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

Registering a server with the Master Server


Now that you've configured the Master Server, it's time to register a server with it. This is easy to do.

Immediately after making a call to Network.InitializeServer, make another call to MasterServer.RegisterHost. This call connects to the Master Server and tells it to display our server in the public game list.

The RegisterHost function takes three parameters, all strings: gameTypeName, gameName, and comment. The game type name is used to separate different game listings from each other. For example, if two games use the same Master Server, they would both supply different game type names in order to avoid getting listings for the other game. The game name is the name of the host server, for example "John's server". The comment is a general purpose data string, essentially anything can be stored here. For example you could store data about the server (such as map rotation, available modes, and so on) and display these to the user while they browse the lobby.

Because RegisterHost is a separate call from InitializeServer, you can simply omit the call to RegisterHost to implement private or LAN-style servers.

Note

You can call RegisterHost more than once while a server is running to update the information stored on the Master Server. For example, if the server changes to a new level, you might call RegisterHost again to update the lobby.