[NO CCU LIMIT] Forge Networking now OPEN SOURCE

Btw,
Once we get the game server fully running I would like to invite any of you to try out and be part of the massive test. More of that soon.

 

Btw, your videos still in 360p format (including those added with v7).

 

Those who downloaded version 7 before this post, please do a re-download as I uploaded the wrong package. I have fixed it now. Thank you!

 

Hi there! We are currently working on Bare Metal in parallel with the system. There have been a lot of changes and we want to make sure they replicate well with Bare Metal. Ultimately Bare Metal uses the core of Forge Networking for what it does, so it is a lot of logical connections that really have to be made in order to complete it. Hopefully we can get it out within the next couple of weeks

 

Hello all! We have just uploaded version 7.2 hotfix which fixes the race condition with the Networking.Instantiate! Sorry about this, it was introduced in the 7.1 hotfix.

 

How do I limit what a player received from the server. Ie I want them only to get messages from players in a bounding box or region and hence no messages from players too far away to affect them.

Also how do I send a rpc which is only active on the server. Ie hit ai. As a result the server will send the results via the object of what happened?

 

If you are looking for proximity based updates we have that built in. Just make sure your main player prefab is marked as "is player" and then in the StartGame.cs you will notice there is a bool to turn on proximity based updates for the system and set the distance. When this is enabled, you can actually use the NetworkReceivers.AllProximity or NetworkReceivers.OthersProximity for RPC and anywhere else that takes network receivers.

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You can route your RPC through the server. So the server will be in control of the logic for the scene and it will delegate the RPC. You can also send an RPC directly to the server with NetworkReceivers.Server for the RPC mode as well as send an RPC directly to one single player as the server with AuthoritativeRPC.

 

Forge Networking has now been release to the asset store!

Just want to thank you all for your support and that we finally got through the last step. It took a few weeks for the asset store to approve of it because of high volume of submissions but glad to know we got everything in order for them to review our networking solution.

Please note that those who have bought from the asset store can use their transaction # on our website so they can get the latest version there. As our main updates would make it to the Asset Store, I always recommend that you check our website daily for the time being until we get a signup process so that we can send you an email whenever an update is available ASAP (for those that enable that feature). Thank you all so much for taking the time to consider us and we are so happy with all the support we have received from everyone thus far.

If you have any suggestions, bugs, or feature requests (Especially feature requests), please send them to us at support@beardedmangames.com

 

Congratulations @farrisarts and @Cranick !

 

Hi there! I just wanted to ask a few questions before picking up a copy of Forge Networking.
1) How easy is it to convert a single player project?
2) Are there out of the box examples?
3) Royalties?
4) Is there One on One support? I.E Skype
5) Mecanim replication?
From what I read, Forge is great for MMOs, so I'll be picking up a copy for Bullet Blackout.

 

If you know where your main variables are that require serialization it is a snap. We have some tutorials on the site on how to integrate with existing code.

Yes, we currently have 12 demo and helper scenes that come with the project

None, you buy per seat and use on as many projects as you want

Currently we do not, if you want to leave a feature request for it though we will do our best to get it into the system asap. If you check out how fast we have implemented other feature requests, this might not be such a bad idea . All we need is a feature request for this and maybe an explaination of how you would like to see it working and we would love to work with you

As seen in this tutorial you can replicate any mechanim state by just serializing the variables that are required for the state machine, this is actually the recommended method as replicating the entire mecanim state machine is a huge performance and bandwidth hit in comparison to serializing the particular variables that manage it. We are working on an automatic system where you can place [NetSync] above the Animator variable, but again, if you want performance and minimized bandwidth, it is best to replicate the controlling variables.

Our users and beta testers have used Forge for a huge array of games ranging from MMO to FPS to RTS. We are proud of the array of games we support and will continuously work with the developers on Forge to make it suit their own unique games!

 

So Brent, out of curiosity, are there people using Forge for small MMO type games? I couldn't find any reference to that anywhere so maybe made an assumption. I can't see why it wouldn't work though.

 

Thank you very much for the reply! I will be picking up the Asset Store copy very soon!

 

Yes I believe that we had at least 3 people in our beta using it for MMO style games. Their feedback led to us implementing some of our server features. Our system can be used as an MMO system also because we support multiple socket connections in one instance, this means you can have both a host and client socket running in one instance which is needed in order to to make distributed servers (rooms) that work together to make one massive server.

 

Awesome! Thank you so much for the support . Please let us know if you have any feature requests, general questions or anything else

 

Hello,

finally, another networking middleware. Im looking for an alternative solution since BOLT engine is in trouble. i don't like the marketing strategy of the company, which bought the BOLT engine. This one looks much more simple in the configuration. The character controller looks good, very easy to set up. But however, i need a bit more to know about this asset:

- The hidden network-character controller got 4 variables, does it automatically send all the animations in the background over the network? Do i have to adapt the hidden network character controller (if there is one) if i want to have a lie down animation?

