Multiplayer Options

Hey guys,

I'm trying to way all the options I have available to me for creating a multiplayer game idea I have. I'm wondering if anyone could set me in the right direction and correct/comment on the below points which I have ascertained by reading various posts, blogs, and sites. The just of main statements/questions I'd like responses on have been enboldened.

1. I should use an authoritative dedicated server if I want to prevent clients from cheating in my game.
   • Are there any easy out of the box solutions for a 2 player game? Not having a whole lot of free time, I'm not sure I want to invest in hardware infrastructure to set up scalable dedicated servers for my game. I'd rather a managed solution where I pay as I go.
     • http://game-cloud.org/ - Seems like a possible solution, but there is not much documentation and it may not even be out of beta
2. Are there any out of the box "match making" solutions I can use in conjunction with whatever dedicated server solution I end up going with?
   • Do I need to write a match making interface per platform? E.g., a game center one for iOS, Steam Works one for Steam, Google Player Services for Android
3. If there are no out of the box authoritative server solutions, AND I don't have a whole lot of free time to learn in depth networking intricacies am I not going to be able to write my own solution for a 2 player game?
4. I've read client side prediction in Unity is very difficult to achieve, because Unity does not provide a way to step forward a physics simulation without actually increasing time.

I apologize if these questions are too general, I'm just having a hard time wrapping my head on the direction I need to take for my two player game:

This is a project I began with someone else 3+ years ago, and it ended up falling through. I'd like to start it back up, but getting core concepts like networking and mobile performance down from the on set.


Thanks,

 

Well perhaps my post is a bit too general to reply to, so I'm going to double post with some more knowledge I've collected:

1. If http://game-cloud.org/ is not yet ready for use, than it would seem that a managed out-of-the box authoritative solution just doesn't yet exist. (By managed I mean that the server is hosted for you, and can be easily up/down scaled).
2. http://developer.muchdifferent.com/unitypark/ really seems like the way to go to create an authoritative server for my game out of the box. While it's a bit pricey, it seems that I can at least develop my game without getting a license, and will only pay once I'm ready to go live.
   
   • uLink seems to have a ton of nice support for client side prediction, match making, and some other neat stuff like persistent storage.
   • While none of this is hosted for you, for my game of 1v1 matches I believe that it will not be an unfeasible goal to calculate my bandwidth, cpu, and memory needs and find a suitable host. Though I may be following up with a new thread on tips for doing exactly this!

 

If you want, add me to skype/email and I'll happily give some advice.

 

I've added you on skype, thanks!