Question Recommendation for Networking Library

Hi,

I have an application that gets installed in 2 devices. The application contains 3 scenes + few buttons in both scenes. I want a multiplayer connection (LAN) with them such that if user 1 clicks on a button, the button should also be triggered on user 2's device and vice versa. I know that such behavior can be obtained through RPCs. I am not sure which library to use.

So far I have tried Mirror & Unity's MLAPI, both require player prefabs to be spawned and also does additive scene loading. I do not want this. Earlier I used to use Forge Networking and it was quite simple to send across RPC calls but then it is now deprecated/no update for latest Unity.

Such behavior is obtained through Photon PUN but that requires internet, so is there any such library that allows me to get this behavior in a LAN (no internet) ?

 

Do not use the imposed MLAPI, Mirror, Photon
Try Enet or LiteNetLib, they are very simple

https://github.com/nxrighthere/ENet-CSharp
https://github.com/RevenantX/LiteNetLib

 

You can disable the spawning of player prefabs and the entire scene management in the NetworkManager of MLAPI. They are optional features.

 

Thank you for your reply. Do the mentioned libraries have RPCs in them?

 

How do I do this? I do not see any option. Also if I change the scene, the network breaks.

 

There's some info here on controlling player spawning https://forum.unity.com/threads/spawn-player-prefab-on-server-only.1231716/

To disable scene management untick Enable Scene Management on the NetworkManager in the editor. With it disabled clients can switch scenes independently of the server, but you'll need to take responsibility for the spawning and despawning of network objects for each client scene.

 

To understand you correctly, the client and host from the starting scene can still be active when switching scene?

 

The client/host players? For the client the server would have to despawn it when the client notifies the server it's making a scene switch. Once the scene is loaded the client can then notify the server to spawn it again. To get around this I would imagine you could use DontDestroyOnLoad().

I'm not sure how having a host would work with scene management disabled, at least the way I use it allows separation between client and server and a host would conflict with that.

 

I am able to send RPC calls within the same scene. But when I load a different scene and use to pass RPC calls, it does not work anymore. I even spawn the network object in the server part of the new scene. On the client side, the network object is already spawned.

I tried disabling "Enable Scene Management" in Network Manager but that just disables all network objects. What am I doing wrong? Is there a simple video explanation of passing RPC calls in a new scene?

Code (CSharp):

1. using System.Collections;
2. using System.Collections.Generic;
3. using Unity.Netcode;
4. using UnityEngine;
5. using UnityEngine.UI;
6. using UnityEngine.SceneManagement;
7.  
8. public class RPCCube : NetworkBehaviour {
9.     public GameObject cube;
10.  
11.     void Update () {
12.         if (Input.GetKeyDown (KeyCode.P)) {
13.             SceneClientRpc (Time.frameCount, "hello, world"); // Server -> Client
14.         }
15.  
16.         if (Input.GetKeyDown (KeyCode.R)) {
17.             DeactiveClientRpc (Time.frameCount, "hello, world"); // Server -> Client
18.         }
19.  
20.     }
21.  
22.     void OnGUI () {
23.         GUILayout.BeginArea (new Rect (10, 10, 300, 300));
24.         if (!NetworkManager.Singleton.IsClient && !NetworkManager.Singleton.IsServer) {
25.             StartButtons ();
26.         } else {
27.             StatusLabels ();
28.         }
29.  
30.         GUILayout.EndArea ();
31.     }
32.  
33.     static void StartButtons () {
34.         if (GUILayout.Button ("Host")) NetworkManager.Singleton.StartHost ();
35.         if (GUILayout.Button ("Client")) NetworkManager.Singleton.StartClient ();
36.         if (GUILayout.Button ("Server")) NetworkManager.Singleton.StartServer ();
37.     }
38.  
39.     static void StatusLabels () {
40.         var mode = NetworkManager.Singleton.IsHost ?
41.             "Host" : NetworkManager.Singleton.IsServer ? "Server" : "Client";
42.  
43.         GUILayout.Label ("Transport: " +
44.             NetworkManager.Singleton.NetworkConfig.NetworkTransport.GetType ().Name);
45.         GUILayout.Label ("Mode: " + mode);
46.     }
47.    
48.     [ClientRpc]
49.     void SceneClientRpc (int somenumber, string sometext) {
50.         SceneManager.LoadScene("Load");
51.     }
52.  
53.      [ClientRpc]
54.     void DeactiveClientRpc (int somenumber, string sometext) {
55.         cube.SetActive (false);
56.     }
57.  
58. }

 

It's hard to say what's going on, but check the NetworkObjectId of the object making the RPC call to make sure they match on client and server.

I wouldn't turn off scene management as there's a lot you have to handle that you can take for granted when it's enabled. If you must have it disabled get things working step by step.

For RPC examples take a look at some of the Netcode video's on Youtube.

 

You should check out Fish-Networking. It does all of that and doesn't require a player prefab. It's developed by a career game designer. Also has lan discovery and offline mode that let's your game run multiplayer code but offline.

Links to everything here including asset store page
https://fish-networking.gitbook.io/docs/

 

The best so far out there!