Networked Event Component

The plNetworkedEventComponent is a lightweight component for broadcasting named events to all clients via reliable RPCs. It is useful for game events that need to reach all machines -- kill feeds, objective updates, sound triggers, or any fire-and-forget notification.

Overview

Rather than writing custom RPC functions for every game event, you can use this component as a generic event bus:

On the authoritative machine (typically the server), call FireEvent() with an event name and up to two parameters.
The event is broadcast to all clients and the server via a reliable ordered RPC.
On each machine, the registered callback is invoked with the event name and parameters.

Usage

Firing Events (Server Side)

auto* pEventComp = pGameObject->GetComponentOfBaseType<plNetworkedEventComponent>();

// Simple event with no parameters
pEventComp->FireEvent("RoundStart");

// Event with parameters
pEventComp->FireEvent("PlayerKilled",
  plVariant(victimID),    // param1
  plVariant(isHeadshot)); // param2

Receiving Events (All Machines)

pEventComp->SetEventReceivedCallback(
  [](const plString& sEventName, const plVariant& param1, const plVariant& param2) {
    if (sEventName == "PlayerKilled")
    {
      plUInt32 victim = param1.Get<plUInt32>();
      bool headshot = param2.Get<bool>();
      // Update kill feed UI...
    }
    else if (sEventName == "RoundStart")
    {
      // Start countdown...
    }
  });

Supported Parameter Types

The following plVariant types can be used as event parameters:

Bool
Int32
UInt32
Float
Double
String
Vec3

Parameters are encoded as type tag + string representation for transport, then decoded on the receiving end.

Properties

This component has no replicated properties. It uses RPCs exclusively for event delivery. The NetworkSerialize() and NetworkDeserialize() methods are no-ops.

Implementation Details

Internally, the component uses a reflected function AllClients_OnEvent registered as an RPC with target AllClientsAndServer and ReliableOrdered reliability. The RPC is registered manually in OnSimulationStarted() rather than via reflection attributes to avoid issues with the editor's phantom type system.

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