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[NO CCU LIMIT] Forge Networking now OPEN SOURCE

Discussion in 'Assets and Asset Store' started by Brent_Farris, Dec 22, 2014.

  1. GraphXCreations

    GraphXCreations

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    @farrisarts

    quick question:
    Forge dead already?
    http://beardedmanstudios.com/
    because several factors i noticed:
    your website is not working
    Error establishing a database connection

    or have i been cut off the testing group?

    last beta notice email i received was more than a month ago.
    (Unity 5) Forge Networking Beta Version 14 from ‏ 3/4/2015

    the strange thing was that you guys kept us spoiled :) by releasing almost daily releases,
    then all the sudden went weekly and now montly barely notices by email :-(


    has forge reached a frozen state already or dying without reaching release state?? or you guys took a good needed break?
     
    Last edited: Apr 9, 2015
    jpthek9 likes this.
  2. jpthek9

    jpthek9

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    I too am curious. A lot of people have been looking forward to Forge's asset store release. In the meantime, I'm using DarkRift which has been improving a lot lately but I have a bunch of server code that I don't want to scrap for players hosting servers.
     
  3. Mikeedee

    Mikeedee

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    Check farrisarts and cranick's posts just before yours. Seems like they've been busy with wedding and stuff :)
     
  4. GraphXCreations

    GraphXCreations

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    I dont know, but being busy in a wedding planning etc. does not excuse leaving main business product site inoperable for weeks,

    there should be something else here, unfortunately

    One must be too naive to buy the wedding planning excuse.
    mostly looks this dev team have come to an end or disagreement.
    or simply lack of userbase can bring hopes down to the drain, therefore discontinue production

    been there done that.
    it happens

    sadly and hate to say it, but does not look good


    ohh well, another one bites the dust, we all used to this arent we.
     
  5. Zaddo67

    Zaddo67

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    I think you guys are jumping to conclusions a little too quickly.

    I expect we will soon see the project moving forward again.
     
    Cranick likes this.
  6. Mikeedee

    Mikeedee

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    Wedding planning + honey moon if applicable+the work complications he mentioned+whatever other complications he may be having that he didn't explicitly mention+development roadblocks etc...
    All together these can take far more than two weeks in many cases, so I don't think I'm being naive. Like you said, been there done that.
    The site being down may simply be due to no one reporting it to them. AFAIK it's not like they visit it everyday and they may have just forgot to pay the host bill which happens to me more times than I'd like to admit.
    And again, it's been only two weeks ffs.
     
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  7. jpthek9

    jpthek9

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    "it's been only two weeks ffs"

    Two weeks is a long time. I mean, look at how much they've done with two weeks of activity in the past.
     
  8. Mikeedee

    Mikeedee

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    Thing is they did give us a heads up that things were being shaky on their end. Its not like they vanished out of the blue. Not saying I can say for certain nothing is up but then again neither can anyone say this has been abandoned like its a fact. That was my point from the start.
     
  9. jpthek9

    jpthek9

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    I never did, and I hope they do come back.
     
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  10. huodianyan

    huodianyan

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    I can't find the Forge Networking package in assetstore, where can I buy it?
     
  11. Zaddo67

    Zaddo67

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    It is in Beta at the moment. I think the Beta is still open. Just send farrisarts a PM to participate.
     
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  12. Cranick

    Cranick

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    Didn't know the site was offline, will get on that asap.

    No, the testing group should still go through. I'm going to assume that our database of beta testers might have gotten mangled as our site is offline as well, so once that is up it should be working again on the downloading.

    We've been extremely busy as others have mentioned, myself included. Sorry about the delay but we will try our best to catch up.

    Forge was made to be relatively ease and quick updates with the flexibility that we have in it that no other solution can provide. Our scalability is enormous while our team is only 2 people. Our only downfall is that we don't have that many people working on it, and that any one of us that is busy, the work load is a huge shift that it will cause a hiccup in releases. We unfortunately don't have the power as people who have more free time then us or enormous companies, but we do have a really awesome networking solution that will be released and polished as much as a possible. We will switch back to daily releases once we have some revenue helping fund our creativity as our only funding is ourselves.

    No, forge isn't frozen, just complications come up and it halts development, we plan to proceed with updates and release very soon our official release to Unity. We didn't take a break because we want to, but because it was necessary for our lives.

