6. Handling a Player Joining a Game in Progress

When a player joins a game in progress, you don’t want them to have to wait as a spectator for a new round to start. Ideally, a new player should be able to spawn and start playing immediately. To handle this, you need to add the new player to TeamMap, subscribe to their elimination event, and grant them their first weapon.

Follow these steps to grant players weapons and subscribe to their player events when they join a game in progress.

1. Add a new method OnPlayerAdded to the team_elimination_game class. This method promotes any player that joins the game in progress to the lowest weapon tier of another player on the team.

   Verse

        OnPlayerAdded(InPlayer : player) : void =
                Print("A New Player Joined!")
   

   Copy full snippet(2 lines long)

2. Get the team for the new player using GetTeam[] and store it in a local variable Team. Retrieve the FortCharacter for that player and save it in a variable FortCharacter.

   Verse

        OnPlayerAdded(InPlayer : player) : void =
            Print("A New Player Joined!")
            if:
                Team := GetPlayspace().GetTeamCollection().GetTeam[InPlayer]
                FortCharacter := InPlayer.GetFortCharacter[]         
   

   Copy full snippet(5 lines long)

3. To assign the new player to the TeamMap you need to access the player_map associated with the new player's Team. Get the player_map associated with the new player and store it in a local variable PlayerMap.

   Verse

        OnPlayerAdded(InPlayer : player) : void =
            Print("A New Player Joined!")
            if:
                Team := GetPlayspace().GetTeamCollection().GetTeam[InPlayer]
                FortCharacter := InPlayerr.GetFortCharacter[]
                var PlayerMap : player_map = TeamMap[Team]
   

   Copy full snippet(6 lines long)

4. Set the player's score in PlayerMap to 0, then update TeamMap with your local variable PlayerMap.

   Verse

        OnPlayerAdded(InPlayer : player) : void =
            Print("A New Player Joined!")
            if:
                Team := GetPlayspace().GetTeamCollection().GetTeam[InPlayer]
                FortCharacter := InPlayer.GetFortCharacter[]
                var PlayerMap : player_map = TeamMap[Team]
                set PlayerMap[InPlayer] = 0
                set TeamMap[Team] = PlayerMap
   

   Copy full snippet(8 lines long)

5. Grant the player their first weapon through a call to GrantWeapon, and subscribe to the new player’s elimination event. Your OnPlayerAdded code should look like the code below.

   Verse

        OnPlayerAdded(InPlayer : player) : void =
            Print("A New Player Joined!")
            if:
                Team := GetPlayspace().GetTeamCollection().GetTeam[InPlayer]
                FortCharacter := InPlayer.GetFortCharacter[]
                var PlayerMap : player_map = TeamMap[Team]
                set PlayerMap[InPlayer] = 0
                set TeamMap[Team] = PlayerMap
            then:
                GrantWeapon(option{InPlayer}, 0)
   
   Expand code Copy full snippet(12 lines long)

6. In OnBegin, subscribe to the playspace PlayerAddedEvent using OnPlayerAdded. Now a player joining the game in progress will trigger OnPlayerAdded. As PlayerAddedEventis an event triggered by the playspace itself, you don’t need a particular device to subscribe to it.

   Verse

        OnBegin<override>()<suspends> : void =
            set Teams = GetPlayspace().GetTeamCollection().GetTeams()
            set EliminationsToEndGame = WeaponGranters.Length
            Print("Number of eliminations to end game is {EliminationsToEndGame}")
            Print("Beginning to assign players")
            PopulateTeamsAndPlayers()
            for (Spawner : PlayerSpawners):
                Spawner.SpawnedEvent.Subscribe(OnPlayerSpawn) # Subscribe to each player spawn pad
            for (Sentry : Sentries):
                Sentry.EliminatedEvent.Subscribe(TestPlayerEliminated) # Subscribe to each Sentry
   
   Expand code Copy full snippet(12 lines long)

Save the script in Visual Studio Code, compile it, and click Launch Session in the UEFN toolbar to playtest the level. When a new player joins a game in progress, they should spawn with the first weapon. When they or a teammate score an elimination, they should be promoted to the next weapon tier.

Next Step

In the next step of this tutorial, you’ll learn how to test eliminations when playing single player using sentries.