Inspiration
I got curious about similar games that uses they proximity system and got inspired to bring it to horizon worlds.
What it does
Player Proximity uses a system called Interest Management to send interesting player activities to other players in the world. This system is efficient since it divides the world into a grid and only sends changes that occur in the player's cell and adjacent cells making it scalable for large player games.
How we built it
The system has 3 main components, the Server, the Client and the Controller. The server does the monitoring of player activities and decides when to send changes to clients that need them. The client uses the data to display the location the interest is coming from. The controller is where most config is done.
Challenges we ran into
The system is challenging to design and develop. One notable challenge is manipulating the Custom UI to display in the direction of the interest.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
I like how the whole system came together and work well. Especially the multi-server setup which you can use to set different ranges for interests.
What we learned
I had to learn about Interest Management system to be able to develop the tool.
What's next for Player Proximity
The system can easily be extended to monitor items in the world and also for maps.
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