    Thanks and hopefully that answers your questions and concerns.
     
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  13. Cranick

    Cranick

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    Thank you, yes wedding planning I though would be easy for a programmer, but when you have a woman who knows what she wants and things that she doesn't, it makes it a whole other project to work on that takes up so much time. Contacting vendors, people, rsvp, deposits for locations, making sure cake is good, lights are good, colors are good, wedding planner, etc. Not easy, I'm sure I am not the only one who went through this rodeo and hopefully it will be my first and last. xD
     
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  14. Cranick

    Cranick

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    Main business product site was a mistake to be offline, we will have that resolved shortly. Wedding planning is something that you just have to do when you care for those you love, if you have not done it, I cannot comment or describe what it would feel like. We are a team of 2, and we will do our best to try and be up to date as much as possible.

    I don't think your negativity is helping Forge in the right aspect, concerns of my personal life to share to you is not something that I would like for you to step on. Perhaps it would be best if your topics are just forge related problems and not a personal vendetta, thanks.

    We are used to products that get no support after a while and they never come back. Just because you think it doesn't exist doesn't mean it isn't there. Forge will be there, it is only a matter of time.
     
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  15. Cranick

    Cranick

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    We plan on too, thanks for your support. :)
     
  16. Cranick

    Cranick

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    We are so sorry about that, wish we received an email about it. Our phones are synced to the support@beardedmangames.com email and we didn't hear anything about it until I just wanted to check up on the forum recently.

    Will have that resolved, thank you so much for your support.
     
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  17. Cranick

    Cranick

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    I know, Imagine what we can do if we had funding xD. If we were able to do this on our off time from working, I can only say that if it does turn into something great, it will be quick, clean and amazing.
     
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  18. Cranick

    Cranick

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    Currently we are in beta, we don't plan on releasing an unfinished product to the asset store until it has everything it needs to be great.

    Please send an email to support@beardedmangames.com and we will add you to the beta testers list. Currently our site is offline as we resolve that problem, when it comes back up we will be able to have you on the beta testing list when it is available. Thank you for your support.
     
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  19. GraphXCreations

    GraphXCreations

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    so now i am the bad guy?

    because you say i am stepping on you and being negative?


    then i guess i must be very naive, because of thinking your product is dead for no absolute reason?

    just blame it on me, i guess I was the one that caused you and your partner to vanish for weeks if not months, i guess i am the cause why you all gone, and your website offline during all that time too,

    I guess also am the cause why you had issues in your personal life,

    lol unbelievable. bro, I was not born yesterday, I may be old enough to be your father, so do not insult my intellect
    and dont blame others for your personal issues and fallbacks.or whatever excuses you come up with.

    just confront them and move on.
    we dont care about your personal life.

    blah, blah, blah, unbelievable.

    anyways good luck with you product, you will need it.

    glad you all still kicking and ready to move forward.that is what matters in a man life but just have the courage to act like it and dont blame others for your faults..

    cheers
     
  20. jpthek9

    jpthek9

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    Comon, that wasn't called for. Let's just drop this and move on. Everyone was crying a little from the few weeks of inactivity - now they're back and ready to keep pushing!
     
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  21. GraphXCreations

    GraphXCreations

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    hell, for all i care, i already moved on, already working on my own networking enhanced plugin based on top of massivenet framework, nothing beats that if your goal is mmo setup networking, already has all necessaries features right out of the box for scalable mmo using unity game server instances. i guess there is nothing better than crafting your own setup if you want something done, open source plugin ready to be enhanced to fit your setup. cant beat that

    Good luck to forge and all waiting for it.

    GraphX signing out from this thread for good.
    cheers
     
  22. Brent_Farris

    Brent_Farris

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    Hello! Much needed break is the closest thing I can think of. We have been very busy working with our contracts to get everything off of the ground professionally. Forge is a massive scale project that we love making however in the professional world it is known as a "risk". That is because there are plenty of other proven solutions and ways of income that are immediate. We are a 3 year old corporation based in California "Bearded Man Studios, Inc.". We pay all of the corporation taxes and report all of our gains and losses. So there are many things that we do have to focus on professionally that must be voted and take priority over the projects that we love.

