Making an Online Quiz Game

In this chapter, we will dive into the fascinating realm of creating an online quiz game using the powerful Network API offered by Godot Engine 4.0. We will explore how to leverage Godot Engine’s Network API to create an engaging and interactive quiz game that can be played with friends or strangers online. We will cover the fundamental concepts of online multiplayer game development, including client-server architecture, game synchronization, and player interactions.

Here, we won’t go through the game design aspects of this type of game: scoring, managing incentives, balancing, and so on; instead, we are going to focus on the engineering side of the equation: how to sync answers, prevent players from answering when another player has already answered, update question data for both players, and so on.

We will start by setting up the server side of the quiz game, including creating a dedicated server that can handle incoming connections...

Introducing the online quiz game

Welcome, network engineer! Our studio needs you to turn our quiz game into an online multiplayer experience! We have already gone through various challenges to create a captivating quiz game. Now, it’s time to take it to the next level by adding online multiplayer functionality.

Imagine players from around the world competing against each other in real time, testing their knowledge and skills. In this chapter, you’ll dive into the world of networking in game development and learn how to implement multiplayer features using GDScript. So, let’s get started and make our quiz game an unforgettable multiplayer experience!

One of the key features of our online multiplayer quiz game is the dynamic loading of questions from a JSON database. Each question in the database contains all the necessary data, such as the question itself and four alternatives for players to choose from. Only one of the alternatives is the correct answer,...

Setting up a lobby for the quiz game

In the upcoming section, we will be delving into the process of setting up a lobby for our quiz game. The QuizLobby scene serves as the hub for players to interact and prepare for the game.

Figure 5.4 – The login screen displaying the username and password fields and the players in the match

The process of authenticating players is similar to what we have done in previous chapters, utilizing data submitted by players and matching it against FakeDatabase. This ensures that only registered players with valid credentials are allowed to access the lobby.

Once a player successfully logs in, their name will appear for other players, providing visibility of the players currently present in the lobby. You can optionally add the previous chat to this scene as well to allow players to interact before the match starts. This will create a sense of community and allow players to connect and interact with each other while...

Implementing online turns

When designing a quiz game, it’s important to ensure that players can only provide one answer to a given question. This can be especially challenging when creating a multiplayer game, as multiple players may attempt to answer the question at the same time.

To prevent this, it’s necessary to implement a system that disables players’ ability to answer the question once a valid answer has been provided by another player.

One common approach to implementing this system is to disable the buttons representing the potential answers once a player has provided a response. This can be accomplished using code that identifies which button was pressed and compares it to the correct answer stored in the game’s database. Once an answer has been identified, the code can disable the buttons and prevent other players from answering the question.

To further improve the player experience, it’s also common to include a brief pause after...

Turning local mechanics into remote gameplay

Now that we can manage players’ interactions and communicate the game state to players, it’s time to implement the core features of a quiz. Coming up, we are going to implement the questions and answers. For that, we are going to use a questions database where we store them with their possible answers and the correct answer index.

Here, we will see how we load and deserialize these questions into QuizPanel. On top of that, we’ll also understand how we make use of RPCs to keep everyone in sync. And of course, we will also implement the logic behind both when players choose the correct and the incorrect answer.

When a player chooses an answer, we need to compare it with the correct answer index, and if it’s correct, we should notify QuizScreenServer about the correct answer. We’ll also need to make use of RPCs to keep everyone in sync regarding the current question and answer status.

Moreover, we...

Summary

In this chapter, we saw how to create an online quiz game using the Godot Engine 4.0 Network API. We covered the fundamental concepts of online multiplayer game development, including client-server architecture, game synchronization, and player interactions. Using the quiz game, we saw how to feature dynamic loading of questions from a JSON database, and how to display the current players in a quiz match. We created a mechanism to prevent players from answering questions when another player has already provided one, creating a pseudo-turn-based mechanism. Finally, we saw how to manage players’ interactions and communicate the game state to players and how to implement the logic behind both correct and incorrect answers, loading new questions one round after another until there are no more questions to display.

In the next chapter’s projects, we will dive deeper into implementing a turn-based mechanism for our online quiz game. As we saw in this chapter, we...