Third Party Photon free version

Hello, i have a question about the photon server.
The free version has 100 concurrent users per app/server right?
Does this means on the masterserver 100 users so that only 100 users can play multiplayer?
Or does this mean 100 users in a server like normal 8 vs 8 fps is 16 users?

 

Both actually..since in Photons case your photon server acts kind of like a masterserver.

However the second fits bets: The license allows for 100 active connections with your game server.

 

As far as I know it's 100 users TOTAL which is one of the reasons I am not using Photon anymore. I am creating my own server using Lidgren which is completely free for any number of players. That way I don't have to worry about licensing and amount of CCUs that I have in any giving month. Theres plenty of other expenses that goes into a multiplayer game with out worrying about networking licenses as well.

There is a down side however in that theres more Server side work that needs to be done because with Lidgren your only giving what you NEED for the networking.

 

But is there any program like photon that works for unlimited players? And are there any tutorials for lidgren combined with unity?

EDIT: The game i am trying to make is my first project. ( i have test and exercise projects also so i know the basics) This game is like warsow or minecraft. People can play singleplayer or in a server list choose server and theres server software for people to set up their own server. I like my server place for 1 server 8 vs 8 fps.

Thanks in advance

 

Photon you would NOT be able to allow users to host their own server. You would have to do it on a Dedicated Server (I could be wrong about that but I am pretty sure that is what I have read on their forum). Lidgren is extremely easy to get working with Unity.

I will throw together an example and post the script here in about half an hour.

 

Thanks for your help,
Is it possible to make in the main menu the option "create server" and then it comes in the serverlist.
And the serverlist is hosted by the masterserver.
Is that possible?

And again thanks that you want to write a little example of lidgren

 

Ok here is a very basic Example. It's a MonoBehaviour so just add it to any game object you want.

You will need to write a Console server to get it to work. If you need an example of a server as well let me know and I can write an example up for you.

For extending this some suggestions I would make is to move the ServerMessage enum over to it's own dll project that can be accessed from both the server and the Unity3D client. My Network messages I have in a dll along with utility classes needed for converting a structure into a byte Array and other things.

 

Currently, the standard license terms for Photon don't allow you to distribute the server and have any of your players host a game. True.
But: We already talked to some people who would like to do exactly that and we're open to the idea. You should mail us or you could post in our forum about this topic, so we can think about it.

If you would use Photon as central server, you would not need the "Master" functionality. A lot of games could run on a single server machine and we've got rooms for the gameplay and room listing so your players can choose which game to join.

The free license for Photon allows you to have 100 concurrent users for a game on a single machine. To have 100 players online at a certain time, often means you have 10000 players who are monthly active. Few people play 24 hours a day.

If you have more players but don't make much money out of your game, you are entitled for an indie license. If you don't make any money yet but the game is cool, we might support you with a license until you make money (this is no promise, but you never know).
All licenses are one-time-fees.

You get updates and quite a bit of support. You get the logic to create rooms on the fly, list them in lobbies and send events around to others in that room. This can be quite powerful when using the client alone - without ever touching the application source code. If you want to extend the server, you've got several projects to use as base and you won't start having a bare message without anything else. Handling loads of clients and lots of game rooms in a scalable, multi-threaded manner is what Photon does for you.

 

I would greatly appreciate that

 

Here is the Example Server and an updated Unity Script. Make sure to read the Readme included in the rar! Any questions or comments feel free to send me a PM!