We at MuchDifferent are very close to releasing the feature packed uLink 1.3 (currently in
beta). You can already see the beta version in action in ShadowGun Deadzone. After extensive tests and observations, we are happy to report that it works flawlessly. With the official release, about a month from now, we will also change our licensing model so that studios are charged depending on how many of the uLink features they want. But the point of this thread is that we also want to provide a free version. With your help, we hope to define a feature set that is equal to Photon Unity Network (PUN) and provide it without restrictions, for no cost, to all Unity developers.
So, what we are hoping to do is ask you what uLink 1.3 features correspond to PUN’s features. Whatever is the consensus of this thread will eventually become uLink Free.
Please join or just read through our UnityPark Beta-mailing list for more detailed information about the upcoming features.
i think the first part would be deciding how much or many concurrent users are allowed on the free version, most of them normally provide about 100ccu for testing. i would probably say around 150 or more just to beat the competition to start out.
This is excellent news, I’ve always been put off trying uLink through lack of a free version to develop with. The number of CCU’s isn’t real important to me as I would only see free being used to test features so a 20CCU would be fine for that and to test a few players, the main things are really the feature set to invest time in learning.
I think you want to clarify whether you want to provide a hosted service (like Photon Cloud) or “just” the networking library (PUN). My understanding is you are talking about the later, but I think most people here seem to be thinking of the former.
Having used both libraries, for me, the big difference between the two is how you “customize” your server logic. Photon is all about having one big non-Unity server process with very optimized native network code, and uLink more about many smaller servers using the Unity framework, communicating with the uLink P2P protocol. It’s thus quite difficult to “extract” the common features of both libs, since uLink without the Unity P2P part would be mostly useless.
For my current project, what I’d like for the free version is “just uLink” without all the others UnityPark Suite products (uLobby, uGameDB and such…) but the whole of uLink. If you want to put restrictions on that, maybe only allow N (2-3?) server processes using the same free license, and forbid P2P communication between processes with different licenses to prevent “cheating”. I think it would translate rather well what the other libs call CCU.
If you are already thinking about some options and would like to discuss the things in private (like how much would I feel comfortable to pay for features X or Y), feel free to PM me here or e-mail me directly (you have my e-mail on my UnityPark Forum account, same username as here). Context : 2 person indie team, self-funded, developing small-scale MMO, with relevant industry experience. Disclaimer: for us, your current indie pricing is already quite a bargain, considering the quality of the lib.
First of all i should clear that MuchDifferent is providing a free uLink library and no hosting for free.
Secondly i want to provide my opinion on this.
1- I think feature pairity is not possible unless many features of uLink are removed. They should remove groups and scopes, custom data serialization and also peer to peer and selective secure RPCs and their bitstream and running unity on the server :).
I think it’s a good idea to limit number of users and disable some of the advanced features like P2P, OnPlayerApproval and maybe selectively securing RPCs and custom data serialization or some of these based on the community’s opinions.
Obviously other parts like uZone, uGameDB, uLink and uPikko are not included.
Cheers to you guys as the nicest networking middleware for unity and one of the most awesome teams around.
Guys i’m not proposing removal of the features. i was just kidding and little and my point was that having the same amount of feature/value is not possible.
i think number of users should be limited to 100 or so
and P2P should be disabled because that’s something advanced for MMOs and server to server communication.
Maybe making security like unity’s built in network is a good idea because there should be a reason to buy it as well. They need money to move it forward and keep development alive.
The fact is that most of the money game engine providers make is not from these smaller sales but they are important as well.
I think it should stay as it is: trial license which in fact is not 30-day but unlimited time, and the commercial release of the game requires licence purchase. If you want to give a free version of ulink you shouldn’t cut off any features and subsystems of UnityParkSuite like uGameDB or uLobby, because in many use cases standalone uLink is useless without those subsystems. Potential customers may come to the conclusion that your product is not the thing they want…
The CCU limit is also a good idea and it shouldn’t be difficult to do, because there is a max users limitation in uLink.
