⚡️ coherence - A modern and flexible networking stack (Verified Solution)

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(see second post for important updates!)

Original post - Nov 2023

Hello everyone! We’re a distributed team of around 30 game developers who are passionate about multiplayer. Five years ago, we decided to start building the kind of networking stack we ourselves would love to use.

Today, we’d like to share the result of that continuing work. coherence is a network engine, platform and a series of tools to help anyone create a multiplayer game. About a year ago we made it available publicly for the first time.

coherence features a powerful, flexible networking model, and a great integration with Unity. You could say that we put it to the ultimate accessibility test by bringing it to Global Game Jam, Nordic Game Jam, Castle Jam and more; which resulted in more than 30 networked jam games made with it.

This summer, we launched the 1.0 version. And recently, we’ve been able to unveil some of the companies building big, ambitious games on coherence, like Bossa Studios and Gardens – among others still unannounced.

Now we’d like to invite you to try it out for your next game.

No matter the genre, from competitive action games with large maps and authoritative servers, to co-op games with distributed enemy simulation, to casual games and virtual worlds: coherence can be used for any kind of game running on desktop, console, mobile, VR or WebGL.


One of our advanced downloadable samples, Campfire

In short

  • Fast network engine with managed cloud hosting and scaling or client hosting through Steam Datagram Relay or other services.
  • A wide range of useful features like built-in persistence, highly configurable bandwidth optimization, areas of interest, authority transfers, and much more.
  • Easy to develop, iterate and operate connected games and experiences.
  • SDK allows developers to make multiplayer games using Windows, Linux or Mac, targeting desktop, console, mobile, VR or the web.
  • Tools that help even non-coders create and quickly iterate on a connected game idea.
  • Scalable from small games to large virtual worlds running on multiple servers.

What’s so different about coherence?
There’s a lot to mention about what makes coherence a great choice. Here’s a few highlights:

Easy Integration – No need to inherit from “NetworkBehaviours”. No “NetworkTransform”, “NetworkAnimator” and the like. Integrating coherence requires minimal changes to the project structure, to scripts, and to Prefabs. This makes it easy to experiment with and change things at a later stage. Instantiating a networked object just means dropping a prefab with CoherenceSync into the scene.

Great UX – The Unity SDK feels like a native part of the engine, perfectly integrating with Prefabs and Variants workflows. Designers can add, play and tweak network gameplay with no need to code, which enables multiplayer prototyping, for real.


The coherence Hub is a multi-tool to bake netcode, debug your setup, create Client and Server builds and upload them to our cloud


Configure what to sync on each Prefab directly within our Config window for a code-less experience


The Optimization window gives you maximum control over network data, offering the ability to tweak the precision, frequency and range of each synchronised value; and to add distance-based LODs.

Simple APIs – A lot of functionality just relies on Unity’s classics: Instantiate, Destroy, SetParent, and changing the value of public properties, they all work. We then provide simple and understandable APIs to go the extra mile.

Multiple Topologies, All in One – We support basically any network topology you can think of: Match-based Rooms, persistent Worlds, client-server, client-to-client, managed or client-hosted, and we do pre-match Lobbies too. You can build a game that is purely client-side, or make it server-authoritative… or mix the two. Then you can change it later, with little effort. Or use the same Prefabs, in offline mode.

Native Big Worlds – We have plenty of tools for big games and big worlds. We have areas of interest to focus on particular areas of the world; distance-based LODs to reduce network traffic when an entity is far; we can shift the origin around and handle 64-bit precision coordinates (yes!). You can even easily make servers talk to each other and move entities across for load balancing, like shown in this video.


Load balancing of servers (Simulators) in one of our demos

Hosted by Us… or not – coherence offers cloud hosting, with a flexible pricing plan. However, we also allow you to create client-hosted games, effectively bringing the cost to zero.

Obviously all the rest that you would expect is also covered. This is just a small selection of the points that set coherence apart.

Spotlight program
If you have a project already in development and want to make it multiplayer, we recognise that picking up a new networking framework is not an easy task, on top of all the other things you need to deal with. If that is you, we’d like to hear from you – we might be able to support you through our free Spotlight program. Read more about it here.

Cool games using coherence

A few studios already chose coherence for their networked games:

Bossa Studios – Wild Skies
A cooperative survival adventure for 1-6 players set amongst the clouds. Find and craft ancient technology, build your own skyship, brave ferocious storms, and battle the giant threats that await beyond the horizon.

Gardens – Unannounced title
A dream team of developers, some of them who worked on the likes of Journey, Sky, What Remains of Edith Finch, and more; is working on a yet unannounced title that’s making everyone curious and excited. We tried a build at GDC, and it’s fantastic.

Squingle Studios – Squingle
Squingle is a fantastic, psychedelic VR game for Meta Quest and Steam VR, that you can already try out. The team is currently working on a multiplayer update.


Getting started

To get a feel for coherence, we would recommend trying it hands on!

  1. Download the Unity SDK package directly, or from the Asset Store
  2. Check out the tiny package samples (included in the SDK!) or a downloadable project, First Steps
  3. Create a free account to host your game and test online during development
  4. Get help in our Discord and Forums
  5. Have fun!
5 Likes

This post collects MAJOR updates

Lost Skies - Aug 2024

Bossa Studios’ game Lost Skies is networked with coherence! See the gameplay reveal trailer.

Unity VSP - Dec 2024

coherence is now a Unity Verified Solutions Partner, and available from the Asset Store! :tada:
It’s now even easier to get started with making a connected game!

image

Vampire Survivors - Jan 2024

We’re working with Poncle on bringing online co-op to Vampire Survivors!

