when you say Multiplayer (PUN) do you mean Photon Unity Networking? Are you using you hosting your own Dedicated Photon Server with Custom Server Logic or are you using Photon Cloud? Very curious how your building this Survival Game with Photon if so… and it looks great by the way! All the Best! I’d be happy to play test it when it’s ready… = )
I am using Photon Cloud, 100 concurrent users.
Interesting… so how many players will you have in a single server instance or game session? and how what about persistent world features, i’m guessing if your using Photon Cloud you can’t have persistent world because the game sessions are hosted by a single player who is considered the Master Client, and if the Master Client leaves the Game the Game Session ends and anything that happened in the world will not be saved. So the next time the player joins another game session everything will be reset correct? Or you have some other neat ways of handling this?
And i’m curious also about your performance, and how well is the game performing with multiple players logged in and lots of Zombie AI running around…
If the master client logs off, nothing is lost and a new random player is assigned as the new master client. When all players leave the room, only then will the room-session die. At least to my understanding.
Because I am using the cloud solution I can not spawn persistent items in the world, and that is a limitation I am willing to work with during alpha and beta stage. I will save inventory, health, food levels, etc in an external database.
And about performance, I can’t really tell yet. I’ve had multiplayer test sessions with no more than 2 people. That is why I will launch an alpha soon, so see how things are holding up.
The master client for example will have to take care of all items spawning in the world. While zombie AI is handled by the one who aggro-d the zombie. I hope tricks like that will keep the network performance fast.
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You should add me to Skype! Skype ID: jonmalave, I can help you play test sometimes when I’m not busy working on my projects… I’m currently working on a Multiplayer RPG, MOBA style game “Heroes of Rune” and I am using Photon Cloud myself… and will have Enemy AI along with up to 6-8 Players Max per game session. I can tell you that I ran into big performance issues before with the enemy AI I had about 32 Enemies in a Game Session and my game’s Frame Rate dropped like hell even with just 1-2 players online lol! We found the issue related to our Movement Script, I think it was too many updates and too much for the Master Client to keep track of as all the Enemies were Roaming around certain area’s. For now we have our enemies idle until a Player engages the enemy, I think this is helping along with probably other script optimizations to the Movement. I would love to share notes and maybe we can learn from each other’s projects as we are both using Photon Cloud. = )
I’ve added you.
I’ve been working on zombie AI. The map is pretty huge, and I use the free indie version of Unity, so no NavMesh. So, I ended up scripting my own super lightweight “pathfinding” script. It’s absolutely super fast, and doesn’t put strain on game performance.
The script still needs a few tweaks to make the zombies respond better to spotting you, but in it’s raw form I’m pretty content with it.
Here’s a video demonstrating the zombies following me in the game’s supermarket:
I’ve also been working on adding drag and drop support in the inventory and that’s working nicely as well.
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Really Cool! AI seems pretty solid… fast lightweight path finding sounds great to me, and looks good! = )
Wow, I am just hearing about this game! 
I would also, like to add that i am currently using photon too! I am making a minimalistic topdown zombie shooter… instead of just normal survival, it will have gamemodes (survival too). but WOW, this game looks amazing! i hope you keep us all updated
The game looks solid, but I think you are not considering the networking part enough.
As I can see, you don’t have an authoritative server, which will translate in rampant hacking and cheating.
Sure, you can say that this doesn’t matter for alpha or even beta, but the problem is that in the moment that it will matter, you will have to re-write almost everything…
Just my two cents here. Again, the project looks serious, not like most zombie survival games on these forums.
Money is always the issue at hand. I am already investing my own money into this project and can not already rent servers. I first need to see if there is actually demand for a game like mine. So, during this first phase we rely on the photon cloud.
Adjusting the game to client/server won’t be a big issue. The network part is setup pretty solid.
Thank you!
Thanks, I will!
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Mac Seymour has been working hard to create models for the game. His latest creations include a new house and something every small town needs… a bar!
I have been working on optimizing game performance. The way Survius is set up is that there is no centralized server. All clients connect through a cloud service. One client however is appointed the “master” client and needs to keep things in sync.
In my first version of zombie AI the master client took care of all zombies, who they detected and who they targeted. This dragged down performance for the master client, even with just 10 zombies.
I have now rewritten that code so that ever client handles it’s own zombie things. I now get a steady 60fps again, without weird framedrops.
I also replaced the backpack model found in almost all videos and screenshots. I found a better one, which still needs some tweaking but looks a lot better.
Here is a video of me running into the bar, showing you around, while zombies follow me inside for a Bar Fight!
