FPSSample/Documentation/GettingStarted.md

Getting Started Guide

The game

The FPS Sample is multiplayer only game. There is no single player mode and you cannot play the game without being connected to a server. It is a pretty traditional shooter game with two different characters: The Terraformer and The Robot. Each have their own weapon with a primary and secondary fire mode. There are two game modes:

1. Team deathmatch

   Two teams fights for frags. Winner is team with most scores when time is up.

2. Assault mode

   One team is attacking, another is defending. Attackers win by capturing all 3 bases before time runs out. Defenders win by preventing that. Attackers can capture a base by having one or more players in the base. Defenders can take capture progress back by being in the base. Once a base is captured completely the battle proceeds to the next base.

There are two levels in the game. The primary level is built for Assault mode. It is called Level_01. The other level is mainly for testing purposes and is much smaller both in size and assets. It is called Level_00.

Playing the game

If you have a full build of the game, it will launch into the menu and you can either connect to a server or create a new game. If you create a new game, it will launch a server on your machine. If your firewall settings permit, other people on your LAN can now connect to your IP address and play.

Key	Function
WASD	Player movement
Shift	Sprint
Mouse	Look
LeftClick	Primary fire
RightClick	Secondary fire
Space	Jump
V	Melee attack
H	When in captured base or spawn: change character
Enter	Open chat
Tab	Show scores
ESC	Menu
F1	Open console
Alt+Enter	Toggle full screen

Understanding the workflow: Standalone and AssetBundles

Working with a multiplayer game in Unity means you will be working a lot with the standalone player. To make a client and a server that talks over a network connection there has to be two processes. To make this workflow as frictionless as possible, we use assetbundles for all the content (levels and characters etc.). The only thing that goes into the standalone player is the code and a single, very small, bootstrapper scene. Only if you have made changes to a level or a prefab do you have to rebuild the assetbundles. (And you can rebuild selectively -- to some degree.)

The Project Tools window is used to make this workflow function in practice. The most commonly used functions here are:

Button	Function
Open	Open all the scenes that make up a level
Levels [force]	Build all the levels into bundles
Assets [force]	Build all prefabs into bundles (players etc)
All [force]	Build all levels and prefabs into bundles
Build game	Build code and bootstrapper scene
Run	Start game in boot mode. No level loaded, only bootstrapper.
Open build folder	Open the folder containing the standalone player

From the boot mode a standalone player can enter other modes. Some examples:

This will enter preview mode on level_01. This is equivalent to pressing play in the editor when level_01 is open.

preview level_01

The following will enter client mode and connect to an ip address

connect 127.0.0.1

And finally, we can start a server by typing

serve level_00

These are the main modes. In practice one will most often use the Quick Start section on the Project Tools window to launch different combinations of clients and servers. The way this works is that command line arguments are passed on to the standalone player. Any command line argument that is prefixed with + will become an command on the console. At the very bottom of the Project Tools window the actual command line arguments are shown. This is a good place to learn how the quick start tool functions.

The Console, Commands and Vars

To open the console at any time, press F1.

The console support commands and variables. As an example the command quit will quit the game. The console has tab completion. Here are some of the commonly used commands:

Command	Function
help	Show list of all commands
serve <levelname>	Enter servermode with the named level
connect <host>	Enter client mode and connect to host
preview <levelname>	Enter preview mode for testing levelname
nextchar	Toggles character
exec <file>	Executes the commands in file as if they were typed on console
respawn	Force a respawn
thirdperson	Toggle thirdperson view (for debugging)
runatserver <command>	Executes the command on the server's console
vars	Show all vars

There are many more variables than commands. Here are a some of the most commonly used

Variable	Function
client.debug	Use 1, 2, 3 to get lots of spam about client networking
client.matchmaker	Set this to the matchmaker host:port endpoint
client.playername	Your visible player name
client.updaterate	Max rate (bytes/sec) client wants from server (30000)
client.updatesendrate	Rate (packets/sec) client wants from server (20)
config.fov	Field of view
config.mousesensitivity	Mouse sensitivity
game.assault.minplayers	Players needed before starting assault round
game.assault.roundlength	Length of a game round in seconds
game.dm.minplayers	Players needed before starting deathmatch round
game.dm.roundlength	Length of a game round in seconds
game.modename	Can be either deathmatch or assault
net.stats	Set to > 0 to get network stats/graphs
r.vsync	Number of vblanks to sync to. 0 for no sync
r.resolution	Current resolution, e.g. 1920x1080
server.port	The port to listen on (7912)
server.quitwhenempty	Set to 1 to make server quit when last player leaves
server.recycleinterval	If > 0 server will shut down after this seconds when no players
server.sqp_port	Server Query Protocol poert (7912)
server.tickrate	The tickrate of the server (and client)
show.compactstats	Set to 1 to show FPS and RTT in top left corner
show.fps	Show some fps stats if > 0
sound.debug	Show debug info about sounds

Making builds

To make a full build of the game, there is some menu items under FPS Sample > BuildSystem. Use CreateBuildWindows64 to make a full windows build, for example.

These menu items are directly available as functions that can be called from the commandline of Unity if you want to integrate with a build machine.