DON’T GET GOT - Jan 2024

Bossa Studios launched a horror game with coherence: DON’T GET GOT. Find it on Steam!

Neat stuff, I was thinking about writing something similar in terms of the load balancing of simulators.

1 Like

Quick question, for the simulators are these headless Unity instances or a console application? Currently I’m building a game that is server authoritative but I run it as a console application and not within Unity.

Simulators as of now are headless Unity applications, yes. They connect to the Replication Server (very much like Clients do), which is instead our own tech.

We have it on the roadmap to allow to connect other tech to the Replication Servers (for example, a C++ application or something), but it’s not there right now. If it’s a business need, we might explore it as a custom solution, but it would need to be investigated and planned.

Cool stuff, some impressive work that’s for sure. Seems similar to the stuff Star Citizen is doing with Dynamic Server Meshing.

Oh wow, tough comparison there! :slight_smile:
Yes, we do have some of the tools required to create a setup like that, partly shown in our Load Balancing demo video. From my limited understanding of their video, they also add a robust level-streaming system that we don’t offer out of the box. As you imagine, that would be something for Unity to create…
But it would be fun for us to build one, and showcase it as part of a demo project. Maybe something to think about.

By the way, in regards to your previous question and my previous answer:

I checked with my colleagues, and we do have pure C# support for Simulators already in, but currently offer no examples so it might be hard to do. If you need it for a business case, please reach out to devrel@coherence.io and we can figure out a way to help.

I was just watching Dino Patti’s GDC talk on founding a successful indie game studio, and he suddenly started talking about coherence! Now I am even more interested than I was.

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We have a new video out! I tried to make it in a way that it could be useful even to people using other networking frameworks – though it does dive a bit into some specific things that we have in coherence, like the ability to do Distributed Authority.

(subtitles are available)

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What about two players carrying one object?.. Would that be possible?

Whoops, I missed this one!

It is totally possible, but in that case you’d have to decide which one of the two players has authority on that one object. So like shown in the video, the authority on that object would be either on player A or player B’s machine, but it wouldn’t be shared.

This is not a coherence-only thing, any networking framework has the same mental model: one player would be driving the object’s state locally, the other would just receive updates and optionally compute a prediction for what they think is happening on the other player’s computer.

What kind of gameplay do you have in mind?

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Thanks for the answer!

I’m curious about how prediction works on the non-authoritative side. Imagine two players carrying a sofa, each holding it from opposite ends. If the non-owner moves sideways, wouldn’t that require some sort of prediction on their end? Otherwise, the sofa would end up lagging behind, right?

Right now, I’m using NGO and I’ve basically had to hack the hell out of it to make this work. Was wondering if Coherence has something up its sleeve for this kind of thing.

Thanks!

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Yes, in this kind of situation where two players are interacting with an object at the same time, prediction can give the illusion to the one not currently having authority over it that they still do, somehow :smile:

In coherence, prediction works this way:
In the coherence Config window, you have the ability to turn Prediction ON per property. You click on the little ‘P’ icon next to each property definition:

9524089--1343653--Pon.jpg

Like the tooltip says, when it’s ON, the property stops receiving automatic updates when you don’t have authority over the entity – as it would be the default.

Before the updates land, you run your Prediction code, which generally just means running the simulation for that specific property according to state that the client knows about. Basically running it as if you had authority!

And then, you can intercept the updates coming from the client that actually has authority, and manipulate them in any way you want, usually interpolating/lerping them with the data you predicted (the Reconciliation part). The code would look something like this:

private void Awake()
{
    var positionBinding = GetComponent<CoherenceSync>().Bindings.FirstOrDefault(c => c.Name == "position");
    positionBinding.OnNetworkSampleReceived += ReconcilePosition;
}

private void ReconcilePosition(object sampleData, long simulationFrame)
{
    const float MispredictionThreshold = 3f;

    Vector3 networkPosition = (Vector3)sampleData;
    float distance = (networkPosition - transform.position).magnitude;

    if (distance > MispredictionThreshold)
    {
        transform.position = networkPosition;
    }
}

This is a quick implementation, but it can do magic for many scenarios!

More info here: https://docs.coherence.io/coherence-sdk-for-unity/authority-overview/input-queues#misprediction-and-server-reconciliation

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Hey all! I wanted to mention that coherence 1.1.2 is out!

In addition to all the usual improvements and bug fixes, one thing to mention is that we now have tiny, self-contained sample scenes inside the Unity package. Find them directly from within Package Manager, or in our deluxe Samples window!

If you were looking to start diving into networking, this is the perfect time :slight_smile:

The package sample scenes add to the already available demos First Steps and Campfire, which are more of a complete project to explore, so we’d recommend them as steps 2 and 3.

We’re also working on more of these, so let us know if they are useful :slight_smile:

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Small update, we have a new video on how to get started with Simulators (which are basically our definition of a “server”). I hope I managed to capture how easy it can be to spin up a Simulator in our cloud or locally!

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What news on tests and reviews are there?

Hey Akhmed, what do you mean by tests and reviews?

Any update on the Native Side of things for ECS ? :slight_smile:

Hey Morphex. No, we don’t have a fully ECS version in the near plans for now.

Are you making a game based on entities?

Yeah, I was looking for an alternative to netcode for entities somewhat and came across this, plus you have a ton of functionality that I am going to need in the future.

The only reason I asked was because that was on your website saying you would be looking into that.

1 Like