Basically my friend and I are creating a multiplayer MMO and where wondering what exactly is the best server solution out there for this? We decided to ask you guys for suggestions as we never really made anything multiplayer in unity but only single player. We expect to hold about 60-100 people in the server and it will be dedicated ( I have my own servers already but would love to test it on a local machine until we are ready to hold more people for testing bandwidth and what not). So this is just a discussion thread I guess, if you guys and gals can point out the up and down’s on things that would be great and even provide some links that would be swell.
Anyways thanks for your help and cant wait to hear what you all have to say.
Photon or uLink depending on your needs, since they both let you use C#. I would probably go with Photon because it allows you to run your servers on Microsoft .NET which is considerably much faster then Mono 2.6 which uLink is bound to due to running inside Unity, and even possibly use C++/CLI to integrate third party libraries.
On MS .NET vs. Mono performance, you can check out this article for example: code4k: Benchmarking C#/.Net Direct3D 11 APIs vs native C++ which runs both SharpDX on both MS .NET vs. Mono 2.10, MS.NET beating Mono out by 6x, even approaching native speeds. And keep in mind Unity is using a modified Mono 2.6 version which is considerably older then 2.10. (Yes, I know that the performance benchmark isn’t directly relative to the question at hand, but you have MS.NET and Mono 2.10 running an identical program, and MS.NET being 6x faster, that says quite a lot no matter if the code at hand is relevant to the topic)
I’m not sure if there is a “best” server solution out there. It depends on your needs and preferences. I had a closer look into the following three:
1) Photon Server
Server-side is Windows only (which was a showstopper for me), but has a very good Unity integration and a strong community. There is also a Cloud version available, as well as a “Unity Network” version, which I have not looked into in much detail. For up to 100 CCU the Photon Server is free for Indies. Server-side code is C#.
2) Smartfox Server
Server-side can be either Windows, Mac or Linux. Also free for up to 100 CCU. Solid Unity integration and a lively community with very helpful developers. Server-side programming is in Java. It comes with very good tutorials and examples.
3) Atavism Server
Server-solution that is being built to support the upcoming MMO project “Neo’s Land”. Currently it seems to be in Alpha stadium. It does not come free, but for the 45$ you seem to get some basic game systems as well (chat, quests, combat, spawn etc.). Looks promising but currently a bit “hobbyish”. However, from what I have seen it has potential.
Since I was looking for a mature Linux-based solution with a strong community I ended up with Smartfox and couldn’t be happier. I found it quite intuitive, well-structured and easy-to-learn.
But again, it highly depends on your needs and preferences.
There might be more MMO server-platforms with Unity integration out there, but these are the ones that I have looked at. Hope it helps (-;
Thanks for the quick replies. I prefer using C# but I do know javascript as well. Basically what the servers need to do is be able to keep track of player inventory, stats, item locations as well as spawn new items and store props the players have placed down and the stats on those props.
Of course it has to keep track of player movement and what not as well but all in all that’s about it for what I need the server to be able to do. Im kinda leaning towards Photon server.
I’m not sure how this is relevant to uLink performance. A uLink server runs in batch mode, no rendering takes place so any rendering performance comparisons are null and void. As to uLink performance when it comes to actually serving as a multiplayer server, it has time and time again shown to be extremely efficient and lightweight across hundreds of instances (even on an entry level server), and if the user requires even more hard-core performance they can look at Pikko MMO Server (which is written by the same engineers).
I’ve researched upward of 25-30 hours in the last week to see which servers my game in development would use and we’ve landed on SmartFox. Don’t take my word for it but it does seem to be the best option available at the moment. Unlimited CCU for $3,500 isn’t a lot especially if you’re going to supporting thousands of players, as an MMO does. You could easily run a server for each realm, etc, if you have more than one and it should probably support it with minimal lag. This is just based off of my research though. SmartFox has a very great past with MMOs, especially popular ones, and the devs are very friendly, as well as the community.