    As a growing indie corporation it is important for us to show growth, balance, and keep our partners and contracts happy. If we do not do this then we will lose everything that we have built up. That being said Brett and I have been working very hard to find the perfect balance in how we can get Forge in a state where we can release it with some very powerful features as well as keep our partners happy with the time that we focus on other projects. We have actually been working out the kinks with the current TCP setup and have started work on integrating a fast new distributed system for all of your player data, stats, etc. We will be releasing an update to TCP very soon and we will be finishing up our integration/testing with the cloud services very soon. We will be continuing our tutorials on all aspects of the system and will be pushing to market as fast as we can with little overhead so that we can validate our work on Forge with our partners :)

    We love all of you guys for sticking with us and working with us with bug reports, feature requests and everything else. We love the indie community, we love Unity, we love what we do, we love Forge, and I will be doing everything that I can to push Forge to market, get it feature complete and keep my studio happy and running :). Thank you all for your concern, we understand it very well.


    As for the Database issue that we are having with the site. I am not sure that I like the CMS that we are currently using. It causes this database error like every 2 days now. I will be creating a cron job so that the server will restart every day at midnight.
     
  23. Brent_Farris

    Brent_Farris

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    Sad to see you go, I do hope that all of your ventures are fun and profitable :). Please keep me informed about how your project goes, I would love to check it out once it is done! :D
     
  24. Brent_Farris

    Brent_Farris

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    We actually have learned a lot and may have come up with a pretty good solution to our main worry about distributive backend services while we were out as well :D. We are testing a solution now that will act as our middle ground and is extremely powerful and distributed across the word (plus it is virtually FREE to use)! More on this once we get passed this initial integration.
     
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  25. Brent_Farris

    Brent_Farris

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    I am often known as the nice guy however, I will take a moment to say that this kind of needless verbal exchange is very childish. If you are as old as you say you are, then please act your age. We are doing this project out of the love for it. We love the great feedback and all of the support that we have received from the beta testers, including your feedback. Now I know that you love Forge so much that it causes you to become a bit angry and in need of the glorious updates such as before and I can admit, that is a good reason to become upset, Forge is a very fun, exciting and promising project. :)

    I am sorry if we have offended you, but it is not fair to us for anyone to say things at this level of immaturity. If you have a dispute, be kind and mature enough to communicate these issues to us through a private message where we can work out any differences or harm that we may have caused you personally. Blasting hateful things on an open thread is not the way to go about getting your "message" (bad time for a pun XD) across. However, I will say that if we actively ignore any messages you send to us personally, then an open forum is possible a place to post your distress.

    I do want to end this by thanking you for being a part of the beta for so long. I truly am sorry to see you go, hopefully your differences with Bearded Man can be worked out in a future date :). We will be adding in the features you have requested still, they are great feature requests, so if you ever find yourself browsing the forums or the Asset Store and come across Forge, then we would be delighted to have you as a part of the team again! :D

    - Brent
     
  26. TeachableNoob

    TeachableNoob

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    Wow this thread is a harsh read, im completely happy that we have options like forge to try out instead of being stuck with ulink and photon, which documentation and support are lacking on big time for both..also pricing goes through the roof.

    Im hoping forge turns out to be a rock solid indie networking engine with indie pricing...I don't want to have to pay an arm and a leg as my CC's climb, I want a pay once, get everything type solution, keep it under 100bucks, don't mess with it after you've got it perfect and im one very happy developer.

    Im very hopeful for this engine.
     
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  27. Brent_Farris

    Brent_Farris

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    Hey thanks for the read, interest, and reply! :) We are definitely indie friendly, we know the other ones are not so much. We have been re-working some of our architecture but are getting ramped up again. We will be definitely doing as much documentation as possible :). We can't wait to see what people make with the system! :D
     
  28. mmankt

    mmankt

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    I am developing a 2d online shooter with unity ( reference vid from offline flash version:
    ) and I am interested in this solution. As you can see the game has simulated bullets, no hitscan , and some of the physics bodies (explosives and those which act as cover) will be also synced. I got a pretty nice grip on how to manage all this and forge with it's on server unity instance looks like a perfect match. at first i wanted to use photon cloud but jptek9's posts showed that their standard cloud solution is actually not that good of a choice. So from what i understand i'd develop all the server/client code in a single unity project, and then a special exe with no rendering would run on a dedicated server with my own host?
     