- How could i make a vehicle controller with wheel movement right and left, physicaly hull swinging (natural physics), rotating mesh (or texture, not sure) wheels?

- How could i setup a tank for networking, has rotating texture for wheel and track, turret and gun movement?

- It looks like you have lag interpolation, do you have functionality to move the network objects in a smooth way?

- Is your networking solution good enough to handle at the same time about 300 units for an RTS game? (mostly infantry, vehicles, tanks)

- Does it have a big impact to the Main-Thread?


Thanks for your answers in advance. (short answers are absolutely enough)

 

Hello there! You are in good company, we do have quite a few users that came from Bolt and they have been very helpful in suggesting a lot of our new features! Thank you for all of these awesome questions! Let's begin-

You can use the new [NetSync] attribute above the variables you wish to replicate across the network. If they are actual objects and not primitive data types (listed here) then you can actually make use of our custom class serialization methods.

Mechanim replication is expensive and very wasteful for a lot of animations (which other systems primarily boast). What I would suggest is to send an RPC call or replicate a variable that determines if the player is laying down or not. By doing this, all of the clients will get the new value for the variable and simulate the animation independently . Very good on performance and bandwidth.

Our system makes use of the physics engine inside of unity, so if you were to replicate the inputs to the server, then the server can calculate all of the physics for the object and send the transformations to all of the clients . We have some tutorials on this as well and will be making more.

There are a few ways you could do this. You could use inputs to determine what the tank is doing and then allow the server to replicate the rotation independently or you can have the tanks replicate their current position and rotation or you could even just set the current destination for the rotation of the tank and the destination position and allow the other clients to simulate this movement (would work well in RTS).

Yes, by default we lerp floating point values (which you can disable). You can also change the speed in which the variables are lerped through the slider in the inspector. Also since you have full source code you are able to break it apart and add what you need if you have a proprietary form of interpolation .

Yes. Luckily RTS games are heavily prediction based which can greatly minimize the bandwidth usage. If you take the input or lock step approach to developing the game you may find that 300 units are actually pretty easy to work with on the system. We may have a video series on minimizing bandwidth usage by clever game design in the near future which will allow you to have a very large amount of networked objects in your game .

Also, we have a feature in our system that allows you to set the network replication speed per networked object, that way you can have some objects that update faster than others if needed .

There is little to no impact to the main thread in our system as all of the networking components are running on a separate thread. Only the variables that are naturally updated on the main thread are there (which still has little to do with the networking system itself and more about game logic). We do however fire our RPC calls on the main thread which is one of the only times we have networking components reside on the main thread (they are fired on the main thread, but they are processed on a separate thread).

No problem Thank you so much for the questions!

 

Release Version 8 Available!

Hello everyone, I wanted to formally announce Release Version 8 which came out with the Asset Store version last night. It has a new feature request addition that was requested in our feature portal to independently allow interpolation on transformation components (like position and rotation). As well as an update on the instantiation callbacks so that they are only executed on the clients that requested the instantiation.

• Position, Rotation and Scale on the NetworkedMonoBehavior can now be independantly lerped
• Updated the website tutorials to include running a headless linux server
• Second upload to the Asset Store
• Instantiate callbacks now only called on the machine that requested the instantiate

Please continue to leave us feedback, feature requests, bug reports and any other general support. Also, thanks to those who have taken advantage of the various features on our website including the tutorials and the forums. Lets continue to keep our community of network developers and enthusiasts strong!

 

Haha, I am also moving from BOLT, but not for the same reason. Though the only thing I liked about BOLT was the mecanim replication, as that's my weakpoint, but if your tutorials are great I'll be happy to use your method.
In addition, most MMORPGs are switching over to an action combat model, and that requires pretty good networking. Do you think Forge can handle that? From what I read, sounds to me it should be just fine.

 

Thank you for the extensive and positive answers!

Much more better as i thought. The only one thing that BOLT do better (on paper, never tried it) is the automated animation handling, that do exactly what you describe as optimized animation replication. That is a bit more complicated, if i remember correctly BOLT also synchronize the animations time.

But this asset has a stable version and very simple to configure.

I have to tell, there is no better network middleware in the Unity asset store. (Without testing, just by asking, reading the specs. and watching the videos.)

