Unity Multiplayer Unity 2021.2: Dedicated Server target and stripping optimizations now live! Please share feedback!

I submitted a similar issue (case 1414630) back in March regarding font data always being included. The case is still "Open".

I'm hoping the Unity teams are taking the hint to try and allow non-essential media (fonts, textures, images, audio, models, shaders, materials, etc) to be stripped from server builds.

In the meantime, my solution to reduce server build sizes is to:

1. Copy every scene, renaming each scene with "_Server" on the end.
   
   
2. Traverse over every GameObject and remove any offending Components that contain media data (Text, Image, AudioSource, SpriteRenderer, RawImage, SpriteMask, ParticleSystem, etc).
   
   
3. Save the scenes, and retain their index order when building – and update naming references where needed.
   
   
4. Move font files out of the project before building, then move them back after. (the meta files seem to keep font data intact luckily!)
   

Thus, Unity does not see any references to the media files when the scenes are built, so a lot of assets are not included, thus reducing size and memory. Reduces my server build sizes by about 50% now.

But yes, a build option to do all this automatically would be nice...

 

Is there a way to mark custom assets as "exclude from dedicated server build"?
An example: we use texture2darrays, which are just textures, read/write disabled on all of them.
We use this awesome import pipeline to handle this: https://github.com/pschraut/UnityTexture2DArrayImportPipeline

Unfortunately, they still show up in our server builds.

Additionally, we noticed lightprobes and occlusion culling data are also still present in the server builds.

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2. Textures               717.2 mb  88.9%
3. ...
4. Used Assets and files from the Resources folder, sorted by uncompressed size:
5. 298.7 mb     13.1% Assets/Scenes/Maps/Map_Factory/AtlasArray-Atlassed_atlassed.texture2darray
6. 90.7 mb     4.0% Assets/Scenes/Setup/Lobby/AtlasArray-Atlas_atlassed.texture2darray
7. 90.7 mb     4.0% Assets/Scenes/Development/Sandbox_Zoo/AtlasArray-Atlas_atlased.texture2darray
8. 58.7 mb     2.6% Assets/Materials/AtlasArrays/AtlasArray-Map_Hideout.texture2darray
9. 53.3 mb     2.3% Assets/Materials/AtlasArrays/AtlasArray-Map_Skyscraper.texture2darray
10. 53.3 mb     2.3% Assets/Materials/AtlasArrays/AtlasArray-Sandbox_Zoo_2.texture2darray
11. 37.3 mb     1.6% Assets/Materials/AtlasArrays/AtlasArray-Map_Chalet.texture2darray
12. 26.7 mb     1.2% Assets/Scenes/Development/Sandbox/AtlasArray-Static_atlassed.texture2darray
13. 8.5 mb     0.4% Assets/BakeryLightmaps/Sandbox_Zoo_2_371857150_copy.asset
14. 6.9 mb     0.3% Assets/BakeryLightmaps/Map_Chalet_371857150_probes.asset
15.  4.1 mb  0.2% Assets/Scenes/Maps/Map_Skyscraper/FBX/Props_F1.fbx
16.  3.4 mb  0.2% Assets/Scenes/Development/Sandbox_Zoo/FBX/Props.fbx
17.  3.1 mb  0.1% Assets/Scenes/Setup/Lobby/FBX/Underpass.fbx
18.  2.9 mb  0.1% Assets/Scenes/Maps/Map_Skyscraper/OcclusionCullingData.asset
19.  

 

Tried this out recently and it reduced our build sizes quite a lot which is nice.

However the build process still compiles shader variants and does mesh data stripping, which takes the majority of the build time. It would be good if it can skip this.

One issue we're now having however, is that our dedicated servers aren't shutting down correctly. (We're using PlayFab hosting) Application.Quit is getting called correctly and no exceptions are being thrown, but the VM doesn't seem to recognize the application has terminated.

Is there something new we should be doing on dedicated server builds when quitting, so that the OS knows the application has terminated?

 

I'm connecting to the question, in the game you need to have this read / write option enabled, but on the server this function is redundant

 

Mac supports not working, says not installed when it is.

