Hi guys,
so I am debating over wheter to use Photon or uLink for my game.
Game is asymmetrical multiplayer first person game, featuring matches of 4v1, something like evolve in terms of game size, but not similar to that in terms of gameplay.
It will contain player movement and not much physics except that.
I kind of like uLink, it has proven project behind it, like Rust, which I am a big fan of. Also, as far as I could see, its the best choice for an fps game.
However, with uLink, I see a problem. Considering that we have only 5 players in a game during a single match, and its a closed session, meaning that once the game starts it must end before someone else can join (if there are enough slots), and we would like to set up an official server(in this case, servers), we will need lots of resources to host, for example, 20 servers, to be able to have 100 CCU (20x5). Im not sure how to handle that with uLink.
I don’t think letting players create their own servers and hosting them would be a good primary solution for this game. Someone hosting the game with bad connection could ruin the game for the rest of the players, and make them think that game is bad and buggy.
We would make it possible for players to actually host a server somewhere of course, if game takes off, we cant really rely only on official servers.
Also, another thing that we should have is a private session option, have no idea on how to handle that with uLink.
I’ve read about multi-session servers, which is cool. But, I am wondering how to handle that in terms of showing the sessions as servers in the server list. Alternative would be to have a server, you join it, and then you see a list of sessions, or you can create a session, which is kind of alright but not the best solution really.
Im talking about this: http://developer.muchdifferent.com/unitypark/uLink/GameSessionManagement
I have used systems like Player.IO and SmartFox server in the past, but those were turn based games that I was making, and they didnt require lots of resources and lag can be tolerated in those. They both have a rooms system, on the other hand, which is pretty cool, and solves this problem.
Maybe SmartFox is the way to go? I am not really sure.
Also, is the uLink free to use during development, or does it have a time limit, I didn’t quite catch that.
If you guys can offer any advice, I would appreciate it. Im kind of torn apart with all of the choices at hand. 