    Last edited: Apr 29, 2015
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  29. jpthek9

    jpthek9

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    I love playing 2d platform shooters and that game looks like a very cool one. I'm not sure where the development is at the moment with Forge, but right now you can do several things with Forge for your servers which are all authoritative:

    1. As you suggested, run a headless Unity instance. On linux, this can be done easily by building a headless Linux server. On Windows, you can use command line arguments to run without user experience: http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/CommandLineArguments.html. Run the instance in batchmode then start one up for every room instance you need. This method is the simplest to implement.
    2. Let players host Forge's Unity-embedded servers. This, of course, comes at the cost of potential cheaters. You'll also have to code some unique networking logic since players can be both client and server.
    3. Use a Forge Bare Metal server, which, as the name suggests, is the bare version of Forge's server abstracted away from Unity. You run it as a standalone executable and can write plugins for it like DarkRift. Unfortunately, you'll have to code all your game logic in a plugin because all it does out-of-the-box is send data.
     
  30. mmankt

    mmankt

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    Thx man, you can play it with bots for free:)

    Thx for all the tips also, I've read your thread about different networking solutions, i see that you use darkrift but i'll decide most likely choose forge. (also looking into bolt, both seem pretty similar and i could host my own master server ). hosting my own servers is kinda scary and eventually i'd like to let the players host their own dedicated servers too and leave the option to also host the game by the player himself.
     
  31. Brent_Farris

    Brent_Farris

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    Hi there, thanks for the interest! :D Are you currently a part of the beta group so that you can be testing out the system in its current state?

    @jpthek9 - Thanks for answering @mmankt's questions :D
     
  32. mmankt

    mmankt

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    Hey! Not yet, will apply soon :) I need to get my stuff going in unity before i can start experimenting with networking. I'm new to unity and still getting my head around my engine's design inside unity. As my game will take over a year to develop forge will hopefully et better and better along the way.
     
    Last edited: May 1, 2015
  33. TeachableNoob

    TeachableNoob

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    hey can anyone here help me with setting up a basic scene in forge ?

    i was trying to follow the getting started tutorial but things dont seem to be working, im just wanting to get started with something simple then learn how to build an authoritative server.
     
  34. Brent_Farris

    Brent_Farris

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    Hi there! The getting started tutorial should be working fine, is there anything that you see is off? Are you getting any errors when you follow along?

    Sorry for the late reply, it was quite a long weekend!
     
  35. Brent_Farris

    Brent_Farris

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    Ah, :) No problem. I can't wait to see how your game will develop. We are doing our best to perfect Forge and we continuously are working to make it better. We are taking a lot of learnings from our contracts and other work and are putting them into the system :D
     
  36. TeachableNoob

    TeachableNoob

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    its ok I dropped a message on the forge developer forum with the errors im getting.

    Basicly I tried to setup your current getting started sample where you move the cube on the server and it moves on the client..however its not exactly working.

    below is the error, and when i fix it, im no longer working in the same demo project

    Level 'ForgeWriteRaw' (-1) couldn't be loaded because it has not been added to the build settings.

    now to fix this i go back into my build settings and drag the assets/beardedman studios inc/examples/write raw/scenes/forgewriteraw

    after adding this, it kinda messes up the project..its not the same simple example of moving the cube anymore.
     
  37. Brent_Farris

    Brent_Farris

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    Ah, we need to update our tutorials indeed. Try this as your Start Game settings. Once you have done this, then add the "ForgeHelloCube" scene to your build settings.

    upload_2015-5-5_13-18-43.png

    Please let me know if this works for you :)
     
  38. Brent_Farris

    Brent_Farris

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    Hello everyone. I would like to let you all know that TCP has been repaired and we should be pushing out a build tonight for it :)

    I would also like to mention that we are going to be starting up a new wave of tutorials and documentation.

    Note: Being that our studio is an active software and game studio, we will be moving all Forge related content from http://www.beardedmanstudios.com/ to the http://developers.forgearcade.com/ domain. We will be renewing our website https://www.beardedmangames.com/ on our main domain http://www.beardedmanstudios.com/. If you go to the main website and notice that it is no longer devoted to Forge, please navigate to http://developers.forgearcade.com/. We will be moving all content, tutorials and everything else related to Forge to this website. Do not fear, we will also have a pretty big homepage link to the Forge website on our main website when we make the transition.