 

Got a quick question:
Can't we keep the BuildOptions.EnableHeadlessMode?
So people can choose between the new and the old way ?

I don't care if my build has textures and sounds i don't need, the old way works well, so i prefer to stick with it.

 

Using 2021.3.3. Profiling a dedicated server spams the output with:

"Stopping profiler. Profiler is not able to flush data to a file or socket and exceeded maximum allowed memory for buffering. Please use Profiler.maxUsedMemory API or -profiler-maxusedmemory command line parameter to increase maximum allowed memory usage. Using 134234112 bytes while Profiler.maxUsedMemory is 134217728 bytes."

 

Any news?


I can't even start the server on Ubuntu:

Code (CSharp):

1. Could not load symbol mono_unity_class_has_failure : (null)
2. mono: function mono_unity_class_has_failure not found
3. Could not load symbol mono_thread_has_sufficient_execution_stack : (null)
4. mono: function mono_thread_has_sufficient_execution_stack not found
5. Could not load symbol mono_unity_field_from_token_checked : (null)
6. mono: function mono_unity_field_from_token_checked not found
7. Could not load symbol mono_method_signature_checked_slow : (null)
8. mono: function mono_method_signature_checked_slow not found
9. Could not load symbol mono_unity_gc_set_mode : (null)
10. mono: function mono_unity_gc_set_mode not found
11. Could not load symbol mono_unity_custom_attrs_construct : (null)
12. mono: function mono_unity_custom_attrs_construct not found
13. mono: function lookup failed
14. Failed to load mono

Editor: 2021.3.3f1
Project

 

Could the dedicated server build sit in an AWS or Azure container and be access as a headless render engine?

 

How do you programmatically check if the application is a dedicated server build?

 

You can use #if UNITY_SERVER

 

Hey Christian, are we sure that's the same?

When executing locally, not only do I not get a console window/output from it (as I would from the proper 'old' headless) to confirm it's internals, but it seems to be consuming much more resources to boot. On top of that it doesn't even seem to be running the server invisibly in the background, as I am able to make no connection to it. I'm also using Mirror, if that's relevant.

How come this change didn't come with the option to build it as the 'old' headless, that would be phased out gradually? It's a massive change to just enforce like that...

 

Hey Christian, thanks for the reply!

Out of curiosity, does running it with -batchmode -nographics set the UNITY_SERVER env. variable to true? Because that could be a thing, and I can't see anything related to it mentioned in the player command line args document you linked.

As for the Mirror issue, it's 'working', as in a connection is established and and player can actually connect, but for some actions sent from Client to Server, which were a-okay with a headless build, Mirror gets hit with 'unknown message sent' and disconnects the client for security reasons. Why that network message is now suddenly incomprehensible is anyone's guess. I expect work needs to be done on both ends, but the new 'Dedicated Server' is a bit of a black box so debugging that is a bit more of a challenge.

 

@cristianm_unity @andrews_unity Dedicated linux server build not working. I build it with Unity 2021.3.4f1. Get the following error when launching:

Spoiler

"memorysetup-cache-allocator-block-size=4194304" "memorysetup-typetree-allocator-block-size=2097152" "memorysetup-profiler-bucket-allocator-granularity=16" "memorysetup-profiler-bucket-allocator-bucket-count=8" "memorysetup-profiler-bucket-allocator-block-size=4194304" "memorysetup-profiler-bucket-allocator-block-count=1" "memorysetup-profiler-allocator-block-size=16777216" "memorysetup-profiler-editor-allocator-block-size=1048576" "memorysetup-temp-allocator-size-main=4194304" "memorysetup-job-temp-allocator-block-size=2097152" "memorysetup-job-temp-allocator-block-size-background=1048576" "memorysetup-job-temp-allocator-reduction-small-platforms=262144" "memorysetup-temp-allocator-size-background-worker=32768" "memorysetup-temp-allocator-size-job-worker=262144" "memorysetup-temp-allocator-size-preload-manager=262144" "memorysetup-temp-allocator-size-nav-mesh-worker=65536" "memorysetup-temp-allocator-size-audio-worker=65536" "memorysetup-temp-allocator-size-cloud-worker=32768" "memorysetup-temp-allocator-size-gfx=262144" error: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not set in the environment.

