This week I managed to get peer to peer network play functional! It is now possible to play a game of Rivalry with a friend anywhere around the world by using the peer to peer method which is considerably faster than using the server relay method.

However, I still have to fix the peer to peer lifecycle and how it dismantles its connections once a game is finished. Currently you can only really have one game before things start to fall apart. There are also still some optimizations that can be made to the architecture of the code and how packets are unpacked and processed.

But once this has been done, all the peer to peer related bugs are fixed and the networking UIs are polished I could say that the network feature has been completed and I can move onto the next feature, player skins.

I also looked at how to optimise network speed times by controlling the rate of host frames being sent by the host to all the clients. I can change the network frame rate dynamically, so in theory I can have it scale with network performance. I could potentially also have it so if there is a large influx of players using the server relay method I could lower the host frame rate which would decrease the amount of information on the network allowing the server more time to process requests.

Pending tasks are now

• Finish Peer to Peer
• Complete network game lobby UI (make pretty and complete all network game modes).
• Complete network game restart UI (make pretty).
• Research player skins.
• Research different arenas and backgrounds.
• General tidy up and enhancement of look and feel..