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[Released] Bolt, The new generation of networking solution for unity!

Discussion in 'Assets and Asset Store' started by fholm, May 30, 2014.

  1. nasos_333

    nasos_333

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    Grand, thanks, seems very versatile :)

    I sont have a player number issue, my game will have 5 players co-op max, only the various implemented methods interest me.

    Does it also handle the possible SQL, PHP requests that may be needed for server side ?
     
  2. fholm

    fholm

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    Just to make it clear, the bolt server runs inside Unity, if you want to talk to another sort of "database" server, that is entirely up to each person to implement themselves
     
  3. fholm

    fholm

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    Since we ended up on a new page on the forum, I am posting this information again:

    Information for everyone buying from the Asset Store today (Bolt is the 24 hours 'Deal of the Day')

    1. To get the absolutely latest version of Bolt, go to this page http://www.boltengine.com/AssetStore.aspx after you have purchased and punch in your asset store invoice number, the 0.3.1 version is uploaded to the Asset Store but is currently in 'review' which is why you get an old version there at the moment. An update for the 0.3.1 version is scheduled for about ~2 hours from now, it will be version 0.3.2 which fixes a few minor issues with the samples project, this is also available on the same link.

    2. If you need help with bolt, head over to the Bolt Support Forum: http://forum.boltengine.com/

    3. We provide free access to our github repository, which always contains the latest and most up-to-date version of Bolt. Just email support@boltengine.com with your asset store invoice number and your github username.
     
  4. iamsam

    iamsam

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    Hey Fholm,

    This looks like a good networking solution and based on the forum feedback it seems to be well supported too. To be honest I am on the verge of purchasing it but have a small doubt in my mind. I just finished watching Unity 5 networking update video and it seems that they are planning on implementing a very good out of the box solution. Can you please let me know what your plans are for Unity 5. I realize that the networking solution will come in a later cycle of Unity 5, I just want to make sure that Bolt with supplement it when it comes rather than the user having to choose between the two.

    Thanks,
    Sam
     
  5. fholm

    fholm

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    Bolt will be able to run on top of the UNET LLAPI (LowLevelApi) so that you can use bolt together with all of the infrastructure for hosting, matchmaking, etc.
     
  6. iamsam

    iamsam

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    Excellent! Will surely purchase it today :)
     
  7. fholm

    fholm

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  8. fholm

    fholm

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    Just popping in to say that 0.3.2 is up, change notes here:

    Fixed: 'Custom' property type should now work properly.
    Fixed: Simplified serialization of entity unique id.

    Changed: Removed all assembly and application checksum code, we will investigate what's going wrong on some platforms before enabling it again.
    Changed: Bolt Entity component custom editor now displays the unique id of entities.
    Changed: The Bolt package will from now on come with two unity package files, which will be named and work like this:

    • Bolt_VERSION_InstallerOnly.unitypackage - Only the core bolt dll's which contains the installer, use this if you're starting a fresh project or upgrading an old.
    • Bolt_VERSION_CompleteWithSamples.unitypackage - Contains a complete and already installed version of Bolt and all samples, use this if you are just starting out or going through the Bolt tutorial.
     
  9. fholm

    fholm

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  10. fholm

    fholm

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  11. fholm

    fholm

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  12. PandaPeleador

    PandaPeleador

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    I cant believe I missed out on this deal by a few hours. I have been reading on this and sounds like a nice product.

    As I dont have a lot of experience in networking, I want to be s
    ure this is the most appropiate tool for my project. I m making a fighting game, this means the requirements for a lag free experience are high.

    How can Bolt help me in this scenario and how will lag be perceived by my players? is it going to be rollback? (rewinding to the previous state,as in "character teleports") , the entire animation lags, or is it configurable?
     
  13. fholm

    fholm

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    All fighting games are made deterministic and only share inputs over the network with each other, bolt can easily do this, but you should not rely on it's "position/animation sync", as that stuff never goes over the network in fighting games anyway

    If you want to check out bolt anyway, send an email to support@boltengine.com and we will give you a private 50% link.
     
  14. PandaPeleador

    PandaPeleador

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    Thank you very much. I think I would like to try this solution and see how it works,I'll send an email later.