 

Right. Well, yes, that's a problem. As that was something that was also taken care of in the old 'Server Build'. As you can see here, under UNITY_SERVER. And I'm fairly sure that making checks for #if UNITY_SERVER / UNITY_CLIENT is pretty common pattern for multiplayer games, and it certainly is for mine.

If #UNITY_SERVER is reserved for the new shiny stuff, is it really out of the question to get back our magic checkbox but with the caveat that it now sets #UNITY_LEGACY_SERVER (or something) to true instead?

Nevertheless - Thanks for the help! You answered all the questions I had.

Unfortunately for me, the answer is that I'll be riding out 2020LTS as long as possible, because Dedicated Server simply doesn't work for me yet (though I don't seem to be alone in this), and the headless option is... not quite as preserved as I would've hoped, it seems. Because having to make a custom build pipeline for something that used to work out of the box and manually re-defining a pre-existing variable, feels a bit icky.

Though to be fair, I seem quite late to the party, what with 2021 being in LTS already.

 

FYI dedicated server builds perform significantly worse than regular builds on apple silicon macs.


Lots of people aim to use Unity for their game servers.
Would be nice if there could be some automated performance tests before release.
It's hard enough to trust the black box as is

 

Just let u know my project linux server build runtime is no longer working properly at Unity 2021.3.x at both non-dedicated and dedicated linux server platform. When run the linux server runtime it just used up CPU and memory and then crash. No issue at Unity 2020.3.x.

 

Hey it doesn't look like there is a way to change to a dedicated server as a build target in batchmode

Trying to do something like this

"C:\Program Files\Unity\Hub\Editor\2021.2.13f1\Editor\Unity.exe" -quit -batchmode -buildTarget DedicatedServer

Returns

Build target platform name 'DedicatedServer' is not valid.  Supported targets: Android, CloudRendering, EmbeddedLinux, GameCoreScarlett, GameCoreXboxOne, Linux64, Lumin, OSXUniversal, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Switch, WebGL, Win, Win64, WindowsStoreApps, XboxOne, iOS, tvOS

I knew this wouldn't work but was stabbing in the dark.

Is there a plan to add the dedicated server as a build target for batch mode?

 

Yes. CASE IN-7885. From what I discovered, this issue only happens at Unity 2021 version and both non-dedicated server target and dedicated server target for Linux platform runtime. I believe there are some big changes at Unity 2021 that breaks Linux platform.

 

Has anyone been able to solve the "Currently selected scripting backend (Mono) is not installed" problem? We're hitting it as well, reported here.

 

In my case, I noticed the modules were not present in the install directory, even though Unity Hub indicated the modules had successfully installed. Using the download assistant (instead of Unity Hub) correctly installs the modules.

 

I realized that disabling Unity Audio in project settings removes 30 MB from server build memory usage.

Could this be implemented automatically in case of server builds as they don't use audio anyway? Or any way to automate it? There is not any API to disable unity audio.

 

Would love an answer to this too. All my audio files get included currently, would be great to remove these from the build.

@cristianm_unity
I really want to use this to create a highly optimised server build (that's faster to build as it doesn't need to bundle assets, compress files, compile shaders etc). But from the above it looks like this option doesn't quite do all of these yet?

 

Hi everyone! Could you please tell me how to realize logging on Unity Linux Dedicated Server. I build it in Windows and then send to Amazon server and run there. It works, but i can not catch bugs without logs.

 

I think there is something more going on.

When I using

-batchmode -nographics

it seems like the process starts in the background. This causes 2 problems:
- in order to close the server you have to go into task manage and end task.
- to view any logs you have to check the log file

However with the old headless build it would start in its own process with its own console window, and show all the logs in that window.

These may not be issues when running a server on a vps, but they are huge issues when running locally to develop a game.

 

Would also be really great if these changes were mentioned in the upgrade guide https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/UpgradeGuide2021LTS.html

Nothing in there mentions that the old

BuildOptions.EnableHeadlessMode

was removed, forcing people to use the new Dedicated Server

 

Why is BuildPlayerOptions.subtarget of type int and not StandaloneBuildSubtarget? Had to see the posting in this thread that mentions how to build servers from script.