    Thank you all for sticking around through the good times and the bad! We can't wait to build Forge into a fantastic product that everyone can benefit from :)
     
    Last edited: May 5, 2015
  39. Brent_Farris

    Brent_Farris

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    Hey guys, its passed 2am here and I've been merging and building the source. I think I'm going to have to hold off the latest build until tomorrow night. Sorry about the delay but I really need to test these merges. :D I think I'll call tomorrow nights build Version 15!
     
  40. Zaddo67

    Zaddo67

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    @farrisarts nice to see you burning the midnight oil again :D
     
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  41. TeachableNoob

    TeachableNoob

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    Ok I've made the changes, and now I have a difference scene opening, however I can't move the cube around, this just tells me to press C and B.

    I thought this would allow me to move the cube around...i just want to spawn 1 cube per client and beable to move it around.
     
  42. Brent_Farris

    Brent_Farris

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    Hmmm, this scene should allow you to move the cubes with the arrow keys. Does the cube in the prefabs folder for that particular example have the "ForgeExample_Move" script on it?
     
  43. TeachableNoob

    TeachableNoob

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    OMG...i am so sorry..yes it works with the arrows....sorry I was expecting it to use wsad my bad.

    hehe seriously who uses arrow keys these days ? :)
    now i shall attempt to gut all the stuff outta this scene i dont need like server time and all that text.
     
  44. Brent_Farris

    Brent_Farris

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    Haha, no problem that would actually be our fault for not displaying the keys on the screen like the other ones. >.>;

    Awesome! Let me know if you need any further help :)
     
  45. TeachableNoob

    TeachableNoob

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    Here is a screenshot of this lovely code in action :) and its dirt simple to edit so far. With working WSAD btw..haha

    working network example.JPG
    now i have one question...how do i configure the client to spawn more then one copy of itself for load testing? can i tell the compiled client to open say 20 copies of itself without having to manually click it each time?

    somewhere you've hidden where your naming those cubes :)...mine all say player right now..which is kind of not helpful...need to edit it so they say player 1, 2,3 or a,b,c to distinguish from each other..but im still digging threw this...im beyond happy to have something actually working today.
     
  46. Brent_Farris

    Brent_Farris

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    XD Awesome!!

    Yes, you can actually do this pretty easily. Inside of that particular scene (ForgeHelloCube) just click on the "Networking Manager" object and you will see that it has a script "ForgeExample_MakePlayer" attached to it. Open that script up and inside the "Start" method you will see that it calls the "Networking.Instantiate" method. All you will need to do is put that guy in a for loop :)

    All of the cubes will spawn in the same location, so if you want to fix that, just use the overloaded Networking.Instantiate method that takes in a Vector3 position :)
     
  47. TeachableNoob

    TeachableNoob

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    yes i was thinking of writing a random movement script so all the cubes will randomly move separate directions to simulate user load on the server.

    I've got to say this was dirt simple to get going with a bit of help....i've been messing around with Photon for a year and the learning curve is gigantic without helpful people.
     
  48. TeachableNoob

    TeachableNoob

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    here we go...insanely crazy moving boxes at random

    random moving boxes.JPG

    I added an else statement in after the arrowkey/wsad code and dropped this in, seems to work ok.
    Im still searching for where to change the player name info though.

    Code (csharp):
    1.  
    2. float x;
    3. float y;
    4. float z;
    5. Vector3 pos;
    6.  
    7. {
    8. x =Random.Range(-25,26);
    9. y =5;
    10. z =Random.Range(-25,26);
    11. pos =newVector3(x, y, z);
    12. transform.position = pos;
    13. }
    14.  
     
  49. Brent_Farris

    Brent_Farris

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    Awesome!! :) We are trying our best to make the system super easy to use and super easy to extend as well! :D

    :000 Oh cool! We actually had some similar tests to test our loads and bandwidth usage. We never released them as a sample scene though, maybe we can add a load scene in so that developers can check out the stats too :).

    In the "ForgeExample_Move" code check out the "AssignName" and the "NetworkingManager.Instance.SetName" methods. Note that these are methods to set a particular clients name (visual identity) rather than the name for each object.
     
  50. TeachableNoob

    TeachableNoob

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    yes im apparently building up my own testing stuff for your library I was gonna put it all into some video tutorials and link em off your dev site and mine, kind of a learn as you go series, since im making progress with this, I figure others may as well also.

    How does forge auto assign ID's to all its connections..or do u do a different method of keeping track of everyone...im thinking for reasons such as disconnecting a select client in game.