Some questions about client/server network basics...

Unity Engine
1

  1. The server app must be a Unity project, and must be the home/owner of all unity objects, npcs, etc. Pysics, collision detection, most everything happens on the server as far as non-player ai, interaction, and control.

  2. As far as interpolation/prediction…it seems like latency is the big thing here. If someone has a 250ms latency…they’re only getting updated every 1/4th of a second. That’s not real fast.
    With no interpolation/prediction at all, the server just sends out the updated positions and the player would see a jerkiness as the monster ‘jumped’ around every 1/4th of a second.

Taking it to the next level, the server could “know” the velocity/turn rate of the gameobjects, and send that also to the client. This could get interesting with sudden moves, or cases where the object is falling, hits something, server sees it hits something, sends out an update, etc.

  1. Should the server attempt to just spam out updates on regular intervals, when something changes, or?
2

#1 That’s an authoritative server.

#2 Latency is not send rate. It’s the time it takes information to reach the other players. The jerkiness is due to the instability of networks (things get dropped or delayed).

#3 You could do either. If you send out continuously, it’ll use more bandwidth, but you’ll get better performance.