A help would be appreciated in a semi-multiplayer game

[Mickey_omar]

Hello Unity devs,

I have been researching lately on some networking solutions but I feel lost. I will explain what I am trying to do and I what I did so far.

What I am trying to do?
I just want a dedicated/ internet server that only sends a bunch of (x,y) coordinates to the connected clients when they ask for it.
Clients won’t need to talk to other clients. Just the headless server to the connected clients only when they ask for.

I am a networking newbie. I just got into it 4 days ago. I found that there are two APIs apparently. The LLAPI (Low Level API) which is the best thing out there but I got lost in the documentation and found this video on youtube "

Unity Multiplayer (UNET) - Transport Layer API [C#][Stream VOD]

" which made me grasp a bit of what I want to do. The problem is that after watching the video, I tried making a chat application just to test my skills out. It worked somehow but there were a lot of bugs. Anyway, the chat project was left aside as it was done “LOCALLY” with no dedicated/ online server.

I tried googling a bit about how to transform a local server created by LLAPI and host it somehow on the internet so that anyone from any network could connect, but sadly, couldn’t find anything.

I then started looking more into the HLAPI. The documentation was better than the LLAPI but the implementation wasn’t smooth and I got lost. I watched this series "

Making a Multiplayer FPS in Unity (EP. 1) - uNet Tutorial

" by Brackeys and I found that the “Matchmaking” functionality is really nice. Maybe what I want to achieve. Am I going to create 1 room for every client that he and the server would talk to each other. I am sure there is a better way.

Also, sending and receiving data from both servers and clients isn’t clear in the HLAPI … it was a bit clearer in the LLAPI when the N3KEN in his tutorial sent the message size in bytes.

I really feel lost right now and I am back to square one. Any guide or help will be appreciated. Thanks for reading.

[Joe-Censored]

For what you’re doing I would use NetworkServerSimple and send everything with unet messages.

Unfortunately this is the only code example I have seen for NetworkServerSimple:

Chat Server example

Attached is a sample project that implements a text chat server written using the middle layer of the UNet HLAPI, that demonstrates the NetworkServerSimple class that is new in Unity 5.3. The NetworkServerSimple class has no "game" functionality - unlike the existing NetworkServer class. It is a pure network server that handles messages, with no spawning, player management or singleton interface. This project uses message classes derived from MessageBase, not [Command] and [ClientRpc] calls. …

[Mickey_omar]

Joe! Thanks man! The NetworkServerSimple is exactly what I was looking for and the example project is perfect and crystal clear. Thanks again!

Another question if you don’t mind, What do you think of hosting the server on Amazon EC2 Servers Amazon EC2 - Cloud Compute Capacity - AWS

Do you recommend a specific host? Are the steps of hosting a server messy or complicated? I found this tutorial but it uses the old Unity Networking system http://www.theorangeday.com/tutorials/how-to-set-up-a-unity3d-master-server-on-amazon-ec2/

Is this still valid?

Thanks a lot!

[Joe-Censored]

I haven’t used Amazon EC2, so I can’t comment on their service specifically. Last I looked at their prices outside of their free tier you can do better choosing another provider. As far as those instructions, I’m not sure why you would need to run “make” on your Linux build. All my Linux headless server builds I just tar them up on my windows machine, scp them to the Linux server, untar them, run chmod +x to set the main binary as executable, and then run it as a background process.