Knockout!

Welcome to Knockout! This is a simple multiplayer deathmatch game, where you get points by knocking opponents off the map into the blue abyss below. Your only weapon is the ability to launch red projectiles that, when hitting an opponent, launches them back: if you hit them in the head it will send them flying across the map to immanent peril.

Controls

This Game is Multiplayer, and best suited for LAN parties

Currently, the game only supports peer-to-peer networking, so it is best played in a LAN environment with your friends. I like to think of it as an old school experience in that way. Theoretically, it should support Wide Area Networks (WAN) if your buddy on the other side of the galaxy forwarded the right ports, but I haven't tried it yet.

Anyway, this was somewhat intentional: it made the scope of the initial version of this game much easier. In the future, I will update this to support a richer suite of modes (see below: Future Features).

Controller Support

Now you can play Knockout on your favorite controller! Running, jumping, shooting, and UI navigation all work with controllers. Note that I tested support on a Logitech Gamepad F310, but it should work for any controller.

Single Player Mode with Bots

If you're like me and don't have any friends you are in luck! Because now Knockout supports rudimentary AI bots. Play with up to 8 bots in action-packed deathmatch rounds.

Other Features

• Warmup mode: to prevent matches from starting without at least two players, the game starts in warmup mode. You can run, jump, and shoot, but you can't hit any players.
• End of Match Winner: The game is keeping score! At the end of each round, the winner is decided. But, if it ends in a tie, it prints that out too.
• End of Match Freeze: In addition to displaying the winner, all players are frozen while the winner is printed

Future Features

What you see now is the first, absolutely bare-minimum game. I set a goal for myself to get a minimum product out there, and I did! But this is only the beginning of Knockout! Here is a non-exhaustive list of features I want to add:

• Sudden Death Tie Breaker Mode: If there are any ties, all the tying players go into a sudden death mode. Any kill is an elimination, and the last player alive wins.
• Better bots: I am super happy with the bots there are, but they don't jump; strafe; dodge; etc. And they are oftentimes oblivious to their surroundings. But what I've got now can be easily expanded on, and in the next version they most certainly will!
• Better UI: The whole menu system is gross. I hated working on it. It was so boring. But a good UI is really important.

Finally, if you like this and have any ideas: please comment!

Background

I actually conceptualized this game for years. It was originally a UE3 (yes, 3, like 2007) project from when I was in high school called "Shout". This was in reference to the "shout thu'um" from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (as demonstrated here). I always thought this mechanic would make for an excellent, hectic game. I had to put this project on hold for a long time due to just life, hence it's ludicrously long development cycle. Actually, I did technically finish Shout, but I wanted to rebuild it when I finished college. 

I was also motivated to make a sort of complete "learning shooter" project in UE5. I intent to do more projects with UE5, and I feel like Knockout! is a great sort of workbench for fleshing out common multiplayer game features.

Finally, the game is artistically very inspired by the world famous capture-the-flag game Toblo, which features unprecedented destructive environments; but also it has a great simple art style that I absolutely love.

Credits

I want to give a special thanks to the following people for their phenomenal contributions to this game:

• MatchaJoeJoe for the amazing character design: https://matchajoejoe.games/
• Music: "Cloud Dancer", "Electrodoodle" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
  Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0