I’m trying to get my Unity-built Android game to run while one instance is a server in Android’s hotspot mode, and have other instances in client mode connect to the server while also connected to that device’s hotspot. I’m using Unity’s framework for Master Servers. The game must run on local WiFi without going out to the internet and coming back.
The game runs fine when all devices are connected to a router (one build runs as a server, and the others connect to it as clients). When the server is in hotspot mode, however, the clients can’t see the server even though they’re connected to the device that’s running the initialized server. Clients also don’t appear to be able to see each other when connected to the hotspot.
Is there some kind of simple setting I’m missing, or maybe some kind of firewall that’s preventing discovery? Can Unity’s networking framework even be used with Android’s mobile hotspot?
Update 1:
I tried testing with a MiFi device and it had the same result, the client and the server can’t see each other even though they are connected to the same network. Is this because of Unity’s network framework, then? How can I get through that?
Update 2:
I changed from port 25000 to port 10001 and got the connection to go through on the MiFi device. But when I turn my phone into a hotspot, it still doesn’t work. Is there a way to open a port like that on my phone? Is that even a good solution?
Update 3:
Ok, I tried ports 0, 80, 8080, 1025, and 49152. No luck. So I think that means I either need to find a way to open a port on a hotspot without the use of 3rd party apps, or to work around Unity’s server code by building my own outside of the engine (which I don’t think I can do).
Solution:
After successfully pinging Unity’s master server on each device, I decided to give up on master server and just connect directly using a known IP address and port. That seems to work for now.