Ballistic Bots
Ballistic Bots is an online multiplayer arena shooter which draws inspiration from Halo, Quake, and Unreal Tournament.
Over the course of 4 months, I developed this project from scratch in my free time using Unreal Engine 5 and C++.
Multiplayer Plugin
My first task was developing a multiplayer foundation. I decided to create a multiplayer plugin in C++ that could be repurposed for future multiplayer projects. This plugin handles creating, finding, joining, and destroying online sessions.
Weapon Design
The pistol is decent at everything but excels at nothing, making it a reliable mid-range utility weapon. The EMP grenade begins a detonation timer upon impact.
The rifle's laser beam has no accuracy falloff. It also has a scope which changes the beam to a deadly sniper. These combine to make the rifle the perfect long-range weapon for players with excellent aim.
The shotgun shoots 15 pellets in a random spread. Getting shot by 10/15 pellets is lethal, ensuring that point-blank is the ideal range. The cloaking ability lets the player sneak by enemy lines of sight to close the distance.
The rocket is very powerful but the projectiles move slow, reducing long-range capabilities. The large blast radius makes it dangerous to use close-range. The static bomb can stick to surfaces, including players, before detonating.
Lag Compensation
I added hit boxes to the player character blueprint and created a lag compensation component which stores the position of these boxes for a set time.
When a client requests a damage confirmation from the server, the server calculates the time that the client claims it hit the opponent and then perform a line trace or projectile path to check the opponent's hit box data at that time to confirm the hit.
The server can check for head shots by enabling the head box collision first. If a hit occurred, boom headshot. Otherwise, the server enables the collision for the remaining hit boxes.
Map Design
Silo is a map for 2-4 players. Supported game modes are Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Zone Control.
Silo is designed to facilitate high amounts of action for small groups of players. To achieve this, Silo is a circular arena with 3 floors and interconnected looping paths.
The top floor utilizes vantage points to encourage the use of the rifle's long-range proficiency.
The pillar at the heart of Silo serves 3 gameplay purposes:
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Provides players cover from almost any direction.
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Used as a landmark to help players navigate.
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The funnel provides quick access to the bottom floor.
The middle floor features plenty of cover that blocks line of sight to encourage the use of the shotgun's lethal close-range. The batteries rise and fall, which players can use to jump to the top floor.​
The bottom floor houses the coveted rockets. Players can fall to this floor from the funnel in the center pillar or side passages on the second floor. The one-way portals lead to the floor with the corresponding color.