Played with Unity a while back but not long enough to remember much about it. I have more time these days so I’m gonna give it a go. I would like to create an FPS game, that is multiplayer but not mass multiplayer. Just like 32 players per server sort of thing.
I have bookmarked a bunch of great tutorials for this exact thing but they are all in Unity 4.
So I’m just curious would it be a good idea to try and follow along with the Unity 4 Tutorials or should I search some more for Unity 5 fps tutorials?
Bonus points if you know of a good Unity 5 fps tutorial. I’m not a complete novice, I write PHP, Mysql and Javascript for a living but am a novice with object oriented programming and having to compile stuff.
Unity hasn’t changed so much that the Unity 4 tutorials should give you much trouble. The main differences are in the UI stuff; a whole new UI system was introduced in Unity 4.6, so older tutorials may be doing things the hard way (though it will still work).
There are a couple of other minor differences when it comes to code… mostly having to do with some quick accessors that have been removed (see here for example). This is unfortunate, but not too hard once you get the pattern.
So, I suggest that you follow any Unity 4-or-later tutorial that interests you, and when you run into a snag, post here for help.
Bonus points: there’s a Unity 5 tutorial referenced in my sig which I think is pretty good.
When I started writing my book, Unity 5 wasn’t out yet so I was writing code for Unity 4. Then I updated the book for Unity 5; there were more changes than I expected, but yeah in most chapters it wasn’t anything huge, just lots of little things sprinkled here and there.
One more question, which probably doesn’t need to be asked just yet, but might as well at least be thinking about. When writing a game that is destined to be multiplayer does that affect character motor design and development? Is it possible to write the system first as a stand alone client and then add in the multiplayer parts? Or should that be figured out from the beginning?
Multiplayer does add quite a lot of complexity to the code, even in Unity. But things like character movement will not change; it’s just an additional layer that controls the position of things (and sorts out who’s responsible for detecting collisions, etc.).
So, dig right in with single-player games at first, and circle back to your multiplayer masterpiece once you’ve got a year or two of experience under your belt.