 

Ah! Well we will be sure to make some video tutorials specifically on replicating animation states. We also do have plans to make a simple replication tool (like what is built into Bolt) however we would only suggest to use it as a last resort because of the performance and bandwidth loss compared to replicating variables. If you are interested in a helper for the mechanim replication, just leave us a feature request in the developer portal so that we can track it and prioritize it

Yes. We are optimizing for more real time interactions models. We also will be having video tutorials on how to take a lot of real time components and break them down to minimize bandwidth where possible. Not to mention that since we support multiple socket connections in one instance, you can easily make a distributed server where you have many servers handle the user load in various "zones" but all collectively make up a concept of one single server

 

No problem

Well, it seems like this is a feature a lot of people want so we may enable it, however we are going to really plan it out so that we can make it as performant and bandwidth conservative as possible.

Thank you! We have worked really hard on making it stable and super simple to use while still giving the power and flexibility to do anything that the developer could imagine.

Hopefully with your help and others in the community we can really build a networking solution that is even more simple, powerful, and flexible!

Thank you so much for the support

 

Does Forge have an interface for databases? Preferably MySQL?

 

Actually I haven't even been paying attention properly, these rooms are like Channels in the average MMO, right?
Also, whenever I try to log into the forums, it just keeps bringing me back to the login page, no error, nothing.

 

Not in the current version, but we have experimental internal code which may find its way into a release build soon.

It is very similar to that yes, it's a way of distributing server load.

On the forums, that seems strange. I just created a new account 'Cranick' from http://developers.forgearcade.com/ main page when I hit register, after doing so then I proceeded to the forums and then hit login, from there I entered my user id and password of what I sign up with, and put in and it logged me in just fine, no kicking me out or anything. Is there by chance some popup blocker or javascript disabling extension that is being enabled on the site? I was using Google Chome when I tested this. Please let me know that information so I can hopefully look at a fix for you. Thank you!

 

Well I'm not too sure what's going on, I'll try to create a new account and get back, but I just bought my copy of Forge Networking, I'm so excited >

EDIT: I found the issue, I was using my eMail instead of username >.<

 

Also, how do you think an MMOTPS would work with 2 000 people on one server + other essentials stuff. Being that there's a lot of power needed for shooting.

 

Thank you for supporting us and glad to have you part of our Networking Solution, please feel free to user the forums here, or on our website, as well as simply emailing us any concerns you may have or need. Glad to see that you were able to resolve the forum issue where it wouldn't let you sign in.

2,000 is a large number and would definitely need to be distributed in combination with a good implementation of the networking architecture and compressed bandwidth wherever possible. More simulation and input based updates and less network traffic with proximity based updates and good hardware or more distributed designs would work.

 

Farris, I am passing along a question from my programmer. With uLink, he has a way to connect to our database but not sure how to do that with Forge. Is there a solution to this or maybe something on the asset store that will help? We are using SQL.

Thanks.

 

Hi there, we are currently working with some experimental code for database interaction so that we natively have it in the system. Are you using MySQL or Microsoft SQL?

I have not tested this on Unity's Mono but there is a .NET connector for MySQL that may be of use until we finish our implementation: https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/6.9.html

We have not used any of the MySQL tools on the asset store yet so I don't want to recommend any of them personally. Another method that is common is to provide a REST service on your server that then Forge can do HTTP requests to. This is often a mainstream practice because it separates the data distribution logic from the actual server logic and allows you to update how the data is delivered and retrieved on the fly without having to shut down and start up your server. Also if your REST service is running on the same server as your game server, then it will be an extremely fast REST request.

 

Thanks, Farris. I will report back and see what happens. Appreciate the quick response.

We are using MySQL.

 

Unity accepted our Forge Update to version 8 super quick! So glad they are on top of their game with making sure users are using the latest version.

To new users: Please also register on our forums when you get time so that you can talk amongst other likeminded multiplayer developers to get feedback. Also register your transaction # so that you can download the latest from our website as well.

If anybody has any problems, contact us here/on our forums/ or support@beardedmangames.com

 

Congrats on the release!

@Telia its really easy to connect to a MySQL db through C#.

 

I see there's a version 9 on the website, what's new in that? Is it safe to upgrade by just reimporting?

 

Release Version 9.1 Available!

Version 9.1 is now available on the website for download and has been uploaded to the Asset Store (which is now pending review). This version has some pretty heafty updates because it now supports multiple network scripts attached to the same object and multiple network scripts in child objects and children of child objects and so on. This version should fix some of the bugs we have received reports on as well . Thank you all so much for your valuable feedback and your great support, please keep it coming!

• Removed useless diagnostics log in the SimpleNetworkedMonoBehavior
• Now you can have any derivitive of a SimpleNetworkedMonoBehavior on any child objects in a prefab and multiple ones
• Multiple SimpleNetworkedMonoBehavior scripts on one object
• Fixed a bug that happens on a long running instance where rpc can cause out of range buffer issue

If you purchased through the asset store and don't want to wait to get this update, head on over to the developer portal, register if you have not already, go to the profile page and then input your Unity invoice number into the invoice box. Once validated (instantly) you will be able to download the latest version from the website!

