Search Unity

ECS NetCode for indie game

Discussion in 'Multiplayer' started by flekoun, Dec 6, 2019.

  1. flekoun

    flekoun

    Joined:
    Jul 13, 2010
    Posts:
    51
    Hello, I need a help to decide which route to go with our new project. It will be a relatively small multiplayer 2D RPG game.
    What I want to know is if it is wise to embrace ECS NetCode multiplayer for our game in a current state.
    I have seen nearly all videos on ECS from Unity Copenhagen 2019. It looks cool, the NetCode is obviously developed for FPS Multiplayer ga mes and I think that it could handle our slow paced 4 player coop RPG game easily. The issue here is that, if I understand correctly, all NetCode is written in ECS. Therefore we would have to make all game logic in ECS. We have a 2D RPG game where nobody moves, players are just casting spells on enemies and putting Buffs/Debiffs on them. However it has quite deep game logic, think of Hearthstone and all possible combinatins the cards can interact with each other.
    And here is my problem. The NetCode looks cool if you just spawn players as 3D objects and sync their transforms automagicaly via Ghosts with predictive movements and all this. This is great. But we dont need any of this and now try to add a much more complex logic to the game which we were used to solve via monobehaviours like evets, scriptsble objects, UI, sprite animations, sounds, etc. Try do all of this in ECS, with netcode. This looks like an impossible task to me. At least in a current state of DOTS. Or am I confused here? I woulf like to hear other people opinion on this. Just try to imagine how hard would it be to implement just game logic of Hearthstone in ECS vs current solution with monobehaviours and all. Am I right that with ESC it will be like nearly impossible or takes 100x more time? I want someone who understand ECS better than me to give me a honest opinion on this.
    So for now I can see usage for NetCode for folks from Madfinger Games for their upcoming 3D FPS compepetitive game but for 2 man indie studio making 2D RPG game it is completely useless and we should look for different networking solution for our game. Is this correct?
    Thanks!
     
    Quirkeley likes this.
  2. Joe-Censored

    Joe-Censored

    Joined:
    Mar 26, 2013
    Posts:
    11,847
    DOTS isn't done yet, and the network API is an alpha with limited documentation or examples. Not sure that is something anyone else can recommend that you use or not, as no matter how skilled your small team is you will be taking on increased risk and challenges.