Official Welcome to the Netcode for GameObjects sub-forum!

Welcome to the new Netcode for GameObjects (formerly known as MLAPI) sub-forum. You can use this sub-forum to ask for help, share feedback, and have discussions about Unity's newest netcode solution.

Please note that Netcode for GameObjects is currently available as an experimental package.

What does experimental mean?
We are still working on future-facing functionality which means that some features are currently a work in progress and you may experience issues. Please note that experimental packages are not meant for use in production scenarios – instead, you could use experimental packages to preview and test-drive what we are working on as an early look.

There are a few things to be aware of when using this Experimental Unity package:

• Expect breaking API changes - using this early has risks!
• Expect no SLA on the timeline to ship patches/fixes to releases, as we are still establishing our test and release cadence.
• Expect this will be moving towards a fuller Release (aka we don't plan to throw this away)
• Expect us to answer questions of early adopters on Discord and Forums, and we welcome all feedback and issues logged!

Resources
To learn more about Netcode, take a look at our Getting Started guide. Not only is Netcode a Unity Package, but it's also distributed under the MIT License. We're developing it completely in the open, on our GitHub, where you can provide feedback, submit issues, pull-requests, and request for documentation.

If you are interested to know about what's planned for the future check out our roadmap.

Please feel free to participate in real-time chat inside Netcode’s Discord! In the Discord, you'll find the Multiplayer Solution Architect team - engagement engineers helping to support you in building multiplayer games.

Netcode's documentation can be found on our new documentation site. Our documentation is open source and contributions are welcome. Here is the documentation repository.

Learn more on our Multiplayer Networking landing page and checkout our Boss Room sample to actively learn with the our new, small-scale co-op sample game project.

Releases of Netcode will be announced on the Release Announcements thread.

Requirements

• The experimental package currently is being developed for users of Unity 2021.1 and beyond.
• Depending on which transport library you pair Netcode with, it will change which platforms you can expect Netcode to work with.
• We plan to backport future releases to work with Unity 2020.3 LTS. We'll have more to share once we are closer to being production ready later this year.

Getting started
Since this is an experimental package, it is not available in the Unity Package Manager yet. Instead, you have to manually add it from GitHub. To learn how to install Netcode into your project follow the installation guide.

What's next
The team is hard at work enhancing Netcode. Original users of MLAPI are able to use the legacy edition from before Unity's acquisition, but in order to use Unity's version, the new API found in the experimental release must be used. Our new netcode foundation offers new ways to create networked, multiplayer games inside a client-server networking model, with emphasis on performance, accessibility, and integration with proven Monobehaviour development patterns.

Netcode's first release focuses on providing streamlined solutions for the creation of client-hosted, co-operative type games. These games that are more tolerant to latency (~200ms), not as strict on cheating, and ones that trend towards moderate-speed interaction gameplay. That's not to say developers can't choose to make other kinds of games using Netcode. Those who want to before our team shifts focus towards other game types can directly access and modify the Netcode code base since it's open-source and distributed under the MIT license.

In the near future, Unity will expand our archetype focus to include dedicated game server scenarios, with emphasis on lower-latency, faster twitch-style gameplay. Server-authority and dedicated-game servers are proven more successful in the creation of competitive and larger-scale games. Expect solutions and tools from Unity which focus on client-side prediction and server consolidation, alongside sophisticated snapshot and area of interest (network relevancy) systems. You can find out more of what we are working on on our roadmap. Please vote on features which are most critical for your needs to influence our prioritization.

Feedback
In terms of feedback, we're especially looking for:

• Use cases that are important to you and your projects
  
• Workflows that are unclear or missing
• Features you'd like to see in future releases
• Questions or feedback on our documentation and educational content
• Reflections on what has been challenging for you in the past when it comes to development of multiplayer titles inside of Unity

Please share your feedback as new posts in this sub-forum.

For questions on other multiplayer technologies being created outside of Unity, feel free to continue to post in the main Multiplayer sub-forum.

For questions or feedback on the new Unity Transport Package, please go to this new sub-forum.

How to report bugs with Netcode for GameObjects
Ideally we'd like any bugs reported through the built in bug reporter tool, as that will automatically provide us with some relevant context. For instructions on how to file bugs through the Unity editor, please go here.

You can also submit a bug using GitHub by way of the Issues section here.

Once you have submitted a bug report through the bug reporter or GitHub Issues section of our repository, please feel free to start a new post on it here in this sub-forum.


Thank you for your interest, we're looking forward to your feedback!