Unity Multiplayer What are the pros and cons of available network solutions/assets

Hey @Iron-Warrior I absolutely agree, game design matters here, Your test showing 96 ms delay shows that.
About the delay, last point from me is that 96 is an ideal case, but if you have cross play with players from different parts of the country, this delay might shoot up to 160 ms or 200, and become impactful.

If you have a click game where the character walks towards that direction, delay is less problematic, and other such tricks can be used.

Another limitation of the streaming technique is that you need to share the same screen/camera with the other players if you want to run many camera setup in your game on unity, that doesn't perform very well, and the streaming service has to compress multiple video streams, not sure how that scales.


Your point about the lack luster networking libraries out there I absolutely agree with.
Maybe your type of game though might work well with Photon Bolt, it does have most good networking features build in.
Whilst not having to redo your game for Quantum.

Quantum obviously is the best choice here today, I know of some mid size Indy studio's that are converting their existing game project to Quantum, it is doable, but does take a few months.

 

It's 2021 and the new Unity multiplayer solution should be released according to their roadmap, but I seem still not seeing anything come out yet. Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

I didn't bother to look it up, but I heard some people talk about using the "new" multiplayer preview. Maybe there is a preview package in the newest Unity 2020 (beta) version or something on their Github. But I think that the new multiplayer stuff will be DOTS related? I don't know the current state of DOTS, I think it's also in preview? I wouldn't bother with any of this stuff until the 2020 LTS version is released and I am not sure if that one will already include these things or if they will still be in preview by then.

 

I have tried mlapi in a simple 2d multiplayer game, but it is not very efficient. When it comes to randomly generating enemies on the client side, the movement of the enemies has a lag. This is the link of the game that I tried to create using mlapi since in the example they use the mirror library. https://gamedevacademy.org/how-to-create-a-multiplayer-game-in-unity/

 

The page shows 404, are there any other comparisons available?

 

UNET (Deprecated)

Photon PUN2

Mirror

SmartFoxServer

MLAPI

Socket Class

Forge Networking

LiteNetLib

DarkRift Networking 2

TNet

Which one of them can I make a LAN game ( Local area network) with it FOR FREE !
please help

 

Anyone using Normcore?

Would be interested to see a pros / cons on that

 

If your LAN game doesn't exceed 100 concurrent players, you can use SmartFoxServer's Community Edition, which is 100% free and fully featured. The only requirement is to display a logo when the game starts.

 

Did anything change in 2021? I'm researching this topic. I want to choose the right multiplayer solution for my project. Not only that, but I also saw that the Unity Networking Frameworks - Feature List docs haven't been updated for a long time. If anyone has any information about this topic in 2021 I would be happy to hear them.

 

I did a deep dive on this last year and looked into it again last week. I'd still go with Mirror in most cases.

One of the big things that has changed in the past year is that Epic started providing a lot of backend services for free (services that you can use in your Unity project; they have a plugin for Unity). Check out Epic Online Services and see if any of those features might be useful to you.

 

we do have (MLAPI based) "unity game services" now, which is the official replacement for UNET, and there are lobby/relay examples which may fill the gaps left by HLAPI.

 

Well this may not be on the scale of many of the solutions here but is still a very good backend that can be used for turn-based multiplayer games. It is basically just a WordPress based database backend but still very useful with good support. I have combined it with PlayFab and it works well.

Take a look:

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/input-management/unirest-solution-182485

http://tigerforge.altervista.org/do...ing_wp_cron=1652758875.2437770366668701171875

 

Any updates to the list? I don't see Fish-Net, NetCode or updates to Photon with Fusion. Anyone know of a maintained list like a wiki page that is kept up to date?

 

It says "New Unity Networking (What's it actually called?)" lol...
Seems this thread is very dated though; none of the links work.

 

Thanks for the post. Been debating on going with Mirror, another solution or code my own with Java as the server code. Probably go on my own since it seems to give me more control over my game.

 

@Punfish @chrisx84 I haven't been maintaining this list sorry. I'll add a note on the OP to warn people.

 

If you're bored and want to toss Fish-Networking on there I made this as unbias as possible.

Fish-Networking
Pros:
- Free, and no concurrent user limits.
- Original code base.
- TCP and UDP support; can be swapped out. Other supported transports are Epic Online Services, Steam, and more.
- Good documentation, consistently named and commented API.
- Regularly updated, fast bug fixes.
- Long-term support and scheduled/limited API changes.
- Released games on product proven to scale to hundreds of CCU.
- Advanced Area of Interest system with condition stacking, and Network Level of Detail.
- Client-side prediction.
- Lag compensation.
- Scene manager for scene instances, global scenes, connection scenes, match scenes and more.
- Network object pooling.
- Most features of any free solution.
- Encryption layer.
- Addressables support for Scenes and Prefabs.
- Allows for custom sync types, serializers, AOI conditions and more.
Cons:
- Unity dependent.
- Match making requires a third party service.
Model:
- Client/server, or peer to peer with third party transports such as Steam.

 

@Punfish thanks, added it at the top since I've heard a lot of good things about it xD