Unity Multiplayer aka UNET aka Unity Networking

Questions & Answers
1

This is about the upcoming “Unity Multiplayer” feature in Unity that is meant to replace the old Network stuff (assuming the project doesn’t change name again).

I know that it is not out yet, it will be released in Unity 5.x (meaning that it can be Unity 5.1, Unity 5.9 or whenever really). It’s either a month away or several months away. This year, next year, who knows?

But: Is it possible to get my hands on it today? As a test version or something?

I sat down yesterday and learned to use Network in Unity but I realized that it doesn’t actually have much protection from cheating. You can’t prevent clients from calling Network.Destroy(gameobject) - they can send as many fake messages as they want to the server and the server will gladly destroy whatever it is told to destroy.

Initially I was very disappointed in learning about such a flaw but I found out about UNET (which was renamed to Unity Networking and then again to Unity Multiplayer). Sounds good, I want to spend my time learning how to use that instead of learning how to use the flawed Network class.

However I can’t really find any information about the project. The name “Unity Multiplayer” doesn’t help since that will find a ton of unrelated subjects on the Internet (about how to implement Multiplayer using various methods).

I stumbled over this page: Unity ID But after logging in and “creating a project” nothing happens. I don’t understand what that page is for? Is it even possible to download anything from there?

I guess my main question is:

Sooo… What’s up with Unity Multiplayer?

Can I try it out? Where can I find the latest info about it? Everything I have found is from 2014…

2

First of all you just asked your question to the Unity community and not to the developers of Unity. We pretty much know as much as you do ^^. The new networking system will be developed in stages so it’s most likely not done yet or if only parts of it.

Yes Network.Destroy is overall a huge failure. They implemented it “recently” to allow to destroy an object as easy as it is to instantiate it. However the implementation is just wrong in all ways since it doesn’t remove the buffered Network.Instantiate call and can be called on any gameobject with a NetworkView attached by anyone.

At the moment the only reliable alternatives are using a third party networking framework that doesn’t use the built-in one.

The page you linked is only for Unity pro users. Do you have a Unity 5 pro license? If you do not don’t bother about that page as it’s only for setting up some kind of cloud based network project. You can’t download anything there.

If something is already out it’s probably part of the beta program. If you have Unity pro you can get your hands on the current beta releases. If you are a free user (like myself) you have to wait until the official release. According to the release notes of the beta some of the new networking features are already implemented. So if you can’t wait for the release, buy Unity pro.