The unity docs mention Havok isn’t good for networked games due to being stateful so I was wondering how a game like No Man’s Sky uses Havok in multi-player mode. I understand that their work is proprietary but I was wondering if anyone had a good guess for how they do it.
My guess is for up close interactions between players they’re using something other than Havok which is used only for large body interactions.
Not being good for networked games means that the physics state is troublesome to replicate, but not necessarily impossible:
- You could simulate stuff only on the server/host, so clients would give inputs to the simulation and server would replicate the positions and rotations of the objects. This is the easiest approach but might not work for fast-paced games.
- You could simulate stuff in both the client and in the server/host and apply corrections where necessary.
- You could find your way through replicating the physics state but I wonder the bandwidth necessary for that.
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Not good is relative. What you will find is that at a low level a physics engine that is designed with networking in mind will give better results. Vs brute force and jankiness.