Multiplayer Options

Unity Engine
1

Hey guys,

I’m trying to way all the options I have available to me for creating a multiplayer game idea I have. I’m wondering if anyone could set me in the right direction and correct/comment on the below points which I have ascertained by reading various posts, blogs, and sites. The just of main statements/questions I’d like responses on have been enboldened.

  • I should use an authoritative dedicated server if I want to prevent clients from cheating in my game.

  • Are there any easy out of the box solutions for a 2 player game? Not having a whole lot of free time, I’m not sure I want to invest in hardware infrastructure to set up scalable dedicated servers for my game. I’d rather a managed solution where I pay as I go.

  • http://game-cloud.org/ - Seems like a possible solution, but there is not much documentation and it may not even be out of beta

  • Are there any out of the box “match making” solutions I can use in conjunction with whatever dedicated server solution I end up going with?

  • Do I need to write a match making interface per platform? E.g., a game center one for iOS, Steam Works one for Steam, Google Player Services for Android

  • If there are no out of the box authoritative server solutions, AND I don’t have a whole lot of free time to learn in depth networking intricacies am I not going to be able to write my own solution for a 2 player game?

  • I’ve read client side prediction in Unity is very difficult to achieve, because Unity does not provide a way to step forward a physics simulation without actually increasing time.

I apologize if these questions are too general, I’m just having a hard time wrapping my head on the direction I need to take for my two player game:

This is a project I began with someone else 3+ years ago, and it ended up falling through. I’d like to start it back up, but getting core concepts like networking and mobile performance down from the on set.

Thanks,

2

Well perhaps my post is a bit too general to reply to, so I’m going to double post with some more knowledge I’ve collected:

  • If http://game-cloud.org/ is not yet ready for use, than it would seem that a managed out-of-the box authoritative solution just doesn’t yet exist. (By managed I mean that the server is hosted for you, and can be easily up/down scaled).

  • http://developer.muchdifferent.com/unitypark/ really seems like the way to go to create an authoritative server for my game out of the box. While it’s a bit pricey, it seems that I can at least develop my game without getting a license, and will only pay once I’m ready to go live.

  • uLink seems to have a ton of nice support for client side prediction, match making, and some other neat stuff like persistent storage.

  • While none of this is hosted for you, for my game of 1v1 matches I believe that it will not be an unfeasible goal to calculate my bandwidth, cpu, and memory needs and find a suitable host. Though I may be following up with a new thread on tips for doing exactly this!

3

If you want, add me to skype/email and I’ll happily give some advice.

4

I’ve added you on skype, thanks!