Overview of the Gameplay Elements.

• This is from an excelent tutorial
• He introduces the "Gameplay Framework"
  • This is intended for multiplayer, on line games.
  • However, you really should watch this.
• The framework is a set of actors that allows programmers to
  • Define and manage the rules of a game
  • Spawn appropriate actors
  • Track the state.
• The pawn system works with this to provide easily configurable player and ai characters.
• 
• Elements
  • The Game Instance
  • The Game mode
  • Pawn controllers
  • Game and player states.
• The game instance
  • This is persistant
  • Created on engine launch
  • Remains until engine shuts down.
  • It is a manager designed to contain data and code, but no physical presence.
  • It is not replecated on server and clients.
  • This is the place for everything to persist between levels.
  • "A repository of information that needs to exist beyonds the bounds of a single level of game play"
  • A good place for the savegame system.
  • 
• The game mode
  • A server based manager actor.
  • Created on level load, not persistant.
  • It is the first actor to instatiate on level load.
  • It is set on a map by map basis.
  • This manages the rules and structure of a play session
  • Creates the other framework actors.
  • This includes the game state and the player state.
• The game state/ player state
  • This manages the state of the game/players.
  • This is replactes the data across the server and all clients.
  • The game state holds logic and data relvelant to all players
    • Team score,
    • Objectives.
  • The player state tracks info relative to a single player
    • Health or inventory.
    • One per player.
    • Created when the player is loaded into a level.
  • 
• The player character
  • Created by game mode
  • Consists of
    • a physical pawn
    • A controller
  • The pawn is the thing we have been building
  • The controller provides the brain.
    • It is responsible for providing the "brains" to the pawn.
    • It can be a player inteface (ie keybord, mouse, ...)
    • Or it can be an AI.
    • 
• More detail on the game instance:
  • Reference
  • called a manager actor.
  • No physical presence.
  • MANY tools for multi player games.
  • He suggests having a player state update the game instance for save information
  • And the game instance provide data to a fresh player state for a new level load.
• Game mode
  • This spawns players and controllers.
  • Special instances of this exist for multiplayer games.