Question about multiplayer and server

Dear Unity users,

I am developing my first game, I have chosen to make a simple card game. When I am finished with the game I want to place it in the android store. The development is going really nice, I have programmed the game all alone and solved all the error's.

Know what I want to know is: How can I make the game multiplayer? I did some research and I have found Photon, unity networking and uLink. At this point I know that these are mulitplayer engines but my question is: Which one do I need to chose? And second question: Do I need to rent a server to make it multiplayer able?

Maybe I should give some information about the game. The game does really like as Spades(maybe some of you know the game), it is played with 4 players, it is turn based. Player 1 must choose his card to play and then player 2 gets the turn etc etc. When all of the cards are finished the game calculates who has won the game and updates the scores of the players. The scores of the individual players will be stored for higscore(Is not necessary but if it can it will be really nice for competition). When a player leaves I want that the game continues, the left player must be get penalty points and the place of the left player must be filled with another player or AI.

I hope I have informed you guys enough and I hope everything is clear. Bay the way I don't try to get easy information, I did research about multiplayer engine and what I don't understand is if I use photon code, do I need to pay photon? Or only when I rent there servers? And about renting a server, I couldn't find information if it was necessary because it is played with 4 people which could be done with peer-to-peer am I right? Or do I need to rent a server for peer-to-peer too?

Sorry for my poor English, I am working really hard on it to make it better.

With kind regards, Speed

 

You do not need a server for peer-to-peer gaming.
For turnbased games you can take a look at https://www.exitgames.com/en/Turnbased.

 

I have actually just started a tutorial series on multiplayer networking. Right now, only the first part is posted, but it shows how to do the initial setup and creating a server and connecting a client.

http://blog.emerging-mobile.com/tutorial/unity-networking-tutorial-part-1/

 

Dear Emerginclint,

I have read your tutorial, it was realy informing but I was already familiar with the content.
What I realy want to know is, is it possible to use unity networking for mobile networking(Android), and is it a trustable networking engine for mobile? I dont want that the players get unexpected error's when they are playing te game.

At this point I know that renting a server for multi is a must, but I want to use the server only to connect the players and put them in a gamelobby of 4 people, and let them p2p so the load on the server is minumum. Is this possible?

I have moderate programming experience, but I am not realy familiar with networking and how it has to be done.

I hope you ore other people can answer my questions.

With kind regards,
Speed

 

If some user on a mobile is hosting the game, it can drop out anytime. Also, some networks don't allow (incoming) connections from other networks, etc. Unless you host Unity, it's not a reliable solution.