    Thanks
     
  15. ronjart

    ronjart

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    Just wanted to express my heartfelt "thank you" for this incredible asset. Like many Unity users, I don't have a computer engineering background and networking was one of those areas that seemed really intimidating to do right. After only a day of fielding around with Bolt and the documentation on your website, I feel comfortable tackling basic networking projects. Bolt is so well designed - simple building blocks that allow for the realization of complex scenarios. The right mix between visual interface and coherent API. I literally feel like a hypocrite developing with this plugin, it does it all for me. I could go on with praise, and I only just scratched the surface.

    I felt like a thief picking up this asset during the madness sale. If you ever get to Portland Oregon, let me know. Beers on me.
     
    Yukichu and fholm like this.
  16. fholm

    fholm

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    Wow, just... I'm taken back by your kind words, thank you so much! Praise like this is what keeps me going! I am very glad you managed to get through the tutoria, it's a bit out-dated at the moment and we're going to have a new one up tomorrow (hopefully!)

    It's no problem, I made the madness sale so that people who were on the fence would get a chance to get it! There's no need to buy me a beer, but I always appreciate a sterling review on the asset store :)
     
  17. Simod

    Simod

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    Hello fholm,

    We are very close to the networking stage developing of our (3G) mobile project. So currently we are working on collecting an information of a several solutions which would suit in our case.

    Our general scene is a 2-20 physics driven vehicles. Network players can control them with a touch gestures and hit each other. Plus a number of debris objects (stones, pile of woods, bricks, vehicle parts, etc) which are also controlled by rigidbodies, hence has to be populated and synchronized on every client as well.

    Does Bolt implementation has already a kind of support for scenes with a lot of rigidbodies? We just want a simple solution to attach a rigidbody to a networking component, and the rest will be automatic.

    Thanks in advance
     
  18. fholm

    fholm

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    @Simod: My first question would be if you intend on letting each client ruin their own physics simulation, or only run it on the server/host and replicate out to the clients?

    Bolt can do what you are asking, yes - but if you are expecting to be able to have each client run their own physics simulation over the network and have it all line up, especially over 3G which huge pings, that will not work in any solution. But if you run it all on one server/host and push out to everyone else, yes bolt can do this automatically. The vehicles sample in bolt even implements this.
     
  19. fholm

    fholm

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    All sales, including the one on the boltengine.com site are now over.
     
  20. fholm

    fholm

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  21. ronjart

    ronjart

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    Done.
     
  22. _fatalix3d_

    _fatalix3d_

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    Hi guys ! Bolt is only for LAN games? It support Online like Photon cloud? Thanks.
     
  23. fholm

    fholm

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    _fatalix32d_: Yes, bolt supports online play, but you need the IP address of the server you are going to connect to (like in the good old CS 1.6 days), we are releasing a master server soon tho, so there will be no need for the IP and you can get a server list like in the BF games, etc.
     
    PandaPeleador and John-G like this.
  24. fholm

    fholm

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    Hey!

    So I did not get far enough to day to be able to publish the first part of the tutorial, I got stuck porting a lot of work over from really old versions of Bolt (0.1.x, before any public releases) to the new version. Anyhow, I wanted to give you a list of features that are planned and will be in the new tutorial, plus also show you a preview video.


    • 8 vs 8 Team Death Match
    • Low poly/Polygon world art style
    • 3 Weapons: Assault Rifle, Gun and Hand Grenade
    • Two firing mode for the AR (Semi-Automatic and Full Automatic)
    • Third person camera with zooming when aiming (can be seen in the video)
    • Support for both keyboard + mouse and xbox 360 controller
    • Fully authoritative movement, shooting and throwing of grenades
    • Respawning, Team assignment and Autobalance
     
    OnePxl, hopeful and John-G like this.
  25. kaz2057

    kaz2057

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    Amazing! :)
     
  26. John-G

    John-G

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    Can't wait, looks like a fantastic tutorial.
     
  27. LegendSeeker

    LegendSeeker

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    That preview is sweet. Looking forward to the update!
     
  28. fholm

    fholm

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    Some more footage
     
    hopeful likes this.
  29. fholm

    fholm

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    some more stuff
     
    hopeful and DMeville like this.
  30. sluice

    sluice

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    Ah dammmmm.. I missed the 24h deal! :eek:
    This is currently #1 in my "wish-list". Unfortunately, I don't have any used for it right now and finance are tight, I have to wait! But at a lower price than what is already "low", who could resist! This should teach me of being away from the computer for a few days!

