I’m seeking a multiplayer solution for Astrogun Powergrid – a virtual reality art gallery and club for the Oculus Rift (non-VR version included). I’ve been looking at Photon, but wanted to get your general opinion which solution would be best for this kind of project?
To start, I just need to get multiple players spawned in with a generic body and the ability to speak over voice chat (does Photon include voice chat or do I need a separate package?)
Photon is just networking. There is no Server side Physics in fact the server by default would have no clue what your world looked like so you couldn’t do server side collision detection, AI code, or Physics with out doing alot of extra work. There is no voice chat in Photon but you could add it through adding another package. uSpeak I believe is one that would work nicely.
Are there any plug-n-play multiplayer solutions available for what Powergrid would need? No realtime combat, but basic multiplayer functionality (player position, avatars). Collision between multiple players isn’t even necessary (in fact probably isn’t wanted to ensure players don’t obstruct other players’ movements through the club).
I was going to check out the Unity Bootcamp Photon Demo to see if they had most of this worked out.
AppWarp recently put out their multiplayer demo based on Unity’s 3rd person controller Viking sample. In the demo - we illustrate how you update and send across player movements. However there is no in-built voice chat feature like you are also looking for.
I am biased (as I’m working on Photon) but I’d say that Photon Unity Networking and the Photon Cloud should be the perfect fit for your project. It should be simple to setup and use for you.
A few projects already sent voice over Photon. You will regularly get a byte[ ] from any voice recording API and just send it to the players in the same room.
I doubt you need server-side cheat prevention and server side physics. This seems to me more about cooperative experiences and communication.
However, any third party framework and even Unity built-in networking will allow you to implement this. The latter is not the best option though.
Thanks for the replies guys. And thank you tobiass-- I have a question for you:
I created a new project and imported the Photon Bootcamp demo. However, it doesn’t seem to play nice with PlayMaker. Is this the case that Photon / the Photon Bootcamp demo won’t work with PlayMaker? I’ll need it to…
Xander: You are right, the Bootcamp Demo does not work with PlayMaker. At least, our Multiplayer Bootcamp Demo doesn’t.
Playmaker is a different way to code and I’m not sure how well it blends with non-visual-scripting. I am sure there are a few basic examples for networking in PlayMaker and you will also get answers in their forum when you’re stuck.