Posted December 14, 2023 by Daffodil Starlight
Hello friends! 😄
Yknow I really should write more frequent devlog updates because....
ITS BEEN A REALLY LONG THREE MONTHS.
AND I HAVE SO MUCH TO TELL YOU ALL. MOSTLY BAD LOL
The interdimensional bug
So like
Remember in the last devlog, I spoke of this server-destroying bug?
we managed to fix that.
But shortly after that fix, we noticed another strange phenomenonenon...
We called in the "interdimensional bug" that happens in the horde mode game.
If you havent tried our game, the horde mode game is pretty much like a prototype game mode made to be similar to Vampire Survivors. Players join a room and fight waves of monsters till they die.
But after some testing, we realized that when more than one game is happening at the same time, players in room 1 can interact with objects and players in room 2!!!! (and every other room)
I mean, they cant see each other, but they can bump into each other. Whats worse, players in room 2 can be hit by stray projectiles fired by monsters in room 1 and vice versa O: SEEMINGLY ACROSS SPACE AND TIME. Which is why we called it the interdimensional bug hahahaha
We found out that this was due to our game rooms being directly superimposed on top of each other, Occupying the same space. By right, Unity and Fishnet(the networking library that we use) are able to handle this without a hitch, but as it turns out, the AI pathfinding library that we used was unable to handle stacked scene physics.
TBH this was a pretty.... annoying... discovery.
We absolutely loved the speed and performance that our AI pathfinding library provided, and we really really did not want to sacrifice any of it.
It was also the only AI pathfinding library that we ever had experience using.
Suarvae and I came up with two potential solutions.
1. Keep using our existing AI pathfinding library, but instead of superimposing multiple rooms to occupy the same space, we write extra logic to offset the rooms from each other such that they no longer overlap.
Kinda like creating a "rubicks cube" game server, except each individual cube represents a game room, and instead of a 3x3 array, it can be as big as our server's specs allows.
2. Change our AI library from our existing one to..... *Queue horror suspense sound* THE UNITY BUILT IN AI PATHFINDER SOLUTION
After some debating and back and forth, we felt that even though option 1 seemed like the better solution in the long term, option 2 looked quite abit simpler to implement. And since it was already November and we were rushing to have something nice and presentable for two conventions in December, we really had no room for any more time-eating bugs.
The overly optimistic idiots
"No time for best. we need whats fast, at least for now. Tech debt aside, whats our best move?" I asked Suarvae, worried about the true time cost of both options.
"Option 2. Two days tops." declared Suarvae, beating on his chest (he didnt actually beat his chest. probably not. I wouldnt know, we were chatting over discord voice).
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Sigh
I got no good way to end this post hahahaha
Its not been a good time, and every step of the way really felt like one step forward two steps back.
We can only hope that all these setbacks accumulated us a good chunk of karma chips that we can spend next year hahahaha
Daffodil Starlight