Static batching; Bluetooth Mutliplayer?

Unity Engine
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1

What is the reason you would use StaticBatchingUtility.Combine instead of marking items as static? Would it be only for dynamically created/loaded content?

What is the situation with Bluetooth multiplayer? I did not see anything about it so far in the new documentation, but I would think that this would be something that Unity could take care of for us without a lot of hassle, given the lack of complexity versus internet multiplayer. There is a lot of stuff that we needed to take care of ourselves, in Xcode, which Unity now does for us automatically. Is this just something that hasn’t advanced to that point yet?

2

If you haven’t done so, yet - and if you have votes left - you could certainly vote this up at:

Unity iPhone Feedback

There’s actually two entries regarding networking:

iPhone 3.0 API support - Multiplayer on Bluetooth

Multiplayer Networking support from Unity 2.x

Personally, I’d love to see the multiplayer networking support from Unity 2.x supported, ideally being “compatible” with Unity since that would open quite a lot of really cool possibilities. On the other hand, I think bluetooth networking is also really important for the iPhone, so I hope they’ll find a way to somehow give us both :wink:

3

I have experimented with BlueTooth via GameKit and it’s really flaky. I think it’s asking for a world of tech support hurt and negative reviews if you integrate it right now.

4

I’m curious about the StaticBatchingUtility.Combine. Is that used for dynamic items?? Or are all small dynamic items under auto batched with no mark?

5

[BlueTooth via Gamekit being flaky] Oh, I think that’s good to know. So it might be better to start with RakNet right away :wink:

There’s a thread on the iPhone [EDIT: RakNet - not iPhone] forums that someone managed to get RakNet to work on iPhone. I don’t know how much that would hurt overall performance but certainly think this is the way to do - even though I guess networking via bluetooth will be quite a bit of extra hassle to integrate into RakNet.

Here’s the thread.

6

I have gotten RakNet working on the iPhone. I was going to add it to the Enhancement Pack, but RakNet is really low-level and I’m not sure how best to expose it to users.

Anyway, it’s a decent option, but I think GameKit will improve soon, too.

7

Hey, that sounds cool … but I guess RakNet really is one of the things that needs to be integrated into the engine - especially because Unity (non-iPhone) already offers it and so it would be best to have it available with the same API as Unity networking already offers.

Did you look into performance considerations with RakNet + Unity on the iPhone - and stuff like what happens when the game is simply closed (which is obviously much more likely to happen on the iPhone that it is on the desktop)?