This video is reductible to just 4 slides (if we ignore the last one wich is an add): one with high-level schematic, one for matchmaking, one for hosting and one for communications.
Knowledgeable users won’t benefit from any of those, because master wizards do not need to learn how to tie their shoelaces since they can teleport!
For newcomers, only the 1st one should matter , and I’m saying should because it does not in this manner, and I hate to disagree with you Joe because you’re one of those that help a lot on this forum (I’m mainly lurking and never posting, so thanks man you’ve been interesting to read), but maybe you’re too advanced to put yourself perfectly in a newcomer’s shoes, here is how i see things since i’m certainly closer…
Newcomers won’t benefit from any of the last 3 slides, since they need a game (and if they already have one, they are not newcomers anymore) in order for them to matter at the exception of hosting, but it is tied to the choice they will make in 1st slide depending on their projects.
Going back to 1st slide (high-level schematic) I see two problems:
- First, directing users to an API based on a survey and not study/test is bad in itself, but it’s going to keep them uninformed of the other solutions (The topic mentionning available choices and letting the user explore possibilities is better).
- Second, all the meat of the project is condensed/simplified in the purple row (Deterministic Rollback/Lockstep, Listen Server, DGS). Why merge two topics ? One being the place where the client/server lives, the other being how timing between their interactions is handled… isn’t this step a gross oversimplification ? Now if I was a newcomer I would be like “Where are my damn links to this Deterministic Rollback?” and i would even think that those problems could be anwsered magically by a drop-in package.
Of course it’s interesting but anyone can spit this high-level stuff, it’s not gonna be hard to find online, so when a company like Unity does it without any follow-up for implementation, it’s either lazyness or incompetence.
And note that, this peticular slide, the most important one is just trown out in 2 minutes. This just feel like copy-pasta of so many things I have learned from users posting interesting stuff in this forum. It’s not even a good “feel good” video since the production value is so low.
This topic for pros and cons:
It should have been sticked long ago at the top of the forum, it would have given creators more incentives to come and describe their product and would have been the perfect get-go for newcomer. Instead unity took more than a year and an half to produce the following link with great “success” looking at the forum feedbacks for this article (it took them almost 2 month to rectify and it is still lacking):
PS: (In the High-Level slide) “Card Game → DOTS”… what! couldn’t you use anything? but maybe i’m too focused in my problems to estimate what others could encounter, if anyone has a point to make on this one I’m curious (in PM).