Mind linking me to that post?
From this post and some other posts from @JTovey .
Hum my bad. No HLAPI gonna come out. I guess new library only work with new Hybrid Entity or Pure ECS as Unity is heading this way. As why the delay with new library, I can only guess they have trouble make it simple for people to use.
Hi there,
To clarify, there are no announced plans for a new HLAPI as yet, though if you need this form of networking API, then using the community Fork of HLAPI, Mirror, which can be found here: https://discussions.unity.com/t/636221
If you have any other questions, just let us know.
Just to be clear, is the HLAPI gone from 2018.3, or still merely deprecated?
The blog post here says “The HLAPI and LLAPI will no longer ship with Unity after 2018.4”
But the manual here says “Removed in version 2018.3.0”, i.e. 2 minor versions sooner than we were told to expect.
I am just starting a from-the-scratch multi-player prototype which is to be finished within 4 months. Later, it will continue into production. Please suggest what framework, libraries how-to guides to use for the same. I am currently on Unity 2018.3. Should I just proceed with network manager, and other components based multi-player implementation?
Please suggest.
Thanks!
Hi Ishwara,
That depends a lot on what you want to do, and how much time you want to spend working on the netcode. As the new Network Library is a Low Level API, you will need to write a lot of the high level code yourself, and unfortunately, because it is still in an alpha state, we do not have any How-to guides on using it, though these are in the pipeline once more of the code is in its final state.
If you want to have use a more high level API then you can use either MLAPI or the community fork of HLAPI, Mirror, both of which you can find information on here:
MLAPI: MLAPI - HLAPI Replacement
Mirror: Mirror - Open Source Networking for Unity
I hope that this help answer your question, and if you have any others, please ask them here.
Hi Kylotan,
2018.3 is only 1 minor version early, however, I can appreciate why this is annoying. The plan is for the new library to replace LLAPI, which was not stable or reliable, however, this is still in alpha, so it is still being actively worked on (this does mean that if you have features you would like to see worked into it, you can request them and they might be added).
While HLAPI might be depreciated in it’s usual form, it is far from dead, you can still access the Mirror Fork ( https://discussions.unity.com/t/636221 ) which is actively being used by the community and is designed to be very usable.
I think the bigger problem was even having LLAPI and HLAPI as a concept. It should just be one API and examples on how to use it to achieve a goal, so there’s only one set of docs to do, one set of support, and one set of knowledge growing on forums / stack overflow / etc… networking is complicated but Unity’s prior handling of it made it a lot worse.
Would also appreciate having UNet removed from the manual once it’s a package, it’s absurdly confusing for a beginner.
I think it makes sense to have them as separate concepts, especially because you can swap out either one of them and keep the other.
Heck, once Unity’s new transport gets in shape, I would expect Mirror to work with it too!
Being gone from 2018.3 is 2 minor versions before “after 2018.4”. If you say something is gone after 2018.4, the implication is that it exists in 2018.3 and 2018.4, but not after that.
So you’re confirming that you actually removed the current networking solution ahead of schedule, despite no similar replacement being ready? And that all we have to work with is the alpha low level API that is barely more than a wrapper around a bare socket? That’s pretty poor treatment of paying customers.
If you want to hear feature requests, how about you replace the high level API too? Give us some actual functionality. Over 600 lines of code to implement a trivial Ping sample is embarrassing for you and annoying for us.
Yes, they did a great job of fixing up much of the abandoned code, but it’s not a drop-in replacement if one is using unreliable transport. There appears to be another 3rd party library to tack on to fix that (https://github.com/SoftwareGuy/Ignorance), which may or may not replicate everything needed from the LLAPI, but who knows? It’s implemented in terms of yet another library (https://github.com/nxrighthere/ENet-CSharp). So if I do all that and something doesn’t work, that’s 3 separate places I need to look to find out why. All this because Unity hasn’t taken its responsibilities seriously regarding providing a usable networking API.
Should be able to use Ignorance with just one line of code.
But sure, an official rUDP library from Unity would save us a whole lot of work, so like @goldbug said above, we are definitely looking forward to that day.
I have seen your name on the networking forums before. Feel free to join the Mirror discord, maybe you can help making things easier for everyone
Ignorance does look easy to drop in. But given that it’s just a thin wrapper between Mirror’s TransportLayer and ENet, it’s not the most transparent system to work with as any problems could have come from either side, and it introduces the ENet dependency as well. This is not ideal for a commercial situation.
It also includes LLAPITransport, if you want to stick to LLAPI
Which (as I think I’ve said to you several times before) is irrelevant if we’re talking about forward compatibility once UNet is gone. This is the UNet Deprecation thread.
Looking forward: once they implement reliable, we should be able to get the new transport working with Mirror.
We are also pretty livid that this was removed without any prior warning despite official word it would be removed after 2018.4.
How is any studio supposed to undertake commercial contracts if we cant trust what unity outlines as future plans?
Its very hard already to make networked solutions using unity, harder if those solutions cease to function from no fault of our own, basically because we are not mind readers.
Please please communicate with us next time before making such a decision, or at least dont tell us you will do one thing and do the opposite.
Wow, relax guys. It has not been removed yet. Look for yourselves. The path is:
Editor\2018.3.0f2\Editor\Data\UnityExtensions\Unity\Networking\
I think the Unity dude’s comments were wildly misinterpreted.
No, they were just wrong.
And one more thing, in light of today’s news…
Will we still be able to host your own dedicated servers without paying for an additional licence?
Hi Kylotan,
Can you confirm what news you are referring to, and I will try to confirm whether this is the case for you?