No matter what anyone does KOS will not stop , but there are ways to reduce it and thats by making features that make the killing only if needed and reducing the anger that results in KOS , for example :
1- in minecraft you dont get so frustrated when you are killed on sight because you have a base and alot of collected materials and tools , so loosing some is not a big problem , and the equipment you wear in minecraft pretty much reflect your base and resources , for example an iron armored guy will be having good amount of iron and very very much stone and enough wood and a good base to hold alot of chests and rooms , but will likely have low amount of gold and less that 16 diamonds , a diamond guy will have about 32 diamonds and good amount of iron and wood , about 5 chests of stone and a large base with a big mine , so if you die in minecraft you can remake what you had easily atleast once to revenge , while in games like Unturned ( check it out if you dont know it ) or DayZ after dying you have nothing , so you are just another easy target , and building a base in unturned requires alot of time ( really really alot of time ) and resources , so you carry everything you have with you and you will likely get killed before building and you will have to start again , so if the game doest have building in it you should add atleast capturing buildings in the map and crafting chests easily .
2- another thing is to make the killer think 1000 times before killing or looting , for example add diseases in the game , and the more you get closer to dead bodies or cloth that someone else used for along time will , depending on some calculations( the period since the dead body was killed , the time the dead wore the piece of cloth , if the dead guy had any diseases ) you will get diseased , and also as in number (1) if the killed player has the ability to quickly grab good equipment and kill his killer , then the killer will rething killing him for nothing .
3- reduce the damage range alot : big problem in KOS is that you are killed instantly from 300 meters and from behind , this frustrates as you cant keep looking at each centimeter around you to check if there is someone , most people look around by a quick look and dont use scopes to see some far snipers , for example the most powerful gun ( will likely be a sniper rifle ) will damage 50% when shot in the body , after 250M it damages 34% .
deleting auto and reducing ammo will also reduce alot of fun aspects of a survival game , like team battles .
disabling loot will turn it to almost PvE , and that sucks .
Me and my friends made our own Unturned server and we formed 2 main clands , other friends were lone survivors , after I and my friend built a base we couldnt KOS because we knew that the other clan will declare war and we didnt know what weapons they have , then someone from them entered our town we killed him , and stayed inside the base for a week because we were scared that someone snipe us , it all depends on making fear in killing , but unfortunally all survivor games now just make killing more rewardable , while there isnt any negative side of it .
Thanks for your long reply. Let me reply to your points:
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the alpha and beta will not have persistent items. it will however probably have some sort of safe zones where you can store your items for later use.
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if you kill a player you will not be able to get his/her loot.
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there won’t be sniper guns in the game, for this exact reason. the only two guns will probably be a handgun (in the game now), and a bolt action rifle (partly in the game).
The rifle will have a bit more range, but right now you have to hit a player about 3 times before he goes down, and then you don’t get his loot (point 2).
That’s the current approach at least.
You know, I’m actually really interested in this. I wasn’t expecting much when I saw “Multiplayer Open World Survival” but its looking very solid.
Normally I never recommend working worldside before your core mechanics are nailed down but in this case, given how tight things are looking, I’d say set aside a day or two for a nice practical testbed. You need a place to test other systems you might use like terrain shaders, volume lighting, pathfinding solutions and so on. You need to be able to regulate all the variables in the scene to get a good grasp on performance and so on.
If you want some pointers just hit me up on Skype.
All the best with this, it looks excellent.
I’ve gone ahead and added you.
why won’t there be persistent items? so do you mean everytime we play we start out with nothing, but then when we find stuff it’s only good for that play session, and if you log off you will lose all your items? I would think that’s an important part of a survival game to be able to keep your items… regardless if there is a safe house storage or not. There is no reason why you can’t add MySQL database to store the player items they pick up on the fly as they pick it up. I know you mentioned no persistant items in Alpha or Beta, but I would think especially in Beta this would be a crucial time to have this already implemented as that’s when people are really getting the feel for the game in Beta stage, Alpha is understandable not to have, but not in Beta… it should be there in Beta.
also… i would suggest checking out Lifeless! it’s a MMO Survival Game developed in Unity and they have a nice thread about the game also which includes a full documentation overview of how they built the game! Pretty nice of them to provide an overview of their development, and even covered how they developed the server. What I learned from (successfully) building an MMO in Unity. - Industries - News & General Discussion - Unity Discussions’
Game Website: http://lifelessgame.com/
Looking really awesome. What are you using to generate the terrain?
By persistent items i meant on the servers, in the scene itself. I will ofcourse save the inventory, health, etc in a database when you log off.
And thank you for the link, really helpful.
I used a heightmap made in Photoshop, then used the Terraintoolkit (old script) to texture it based on height and steepness.