Hi there,
I have begun my first multi player development and am using Photon.
I have run into a few things that “bother me” about the api. What I am wondering is, is there a consensus that Photon is the best way to go? Or is Unity Native Mulitplayer better?
Just wondering for opinions.
Thanks
Photon is more complete and battle tested, UNet is brand new really.
Is Unity looking to replace Photon as they did with the many UI PlugIns? See EZ GUI etc.
Unity doesn’t replace anything, they offer alternatives.
You can still use NGUI over uGUI. You’ll still be able to use Photon down the road.
UNET in it’s current form is terrible in my experience. It will take a lot of time before it’s usable. A lot of features are missing and many more are broken. UNET is completely unusable at the moment. (my opinion)
Consider other solutions such as DarkRift/TNet/Forge networking.
UNET is currently in an early stage of its developments and has quite a lot of issues. You would be better off learning something different and then switch to UNET when it developed more.
I’m totally photon fanboi, using it for my MMOFPS game project but with own custom logic. That’s hard to say, every plugin has his good and bad points.
Personally I lean towards UNet only because it’s the Unity ‘native’ solution so I expect it to end up better in the long term, and to have better support. That being said…it’s a hard sell at the moment, especially with all the scary posts I’ve seen about stress testing that seem to indicate that it just doesn’t work under and any kind of real load.
In the end I’m sticking with UNet, because I want to believe in Unity, and because I think it is the cheapest alternative, as long as you avoid using the relays as much as possible.
I’m in the middle of researching/evaluating network solutions too, and I’m going with Photon for now, mainly because it looks like they provide their own servers, matchmaking, and lobby systems which I don’t care to spend time implementing myself. I couldn’t really find much on UNET, other than it provides LAN support. I’m waiting for someone to prove me wrong.
@aer0ace Unity does have matchmaking and some lobby stuff just for reference. I don’t know what gave you the impression that UNet only works on LAN, that would be completely ridiculous.
Because I couldn’t find any documentation on it. It’s probably pretty easy to find, but I got frustrated looking for it, whereas Photon documentation was quite easy to find.
EDIT:
Heh, I just found some stuff. But I still haven’t found a pricing page. Anyway, good to know it’s there.
EDIT 2:
Okay, looks like they make it pretty easy to integrate, but I will still most likely stick with Photon as previously noted in this thread, it’s a lot more battle tested.
I am also sticking with UNET and I just hope it’s ready by the time I need it. I hope it’s the right move… but I keep 2nd guessing myself and thinking about jumping ship 
I just get really frustrated at all the UNET bugs at the moment. Like today I was testing my game, swung my sword, and a fireball popped out!! It turns out UNET [Command] doesn’t support inheritance and commands with the same name (it will always choose the first command that matches the string in the hierarchy)!!! So you can’t have a base abstract “Ability” class with the [Command] virtual UseAbility() method. You must rename each one so they are unique. [Command] UseAbilitySword() and [Command] UseAbilityFireball(). Bug 734257 almost a year old…
And yesterday I learned that UNET’s NetworkAnimator does not support multiple animation layers. So if you are trying to animate walk AND attack… it doesn’t support this. This is unfortunate because UNET’s NetworkAnimator was one of the things making me stick with UNET.
There are so many UNET bugs like this and constantly having to bandaid workarounds (and sometimes not being able to) is starting to drive me crazy!!! Ever since SeanR left I haven’t seen much communication or bug fixing :[
Yeah, screw that. I don’t need that kind of drama. Making a game is hard enough as it is.