After thoroughly testing the Megacity Metro project both without a connection to Unity Cloud and with a locally hosted server, we encountered several issues that merit attention. It is unclear whether these issues are inherent to the project design or specifically related to our unique setup.
Pros:
- The user interface is both visually appealing and intuitively designed.
- Multiplayer functionality performs well, indicating robust network code.
Major Bugs:
- Locally hosted servers exhibit instability, shutting down unexpectedly without generating player logs, complicating troubleshooting efforts. This is a critical issue that must be resolved! It sounds like UUM-39498 (Unity Issue Tracker - [Linux][IL2CPP] Dedicated server crashes when calling Socket.Send) but the issue tracker claims that this is already fixed in 2022.3.21f1 which is the version we are using for evaluating Megacity Metro.
- It is not possible to change player names on locally hosted servers.
- In the client only IPv4 addresses of the server can be entered, neither IPv6 addresses or domain names are possible, which is an unnecessary and unpractical limitation.
- Clients experience indefinite loading when attempting to connect to non-existent servers which is a bad user experience.
Minor Bugs:
- Numerous shader warnings and console spam detract from the development experience. This is a known problem in the dedicated server build target since its release.
- Flying cars sporadically disappear if players move close to them. It also seems like they have no collider, and players can fly right through them.
- The player spaceship has no colliders on the wings.
Cons:
- The graphics quality represents a significant regression from expected standards. For a project intended to showcase a production-ready multiplayer framework, it falls short of providing a holistic, polished game experience.
- Some people were saying “Hey, this doesn’t look as good as Megacity, but it has way more gameplay!” but in our opinion, there isn’t much gameplay. Notably, interactive elements such as holograms lack functionality and the respawn mechanic is overly simplistic.
In conclusion, the Megacity Metro project, as tested, does not fulfill its promise to demonstrate the capabilities of Netcode for Entities in a production-like game environment. The experience is marred by significant technical issues and a lack of gameplay depth, resulting in a product that resembles a dated, early 2000s game more than a cutting-edge Unity showcase. This feedback is intended to highlight areas for improvement in the hope that future iterations will address these concerns.
In addition the advertised webinar on March 27th failed to deliver meaningful insights into the Megacity Metro project or the Netcode for Entities library, serving instead as a promotional platform for Unity Gaming Services.