision detection which freezes movement on corners

  • it is possible to further improve this logic if i'm feeling bored

• add touch screen / mobile controls and functionality

  • controls need some polishing. Make fire work while not moving.

• polish and bug fix network issues and determinsm

  • Key issues are fixed, for now, but stll keep an eye out for bugs!
  • Improve Rollback Audio system robustness

• optimize performance

Complete

• add sound effects and subtle music
• Add a block based map to the grid
• Add collision detection to map using a simple calculation (coordinates / MAP_SIZE).floor() as index into array of blocktype at position
• update player spawn function with random locaion with no overlap
• check player spawn location generation with collision to not spawn in wall

Additional Fun Features

• Cosmetics
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