[DOWNLOAD NOW] Forge Networking FREE

Community Showcases
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Update 3/25/2017!
The free version of Forge will be taken down for the time being as it does not accurately reflect the newest Remastered version of Forge Networking. We will update this thread with more information as we move towards a trial version for Forge Networking Remastered. Currently our focus is on supporting our current community so we do not have a set date for a trial. Thank you for your patience and understanding. Please feel free to send an email to us at support@beardedmangames.com with any questions that you may have.

Announcement!

You’ve asked for it and so we are delivering. We are going to be publishing a FREE evaluation version of Forge Networking. This will be the full power of Forge Networking with a few small limitations.

  • You can only host servers within the Unity Editor for testing (builds can not run servers)
  • You will have text in your game “Forge Networking Evaluation Copy” or something similar
  • You can not publish or make money using the free version of Forge Networking
  • Obfuscated closed source .dll files (no source code) **(1)
  • You will not be invited to the live slack chat

Other than these five limitations, you will have the full power of Forge Networking to evaluate, test, and even create your complete game before purchasing the main plugin…

**(1) = iOS may have issues with obfuscation, if so it will not be a testable platform, iOS is fully supported with IL2CPP on the full Forge Networking plugin. Other platforms may as well, ANY platform that supports .NET sockets will work with Forge Networking :slight_smile:

Can we use this in our classroom?
Yes! You may use this in any class setting, you may also have your students ask questions on our Epic on EpicJoin (see links below).

Can I develop my game on this then buy the full version when I complete it?
Yes, develop to your heart’s content. Make the whole game if you would like! We will support you along the way :slight_smile: We would recommend that you buy the full product when you can so that you can get faster updates, access the addons, get full source code, and be a part of the live chat with our community though! :slight_smile: (Of course you can not publish your game without purchasing)

Can I use this for a class project?
Yes, one of us in the studio has actually been a professor in Computer Science so we know how important it is to be able to use plugins and third party software (even trial version) to complete a task or project.

Do I have a CCU or connection limitation?
Nope, full power is full power, no limitations other than the 5 listed above :). So go ahead, connect 1,000 clients to your Unity Editor server :smile:

Can I get support for Forge Networking Free?
You CAN get support for the free version of Forge Networking through the forums here on Unity just put “[FORGE]” in your thread title and we’ll be searching for them :slight_smile:

If you have not heard of Forge Networking, please see this thread.

We will be releasing this to the Asset Store in a couple of days, which means it should be up a few days after that :slight_smile:

Let us know what you think below :slight_smile:

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This is awesome! I’m not a big fan of DLL releases, but in this case I think it definitely works. Besides the whole being strapped for cash right now, I’m also in that once bit, twice shy mode. After having purchased Bolt, MassiveNet, and others only to find out that they either don’t work well for me or to have the developer give up and open source the project, I’ve been really hesitant to try Forge even after having developer friends rave about it. Being able to work it into my development pipeline before actually committing to a purchase and being able to make sure it is a good fit is BRILLIANT!

It is probably going to be a couple of weeks before I can do anything with it, but will definitely pick it up to give you guys a try. :slight_smile:

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Thanks! We deliberated on this topic in deciding how we can show people the power of Forge Networking for the vary reasons you are stating. We also have had a lot of private requests from students and teachers to use Forge Networking for their classes. We do want to give access to everyone to truly evaluate the product as far as they want before they decide that Forge is for them.

We have noticed that after the “fall” of one system, the limitations of the other, and the lack of flexibility of the others that people are not willing to throw out their hard earned money to try another system. We are so confident in Forge. Our support has spoken for itself, our flexibility has proven its worth, our ease of use has been spread to many listeners, and our development cycles have left others to re-evaluate how they do updates. We do not wish to limit anyone when it comes to developing networking games, we want nothing more than to make our system better and to build a strong community of multiplayer game and application makers! :smile:

Thank you for your feedback and I can’t wait for you to try out Forge and join the community :smile:. It’ll be a blast!

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Update

The package has been submitted to the Asset Store. Look for it to appear within the next few business days! :smile:

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Will it be possible for others to connect to the server hosted from the Editor? (Testing Purposes)

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Yes :slight_smile:

If you are connecting via LAN then it will be ready to go once they get your LAN IP address.

If you are connecting from the internet (WAN) then you will need to make sure that you have forwarded the specified port on your machine on your router firewall. This would be done the same way you would do any kind of port forwarding for a game or any other networked application when hosting a server :slight_smile:

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Hey there, I’m considering moving from Bolt to Forge, this free version would be great for testing it out!
I understand not having access to the live chat, but will we have access to the wiki since all updated tutorials seem to be only available there?

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I doubt it since its a free version, but you still get the full power.

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Full power doesn’t really do much good though if you don’t have access to all the tutorials and wiki in order to figure out how to do things. I can understand not offering live support to free users, but you kinda still want them to know how to do things. Successful free users convert to paid users if they are able to do everything they need to with Forge to get their games ready to publish… :wink:

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I completely agree with Shawn67, full power doesn’t mean a lot without full knowledge too.
I highly suggest Bearded Man Studios to open up their wiki pages now that free version is on the way, in order to have the most interest in people that want to try their product.
I would most likely be willing to upgrade to paid but only after I understood the whole potential of the framework, which I wouldn’t without all the available tutorials.
In fact having access to tutorials doesn’t mean you can get away with the free version because you can’t go into production without live support and the permission to publish your game, and that should suffice as far as free-paid conversion go in my opinion.

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I would be very surprised if they didn’t give you access to the documentation and tutorials. Did you try their EpicJoin as they suggested above? I think they may be moving information there.

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Not yet, since it isn’t available yet. I was just responding to another @blueagardq13 's response while we wait for an official Forge response. Definitely would be nice if that is the case though. :slight_smile:

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^^^^

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We will not have access to the wiki since it is tightly coupled with purchase usernames at the moment. All of our official (non-user based) documentation will always be publicly available on the main site and on our EpicJoin docs :).

Since users share more code that is relative to the main libraries in the Wiki, we want to keep their submissions private to others who have purchased and have the source so they can emulate the modifications.

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You betcha! We have not taken out any systems for Forge Networking Free. We have simply limited where you can host a server and the fact that you will need the full version to publish.

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We completely agree and have devoted the entire month of November to making tutorials and documentation on every inch of Forge Networking. All of the tutorials and samples that the Forge team produces will always be publicly available in the above mentioned links :slight_smile:

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Seems absolutely fair, thanks for the explanation, looking forward to try it :slight_smile:

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Do you have an update on when the free version will appear on the asset store? I’m right about to start working on networking for a prototype game I have been developing, and it seems like the perfect time to evaluate forge. I was just about to start implementing unet but I would rather work with a product that fits my requirements for the production version :slight_smile:

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Unity has spent 2 weeks (even though they clam 3-5 business days) reviewing Forge Networking Free. We are now going to release the asset on our website, watch this thread and we will announce the release publically here :slight_smile:

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Forge Networking Free is now LIVE on the website! Go to http://developers.forgepowered.com/ to get started :smile:

To download Forge Networking Free, you are going to have to register your account if you haven’t already and once you have you will find the download ready to go in your developer profile! :smile:

Unity has taken over 2 weeks to review the asset so we decided it was time to push it to our website. Please feel free to give it a go and let me know what you think! We are eager to hear if there are any bugs in the port from the core to free.

Thank you so much for being a part of this process and participating in the community. We can’t wait to hear all of your great feedback! :smile: