Is it possible to create a simple server list without a master server that is pure peer to peer?

Unity Engine
1

I’m poking around the multiplayer aspects of Unity now because at some point I do want to try out at making some simple multiplayer games as they often have good replay value. However as I’m still learning I’m trying to find out what the limits are of multiplayer networking and so on, I found a great asset I plan on buying called forge networking which will enable me to at least create my own dedicated server and have people play on a stand alone network rather than rely on anything made by photon etc. however what I’m curious about is if there are any other options for making the game completely stand alone.

For instance if I decided to stop supporting the game for whatever reason or there just wasn’t that much interest in the multiplayer I wouldn’t want people to be shut off from playing it if something happened to the master server. Now I’m fully aware there’s the pure, peer to peer multiplayer networking but I always have found in general using that is a bit tedious as a gamer. Is there a way to make some kind of server list that scans for active clients for example? This would make life a lot easier for people and also ensure they can find and run servers of their own should the game ever stop being supported.

I’m viivdly reminded of Freelancer for example, where they’ve gone and somehow reverse engineers the client so they can have it connect up to their own master server or some other thing which lets everybody make games on their and still play the multiplayer part of the game no problem.

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Yes but nothing out of the box you have to create that. Given you only plan on that if you stop supporting the game, it doesn’t seem to make much sense to put a huge amount of effort into it. Just make it so players can select what server to connect to, provide the server source, and if it’s actually a popular game players will pretty much take it from there.

P2P still requires someone to be running well known seed trackers, you can’t really get around basically having a dedicated service to do that. Otherwise the system can’t bootstrap itself and it’s basically worthless.

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Sorry didn’t mean to say provide server source, just the server.

4

I see, it makes sense though because unfortunately you’ll always need a server to hold all the data of the servers so the game actually knows they exist.

Thanks for the information, looks like I’ll need to poke around, I just want to be able to make my games as stand alone as possible without having to rely on any third party providers that might go out of business, if that makes sense, it also means that I can do something about if I ever have to stop making games or can’t support the multiplayer.

I guess I should probably look into letting people create their own master servers where they can build a list on a private network, that’s probably the best solution because then they can self-host without needing a developer to do it.