Multiplayer & Zombie Replication

Night of the Breach – Weekly Development Update

Over the past several development sessions, we've been focused heavily on multiplayer stability, zombie AI synchronization, wave progression reliability, and preparing the project for real-world online testing.

Multiplayer & Zombie Replication

One of the largest issues tackled this week involved multiplayer synchronization between players.

During testing we discovered situations where zombies would die correctly on one player's screen but remain standing or continue animating on another player's screen. In some cases wave progression would also fail to advance because zombie death states were not being processed consistently across all connected clients.

After extensive debugging and testing, we successfully corrected the zombie death replication chain and restored proper wave progression behavior.

Results:

• Zombie deaths now replicate correctly between players.

• Dead zombies properly enter ragdoll state.

• Wave progression resumes correctly after enemy elimination.

• Zombie kill counts remain synchronized between clients.

Multiplayer Weapon Testing

Additional testing revealed that Player 2 could fire weapons visually but was unable to consistently damage zombies.

Investigation determined that the authoritative projectile system was not correctly handling client-generated shot information. Multiple rounds of testing and debugging were performed to trace projectile spawning, damage application, and server authority handling.

This work resulted in:

• Restoration of Player 2 zombie damage capability.

• Successful client-side elimination of zombies.

• Successful destruction of barricades and doors by remote clients.

• Improved understanding of remaining projectile replication issues.

While projectile visuals still require additional polish, multiplayer damage is functioning significantly better than previous builds.

Sandboxie Multiplayer Testing

A large portion of development time was spent conducting local multiplayer tests using Sandboxie.

While Sandboxie has allowed us to simulate multiple players on a single machine, it has also highlighted limitations in testing workflow. Window focus issues, client update delays, and testing restrictions have made it increasingly difficult to accurately evaluate multiplayer behavior.

As a result, work began on preparing the project for proper online multiplayer testing with external testers.

Advanced Sessions & Steam Preparation

To support future multiplayer testing, work began on integrating the Advanced Sessions and Advanced Steam Sessions plugins.

This process uncovered several infrastructure challenges:

• Plugin compilation failures.

• Missing project source generation.

• Visual Studio integration issues.

• Build environment configuration problems.

Through extensive troubleshooting, the project was successfully converted from a Blueprint-only project into a C++ project.

Final outcome:

• Visual Studio integration is operational.

• Source files are now generated correctly.

• Project builds successfully as a C++ project.

• Advanced Sessions plugin loads successfully.

• Advanced Steam Sessions plugin loads successfully.

• Project opens and closes normally.

This marks one of the most significant infrastructure upgrades completed since development began.

Current Status

Night of the Breach is now in a much stronger position for future multiplayer development.

Major systems currently functioning include:

• Wave spawning

• Zombie combat

• Zombie death replication

• Multiplayer damage handling

• Barricade destruction

• Door destruction

• C++ project infrastructure

• Advanced Sessions integration

Next Steps

Upcoming development priorities include:

• Steam session configuration

• Server browser implementation

• Real-world multiplayer testing with external players

• Continued projectile replication improvements

• Additional zombie AI behavior refinement

• Further multiplayer synchronization testing

While this week didn't introduce flashy new gameplay content, it dramatically improved the technical foundation of the project and moves us much closer to testing Night of the Breach with real players outside the local network.

— Pixel Syndicate Studio