Clerification on NetDog and Smart Fox Server

Could someone kindly clear up this confusion for me? Unity comes with its own networking setup yes?

So why would you use something like NetDog or SmartFox Server? Does it have to do with how many players are handled?

Thank you!

 

Unity comes with it's own networking capabilities, due to Raknet being integrated with it.

The above allows for networking to occur, but if you want chat, authoritative serve, dungeon instances, username / password verification, account details, database integration, be prepared to write all of it yourself.

It is possible, using what Unity has already, to achieve all of that.

Or, you can use middleware, which already has chat features, account creation/management, "rooms", etc already done. All you have to do is reference it, via a collection of functions / classes typically known as an API.

So, instead of writing all the chat code yourself, making sure everyone sees it, that it appears correctly, making people able to use different channels and each channel has it's own user list, etc, all you have to do is call a function provided to you by SmartFox.

Unity is middleware, in a sense. Unity is to Game development like SmartFox is to Game networking. You COULD code everything from scratch; no game engine helping you.

To answer your last question, yes, it's sorta related to users handled. It's not that Unity, or SmartFox, have some limit to users (and network data), and that's what sets them apart. It more related the quality of the networking code. If you're new to networking, your code may only be able to handle a small handful of players, because it is not optimized (you're sending way to much, way to often). If you spend more time, your code will improve.

So, yes, the more developed, better quality code typically can support more players because of the methods they use to keep everyone synchronized.

 

Thank you very much Tempest!