There hasn't been a tutorial yet because there's really not that much to know regarding multiplayer maps that's any different from single player. But I'll give it a try...
Multiplayer Tutorial
Part I. Level Design
Build your arena map like you would as a single player game. Avoid using dynamic objects as they are not supported in multiplayer arena (ie, dynamic crates and boxes, etc). Though you can add doors to an arena map, they do not update for all clients in the server (meaning if player 1 opens a door, player 2 will see player 1 walking through a closed door, and player 2 will have to open that door again to follow player 1). Stick with open doorways, or doorways with static door entities positioned in the open position.
Part II. Weapons and Ammo
You can add any number and any combination of guns or melee weapons to your arena. Place them in various pick up locations around your map, and/or in the players' spawn locations. To make a player start with one or more weapons after respawning, simply place the guns you want each player to spawn with under their spawn markers.
NOTE: flak is not supported in multiplayer so you cannot add grenades, grenade launchers, or RPGS. The game will CRASH when attempting to use flak.
Set the weapons and ammo to respawn after they are picked up. Right-click on the weapons and ammo to view their properties, and change their maximum spawn numbers to 500. Here, you can also adjust other values for each weapon such as it's damage, accuracy, and magazine capacity.
Part III. Placing Spawn Points
Change the game type under the preferences to a multiplayer arena game. Go to
File > Preferences, and at the bottom, select
Multiplayer. The map should turn red.
To set spawn points and characters, select various characters from the entity bank, and place them around your map. Each character represents both the player's character, and their spawn point.
You can change the name of each player by right-clicking on the characters to bring up their properties. The name of the characters here, are the names that will be displayed in the character select menu of the game. (i.e., naming the characters Player 1, Player 2, and so on, will show Player 1, Player 2, etc on the character select menu before the players enter the arena).
Part IV. Performance Tips
There are a few settings you can change before building your game that will optimize it's performance, and allow your game to run much, much faster.
1.
Use a mod. This should be pretty much self-explanitory by now. A modded version of FPS Creator runs much faster than stock. Most mods also run a timer system, meaning gameplay will run smoothly weather you're getting 20FPS or 200.
2.
Turn off full shader effects. You can turn this setting off under the preferences tab. Shaders are visual effects that are, IMO, not worth the performance sacrifice in a multiplayer game when everyone is going to be more pre-occupied shooting the other players, than looking at a specular map on a wall.
3.
Turn off dynamic lighting. You can turn this setting off under the preferences tab. Dynamic lighting is what is required for the "muzzle flash" of you gun to illuminate the room around you for a fraction of a second. You also need this setting to have flickering lights.
However, this can be considered another visual effect, and isn't required in a multiplayer game. Turning dynamic lighting off in most cases will more than double your game's running speed.
EDIT: Dynamic lighting is also required to update the light reaching the players' hands and weapons. (i.e., when you step into a dark hallway, the players' hands and equipped weapons are less illuminated (or completely black), but when the player is in a bright-lit room, their weapons are as clear as day).
Again, you don't need dynamic lighting, and this issue doesn't require too much of a work around. To make sure the players' hands, and all of the weapons in the area will be properly illuminated, simply place the weapons and player start characters in a well-lit area of the map.
Part V: MISC
Fog. Fog works fine in multiplayer, and doesn't really affect your frame rate too drastically (if at all). You can adjust fog settings under
File under the
Build Game option.
Training Grounds.
This was my first multiplayer map. It uses the same performance settings that I listed above (no shader effects and no dynamic light effects). Running with Project Blue Mod, my lower-end computer (integrated GEForce 6600) ran a full server at a steady 57 FPS.
Training Grounds Link
Kravenwolf