So, for conclusion I would say: leave it as it is in current trial. Do not cut any features. Limit max CCUs.
@K0mbrain
When you are publishing a .NET assembly like uLink, piracy is really easy so not cutting features is really a big security risk for anyone in software business.
The free and paid structure of uLink seem something like unity’s own at least to me. You have some features and will get others if u want it and pay for it.
In some situations i agree that having all systems is required for full evaluation but the documentation for all of them (other than full uPikko doc which is partially available) is fully available and i think some sort of trials will remain available for the paid version/versions as well.
Aside from Unity, I own very few free versions of software. Most free versions are crippled and make you suffer by lacking something essential to make your life easier or to make whatever you’re doing “complete.” This is why micro-transactions are so successful.
The issue to me always comes down to this… It’s a business. It’s about making money. When taking product develop, product maintenance, and support expenses into consideration, what business model makes the most sense? Do you want to charge more and have less customers, but those customers are serious developers who value their time and yours when it comes to support? - OR - Do you want to charge less, have more customers, but have to deal with people who don’t value your time and have all the time in the world?
Free with limited CCU makes the most sense to me. If a developer is serious about getting uLink, then they just need a more flexible time table for testing and if uLink is what they want, they will buy it. If a developer will never have the money to buy uLink, then where is their game going with the free version? Is their game ever going to be popular enough to have more than say 50 CCU at one time? If not, then neither the developer or Much Different is going to be making any real money anyway, so giving a full functioning version with limited CCU isn’t really giving anything away.
It’s like giving someone who has a great idea for a cookie access to a fully staffed bakery for free - either everyone loves the cookie and it’s going to make money, or everyone doesn’t love the cookie, so no cookies need to produced - and thus the person just goes home. Is there an expense associated with giving someone access to the bakery? Of course! How do you make your money? By limiting the number of cookies the person can produce each day. Want to bake more cookies? All you have to do is pay $X.XX for each additional X number of cookies. Simple right? The person makes money, the bakery makes money, the customers love the cookies and everyone is happy. If only software were this simple. lol
Hey Christian, I think it would be great to make uLink charged on a ‘modular’ basis. So you charge a certain amount for a uLink license, and additional license fees for each add-on module such as uLobby, uGameDb etc… then perhaps offer a cheaper bundle price if the developer takes the entire suite.
Looking forward to the 1.3 release! We’re about to release our game soon, now I must wonder if I should wait for 1.3
uLink has always been free to develop and test with. You only need to buy a license before you release your game with it.
Authentication doesn’t necessarily need to be uLinks concern. There are many ways to write your own authentication service that provideds a token of some sort to an authenticated client, which can then connect to the game server. You can re-issue or verify this token at any time and boot anybody who is not authorized to be in a game session.
@MeltDown If your game required 1.3 features, just go and grab the beta. It’s really stable and awesome and you can add features of it to your g ame or just gain some performance from new bitstreams and have many bugs fixed for you. Just keep in mind that both client and server should upgrade because there are incompatibilities between versions in terms of protocol and …
Removing and limiting any part of uLink as it is now will make it much less interesting and annoying to develop.
CCU limit is the best way to go. uPikko and server / gamedb hosting is where you should make money from. There should be different versions of uPikko, basic/advanced.
But before doing all this, please update your scripts, tutorials/API’s first. We spent so much time figuring basic stuff, its not even funny anymore. Those uLink smooth/strict scripts are sooo much more important, the whole networking thing is about those and you know its not really polished nor finished.
Its a sports car with bicycle wheels and a half finished instruction book how to change them. Sure it will drive and if you put enough time in it, it will be great. But what if…
CCU is probably the simplest way to limit uLink, and will be easiest for potential customers to understand. So I’d vote on this too.
Would also be great if you guys updated all your API’s and documentation too, hopefully they’ll be overhauled for 1.3 release.
You guys should also sign deals with server4you.com or leaseweb.com, from the research I’ve done, they are the most competitively priced and can deploy servers in EU and US in a variety of data centres. Those other guys you used originally or that you referred to me were quite expensive, so I found better value for money hosts.
