Networking Standalone UNet Relay server?

Will the Relay server be made available publicly so it can be installed on a regular Linux VDS, instead of hosting in the Unity-provided cloud? The old RakNet networking had that, but I can't find any information on this regard about the new UNet system.

 

No, there are no plans to release the relay server at this time.

In a future phase, we intend to support custom servers for running their own simulations. Then you can publicly host that server yourself. For this first phase, the relay server is simply a routing mechanism. We will have a free tier to handle light load and development, and save most folk the need to learn to setup and handle the relay.

The networking team can give more details (or correct me if I've been misinformed)

 

I understand that we'll have full-blown simulation servers for the future phase, but I don't really need that. What I'm talking about is exactly the relay server that is nothing more than a routing mechanism, and the sole purpose of which is to allow players behind NAT to play between themselves, while the simulation still takes place on a host player's machine.
For the very least, it'd be very strange to have an option for dedicated simulation server, but not have a simple relay server, like RakNet did.

 

There's some complexity as it's not a standalone thing. There's web service integration to set up and manage the scalability, routes and rooms. There's also the difficulty in learning and setting these things up. That while some percentage of developers might know how to do this, it's a barrier for others that we're working on tearing down.

 

Is there any ETA for a blog post or an announcement about UNET services and/or the tiers and costs? If we do deep integration of UNET to our projects and there will be stuff that are only available as services which we would then potentially have to rely on for years it would be good to know what we are getting in to.

Even if there is a free tier its unknown how limited it will be. As Pro user as I was already disappointed by Unity Cloud that is only available for 12 months even if you paid for all 3 Pro platform versions (core, ios, android). Does the same happen here that you get a fixed number of months for the network services?

I know that you probably don't know the answers or can't tell but maybe you could pass the question to someone who could come here and give some rough estimate? Probably has to happen at least before the release or will the network services hang around in beta state too for unknown time with no details like some of the other services currently or in past

 

Will UNET be free for people with unity personal?

 

So basically, the only 100% free option that won't have any limitations is direct IP connection, just like the old days?

 

I might understand that the matchmaker could be with a fee, but I do really hope that the authoritative server is for free. If that's true, I love you xxxx.

 

Ps: it would be an awesome idea if you could implement what I like to call Ranged RPC. The difference with this one is that it broadcasts that rpc only to nearby players in a range of the specified position and to nobody else. This way we could really save a lot of bandwidth with bigger maps and more players

 

I don't think they are doing authoritative servers or any of that kind of things as part of their services at all since thats too game specific stuff and load intensive. What you described sounds more like your custom hosted server with own logic either by hand coded to match the low level network api in any language/environment or Unity game running in headless mode as host to players. Such things are of course done and hosted by you of course. However the topic relay server or matchmaking stuff are generic stuff and work for multiple games. Maybe there will be more higher tier services similar to photon or other ranking/cloud/community thing but would not count on it.

Straight from the 5.1 manual:

UNet supports the idea that not all objects on the server should be visible to all players in the game. This is sometimes called “Area of Interest”, as players are only given visibility to objects that the game determines are relevant or interesting to them. Some game features that use this concept are Fog Of War, Stealth and proximity based visibility. This is especially important when the game world is very large on the server or contains many networked objects. Reducing the set of objects visible to player reduces login times, and ongoing bandwith - as updates are only sent to players for objects that are visible to them.

 

Thanks for the info.. By the way, I do think the authoritative server will be added, as they said this in their blog:

http://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/05/12/announcing-unet-new-unity-multiplayer-technology/

and.....

http://files.unity3d.com/larus/NetworkingDocs/Manual/UNetUsingHLAPI.html -> Spawning

 

Yes I don't disagree on that as it's been known from forum posts and the blog posts like that but we were talking mainly about services here and the possibility get the software or are we stuck with paid services. If you have used things like RakNet you know

 

Please at least consider some sort of perpetual benefits for professional users.

In addition, any software that could be hosted/managed by ourselves would also be preferable over central services.


Much obliged.