 

Hrm, ok ... and just setting BuildPlayerOptions.subtarget apparently can switch Unity over to Dedicated Server builds - but it looks like this cannot used to revert it to non dedicated server builds. So it looks like the way to do this is (of course, if you can call Unity via batchmode, using -standaloneBuildSubtarget Server or -standaloneBuildSubtarget Player will also work):

Code (CSharp):

1. EditorUserBuildSettings.standaloneBuildSubtarget = boolThatTellsUsWhichOneWeWant
2.                 ? StandaloneBuildSubtarget.Server
3.                 : StandaloneBuildSubtarget.Player;
4.  
5. BuildPlayerOptions buildPlayerOptions = new BuildPlayerOptions();
6. buildPlayerOptions.subtarget = (int)EditorUserBuildSettings.standaloneBuildSubtarget;
7.  

 

I am also seeing an issue with building from code.

buildPlayerOptions.subtarget

does not work correctly, instead I had to set

EditorUserBuildSettings.standaloneBuildSubtarget

before calling build.

It looks like

buildPlayerOptions.subtarget

changes the build target after the build is complete rather than before. This results in the build being a normal player (no headless, no UNITY_SERVER define)

 

Um, nope. That will crash Unity on startup (tried with 2021.3.5).

@cristianm_unity ... am I doing this wrong or is this not properly implemented? I'd think that if -standaloneBuildSubtarget Server lets me switch to Dedicated Server, -standaloneBuildSubtarget Player should let me switch back. But instead, I get:

Unable to find method OpenProject in [UnityEditor.CoreModule.dll]Unity.CodeEditor.CodeEditor
[... and a massive amount more similar messages...]
received signal from system: SIGSEGV
=> crash

Full command line (we also have a few custom parameters that I haven't included):
-batchmode -nographics -executeMethod OutBuildMethod -buildTarget Win64 -standaloneBuildSubtarget Player -projectPath OurProjectPath

 

Hey everyone! What about Unity Cloud Build (UCB)? Does it support building of dedicated server sub-platform? I can not see any mentions of this sub-platform there.

 

Hi! Thank you for your reply.
I have just checked it and it seems to be incorrect.

I have created a build in UCB with headless mode:
Unity version: 2021.3.0f1
Target: standalonelinux64
Headless Builds: Yes



Then I downloaded it and compared with a build created with Unity Editor (same version) target Server
Builds differ a lot.

Then I have created a build from editor script with BuildOptions.EnableHeadlessMode and it is the same as UCB.

So, the conclusion is that now UCB builds with deprecated BuildOptions.EnableHeadlessMode flag and ignores new Server subtarget. And there is no way to use UCB for building Server subtarget now.

 

Thank you very much! Waiting for updates.. )

 

Is there a dedicated workflow to build properly stripped adressables for the dedicated server?
Most of our content is in adressables and generally required to be available but of course we don't need audio files and textures in the server application.
So far it seems we have to write this custom. Thanks

 

Hello,
I'm trying to build a GLTF Viewer that will display 3D Models Generated by unity. This is how it works:
1. The user opens the GLTF viewer on a web page (it will be a simple html tag)
2. The GLTF Viewer will request a 3D model to an API service and will pass some params of the model I want to show
3. The API Service (running on a server) will execute a Unity build (in batchmode) that will generate the GLTF, after the execution the app will be closed
4. Once the GLTF is generated the API service will take the generated file and send it to the viewer

Here is the workflow:



My questions are:
- Is this the right way? I have to handle multiple API requests, is it ok to run multiple unityAppBuilds in batchmode? What if an exe is crashing, do I have to restart the server?
- How can I solve the same problem with Dedicated Server Build? I saw that I can run only one exe, should I handle the API requests in the Unity Build?

I'm a noob in server-side applications, If someone could point me in the right direction it would be amazing!

Thanks!

 

Are there any considerations about this issue?
Seems a little bit concerning when working on multiplayer projects.