Serialize array of class for networking

Hey guys, I'm trying to write an efficient way of sending the player position of everyone on the server to a certain player, now I've accomplished that decently so far by using this.

Code (CSharp):

1.     public void massPack( List<uPacket.uPositionObject> data )
2.     {
3.         byte[] bytes = new byte[1500];
4.         BinaryFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter ();
5.         using( MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream () )
6.         {
7.             formatter.Serialize ( ms, data.ToArray () );
8.             bytes = ms.ToArray ();
9.         }
10.         Debug.Log ( bytes.Length );
11.     }

This allows me to send around 40 players worth of data in 1 packet, however if I have more than 40 players it'll go over the maximum of 1500 bytes and it wont send properly, so I was thinking of turning it into a foreach loop and after it writes it to the stream it'll check if its >= 1400 bytes length, and if it is then it'll send it and clear the stream before continuing the rest of the packet and then when it's done it'll send that bit too.

Now I was wondering if that's the most efficient way of sending large amount of data to one client or if there's a better way, and any code provided with explanation would be appreciated!

Cheers

 

I attempted something like this

Code (CSharp):

1.         byte[] bytes = new byte[1500];
2.         BinaryFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter ();
3.         using( MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream () )
4.         {
5.             foreach( uPacket.uPositionObject item in data )
6.             {
7.                 formatter.Serialize ( ms, item );
8.                 bytes = ms.ToArray ();
9.             }
10.         }
11.         Debug.Log ( bytes.Length );

This would allow me to manipulate the stream whilst its going however the results were bad,
When I ran the first code it serialized 40 positions and ended up being a total of 1416 bytes
When I ran the second code it serialized 40 positions and ended up being a total of 7920 bytes

clearly I did something wrong

 

poke, still looking for help

 

Rather than trying to guess that 40 positions will fit, I'd serialize all the positions then send the data in 1400~ byte fragments by chopping up the resulting byte array.

 

Thanks for the reply, but how would I go about doing that?
I can't seem to figure out how to make a byte array til a certain amount of bytes length worth

 

I'd make 1 big byte array, and then from that create a series of smaller byte arrays based on the message size you're needing. Then I'd test how that performs.

 

So the only problem I'm having with that is.. how would the client combine those fragmented byte arrays and even know when a byte[] is being send fragmented?
I wish there were more document
I appreciate the help!

edit: actually if i were to just use a massive array and used QOS.ReliableFragmented would it automatically fragment? I'm gunna give that a go.

 

You could send the length or number of packets in the first few bytes, like a 'size header'.

 

Ah yeah that would work too! cheers

 

My other thought was that you could try to ensure that you never pass a fragmented single piece of position information. If that wasn't tough to do, then the receiver could process the packages and not care if more was coming or not, because they'd be able to process 1 or more byte arrays of the same type..

Anyways, I think the size at the start is / can be often helpful for certain things of dynamic size in general.
Cheers.

 

Wonder if it would be smart to besides adding the header int to also add a packet id to make sure the same packet is combined anyhow..

Thanks a lot Methos and Joe-Censored!

 

Oh, maybe.. I suppose that depends on your "channel". That didn't occur to me at first, I was thinking of TCP. heh. If you don't have a reliable sequenced channel, then that would probably be a good idea.