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

Chapter 6. Entity Interpolation and Prediction

In nearly all games that employ multiplayer networking, entities need to be interpolated to hide lag and jittery updates. While the updates for an entity only arrive relatively few times per second, and may even be dropped if using UDP, the interpolation needs to smooth these and make the final motion appear smooth, and close to the original player's movements.

Previously, we implemented a simple form of interpolation, by simply interpolating toward the current network position. This looks sluggish and artificial in many cases, especially in twitch-style action games where players move quickly and can change direction on a dime. In this chapter, we'll learn how to implement a form of entity interpolation inspired by the source game engine, employed in a wide variety of AAA games.

In many games, it's also very common to give the server full control over everything. We did this in the chapter on Photon Server, but notice that when the player moved...