    I just have to say: fholm, keep up the support and the tutorials, as a future buyer, this is a "must"! :)
     
  31. fholm

    fholm

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    @sluice ah, sorry you missed the 24H deal =(

    Here's a screenshot of the second weapon, a bazooka :)

     
  32. ZJP

    ZJP

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    OMG...
     
  33. hopeful

    hopeful

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    Sooooo looking forward to this new tutorial! :)
     
  34. fholm

    fholm

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    Pushing as hard as I can to at least get the first chapters out today!
     
    hopeful likes this.
  35. fholm

    fholm

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  36. red2blue

    red2blue

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    Thanks for that. Keep it coming ;)
     
  37. Tiny-Tree

    Tiny-Tree

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    possible to add it or oin an other package in the asset store too?
     
  38. fholm

    fholm

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    @damien: we will make sure to release a proper version with the correct code bundled, etc. so there is no hassle with setting it up.
     
  39. fholm

    fholm

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  40. ronjart

    ronjart

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    I'm having an issue with not seeing the "play as server" and "Debug Start" options in the Blot Scene menu. I'm using unity 4.6 (Beta 17) with a Unity Pro License and Bolt 0.3.2.0. Any idea why?
     
  41. fholm

    fholm

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    Yes, these buttons are missing in 0.3.2, check out the latest releases on github: https://github.com/BoltEngine/bolt/releases for code which is pre-compiled and ready to go with all the latest stuff compatible with the new tutorial.

    If you do not have access to github email support@boltengine.com with your receipt (asset store or pay pal) and github username.
     
  42. fholm

    fholm

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    From today and onward we will provide daily builds on GitHub, in a convenient package with all *.unitypackages that are up-to-date and compatible with the latest tutorial: https://github.com/BoltEngine/bolt/releases

    If you do not have access to github email support@boltengine.com with your receipt (asset store or pay pal) and github username.
     
  43. Nakor

    Nakor

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    I really don't have time to read 10 forum pages, but I am curious. I have already bought your asset but scanning through here I am not quite certain that it will have what I want exactly.

    I want to provide the multiplayer that it already supports (peer to peer with a host peer), but I want to provide dedicated servers as well. I want people to be able to run a host package on a server and have this package control the game. Obviously it won't need to render a thing. It will receive data from clients and push data / instructions to clients. In my particular case it wouldn't really be necessary for the server to handle enemy AI as that will be handled by the client that "owns it". The client will simply communicate the actions of the AI. I have a potentially infinite "game world" (space) with the majority of it being procedurally generated. I have zones that are created at the start of a game, and then further zones are created as needed. Zone creation is fast and light weight, and of course the "game world" would need to be spawned on the client that needed it, and communicated with the server package. This would need to be fairly fast so as to not cause undue lag, but of course reduction of this lag is mostly my responsibility and would involve tweaking spawn distances and the like.

    I'm sorry that was so long but is this conceivably something that will be supported, or should I look into coding my own solution? I imagine I could write my own server side package but it would require me to learn a lot of new code and I fear it may result in poor and vulnerable code due to my inexperience with server architecture.

    Thanks! :)
     
  44. fholm

    fholm

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    @Nakor

    Yes you can mix dedicated server and "client servers" at will, no problem. Whenever someone says they have an "infinite" world I kind of wonder a bit, but as long as you can get your game to run inside Unity I don't see a reason for Bolt not to be able to handle it, and we are releasing a version of Bolt over the winter which will be able to run a 100% custom server outside of Unity.

    Regards,
    Fredrik
     
  45. Nakor

    Nakor

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    Well, I said potentially infinite. Obviously no computer would be able to store an infinite world's data. Only a few zones are ever rendered or even very much maintained by each client at a time. The amount of data stored per zone is actually very small. For example, when no player is close to a zone anymore (and all other rules are met), the zone forgets it's ship locations (and in fact returns the ships to the prefab pool).

    Anyway, that's great to hear. Thanks for the quick reply.
     
  46. fholm

    fholm

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    hopeful likes this.
  47. fholm

    fholm

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  48. fholm

    fholm

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    hopeful and John-G like this.
  49. John-G

    John-G

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    Just keeps getting better :)
     
  50. fholm

    fholm

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