Book Image

Unity Multiplayer Games

By : Alan R. Stagner
Book Image

Unity Multiplayer Games

By: Alan R. Stagner

Overview of this book

Unity is a game development engine that is fully integrated with a complete set of intuitive tools and rapid workflows used to create interactive 3D content. Multiplayer games have long been a staple of video games, and online multiplayer games have seen an explosion in popularity in recent years. Unity provides a unique platform for independent developers to create the most in-demand multiplayer experiences, from relaxing social MMOs to adrenaline-pumping competitive shooters. A practical guide to writing a variety of online multiplayer games with the Unity game engine, using a multitude of networking middleware from player-hosted games to standalone dedicated servers to cloud multiplayer technology. You can create a wide variety of online games with the Unity 4 as well as Unity 3 Engine. You will learn all the skills needed to make any multiplayer game you can think of using this practical guide. We break down complex multiplayer games into basic components, for different kinds of games, whether they be large multi-user environments or small 8-player action games. You will get started by learning networking technologies for a variety of situations with a Pong game, and also host a game server and learn to connect to it.Then, we will show you how to structure your game logic to work in a multiplayer environment. We will cover how to implement client-side game logic for player-hosted games and server-side game logic for MMO-style games, as well as how to deal with network latency, unreliability, and security. You will then gain an understanding of the Photon Server while creating a star collector game; and later, the Player.IO by creating a multiplayer RTS prototype game. You will also learn using PubNub with Unity by creating a chatbox application. Unity Multiplayer Games will help you learn how to use the most popular networking middleware available for Unity, from peer-oriented setups to dedicated server technology.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
Unity Multiplayer Games
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Setting up the Master Server


Although Unity provide their own default Master Server and Facilitator (which is connected automatically if you do not specify your own), it is not recommended to use this for production. We'll be using our own Master Server, so you know how to connect to one you've hosted yourself.

Firstly, go to the following page:

http://unity3d.com/master-server/

We're going to download two of the listed server components: the Master Server and the Facilitator as shown in the following screenshot:

The servers are provided in full source, zipped. If you are on Windows using Visual Studio Express, open up the Visual Studio .sln solution and compile in the Release mode. Navigate to the Release folder and run the EXE (MasterServer.exe or Facilitator.exe). If you are on a Mac, you can either use the included XCode project, or simply run the Makefile (the Makefile works under both Linux and Mac OS X).

The Master Server, as previously mentioned, enables our game to show a server lobby to players. The Facilitator is used to help clients connect to each other by performing an operation known as NAT punch-through. NAT is used when multiple computers are part of the same network, and all use the same public IP address. NAT will essentially translate public and private IPs, but in order for one machine to connect to another, NAT punch-through is necessary. You can read more about it here:

http://www.raknet.net/raknet/manual/natpunchthrough.html

The default port for the Master Server is 23466, and for the Facilitator is 50005. You'll need these later in order to configure Unity to connect to the local Master Server and Facilitator instead of the default Unity-hosted servers.

Now that we've set up our own servers, let's take a look at the Unity Networking API itself.