Thank you all so much for all of your constant feedback!

 

Yes, it is safe to reimport!

 

I am going to buy it and replace every bold stuff...

I hope this here doesnt get inactive too q.q

 

It won't, we will make sure that when and if ever it does become inactive, it is because there is no bugs/features or any problems with it. Even then, we will still be supporting it.

 

inactive = not happening

 

Thanks! Glad to see you here again!

 

Well thats great

Is it somehow possible to create a master server without your webstuff ?

My game Go Home needs a serverlist because... well its simpler to understand a d yeah


Edit--
And could you do an tutorial how to sync variables like health ?

 

Networking is a black art to me but both my personal projects really do require mp functionality out of tradition, so i have a few questions if you have the time

The chief one for now is, how is it with some pretty complex physics - im quite sure most can be done player-side without affecting gameplay, but i'm using very interesting physics-controlled characters based on an advanced follow-on from AnimFollow https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/14637 and integrating FinalIK https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/14290 (The game is not gang beasts but just imagine gang beasts procedural animation - which hasn't got online play yet)

I'm guessing somewhere i'm going to have to compromise unless i imagine everything active is done server-side and client's physics components lerped to that (I think?), as i'm truly in the dark regarding it all i'd appreciate some insight

One final question is how well, or what would, if possible, be the best way to network between android phones that are in the same room concurrently. And would i be able to network with iOs and even desktops all in the same instance? One of my notions is about social VR and being able to easily link up people using various headsets (Mobiles using Cardboard or Samsung Gear, desktops with Oculus and speculatively, Valve's work and so on)

Thanks for your time

 

Thanks!

Been busy, just finished my master degree and are putting last hand on a game for tablets/steam, so did not have much time for forum spam

But maybe i get a bit more time soon. Then ill buy it from the Asset Store and play around with it

 

Yes . There are 2 ways to have a master server without our stuff. The first one can be implemented now which is to create a server that basically stays on all of the time. When a person goes to host a server in your game then it will connect to this server and send it some information (it's IP address and Port number will be captured, and you can send any other information like name, password, comments, etc.). We are excited to say that we will be providing this kind of master server out of the box so you would not have to do it yourself very soon .

The second method will be that we are (hopefully soon) going to be releasing our source code for our Arbiter stuff (the web interface). That way everyone can run their own Arbiter with their own REST api's and such.

Why of course! We will add it to the tutorial list. For now, this will probably be your closest tutorial for this: http://developers.forgearcade.com/Tutorials/MasterClassBeginner/Serializing-Fields-And-Properties

Please let me know if you need any further help with this. We are probably going to push the master server implementation up in development so that we can get it out as soon as possible if we can.

 

Haha, no problem, we have a few users that see networking the same way and we accept them with open arms. One of our main goals is to help those who don't know anything about networking to learn networking. We want to help enable them all to be able to make the games they wish to make!

Well the magic is that we use the Unity physics is the physics engine we work with since everything is inside of Unity. There is more magic to this that is very common, that is to say that the server will calculate all of the physics and then replicate everything to the clients. We do have a new mode where you can send just inputs to the server and the server will simulate everything and send the results back to the client, we also have client side prediction for this

Oh nice! Yes this is actually the common method (as stated above). You can have a peer to peer style where the clients send up their positions to the server and then the server replicates that to all of the other players, but this could be veriy insecure if you do not do the proper checks on the server. This can also be a big hit on your network bandwidth.

Forge Networking would be the best way . We tested extensively between all of the platforms as well did our beta testers. You don't have to do anything special to have PC, Mac, Linux, Android, iPhone, and Windows Phone all running on the same server and seeing each other in real time.

 

OH NICE! Congratulations!

Hopefully you can get some of that time, we would love to get some new feedback from you. Until then, do you have any links to share so we can check out your work?

 

Some of it is still under a NDA, but soon!

 

Thanks! Yep, it is already done. Very easy...actually my programmer knew more than I thought he did. I guess it was the complaining that made me think otherwise. But all is well and Forge is working very well for us. I wish we had found it a year ago...lol.

 

Yeah seems very nice.

I am on the look out for a great system. Going to release a game on steam using Photon Cloud (PUN), which is great for what i need now. But would like to make a 'number 2 sequel' sometime in the future based on that game - and wants a system where i can use an authoritative server this time around. Photon Server or Forge seems like the best bet at the moment. But of cause the project depends on how much money i make from the other game

 

Thank you for your fast answer
I will anyway use your interface to support you even more but first i have to wait for my money at this month to buy the asset package