Networking Server Comparison Chart

I think some of the required things are not in chart and the data about uLink (unitypark suite) is out of date.
Take a look at this article to see some of the important factors to choose your middleware.

http://mindhammergames.com/index.ph...e-for-your-unity-multiplayer-or-mmo-game.html

 

Has anyone checked the "TNet" solution (by the same guy who did NGUI)?
(It's on the asset store here).

This has a "server" that you can use on Win, Mac, Linux. Apparently it works on Amazon EC2 servers too (which I gather can be a low cost way to have a "real" server - i.e. a persistent one on internet).

It would be nice to see this in the comparison chart as, in theory, it would be a fairly low cost option for a lot of people.

There are a few other candidates on the asset store too.

 

Yes, this chart is a little stale. I did have it open for anyone to edit, but people were maliciously editing the page to promote/denigrate the various options. This seemed to be users with strong opinions and definitely not the package developers.

If you have changes you want to see, either ping me for access (Unity Forum PM, not Google) with the reason and details, or simply put the info here in post and I'll add it to the chart.

 

Thanks so much for making this, Little Angel. I am writing a small MP game now that we tried to finish during the Global Game Jam but failed, mostly due to the Unity networking portion. It seems you started this quite a while ago, have you gone with a specific option? I notice there's a lot of missing information such as if unreliable RPCs are available for certain options and if they support UDP.

I've read elsewhere that using .NET UDP Sockets in WebPlayer causes a TCP request to the policy server per-packet sent. It would be nice to know if these issues are solved with these middlewares of it that problem persists. Not sure if that should be covered in the "other notes" or a specific column.

Thanks again!

 

@jodon
Actually most middlewares support unreliable messages and as much as i know uLink supports unreliable RPCs and i've made some videos to help jammers make multiplayer games but it's late i think. anyways you can watch them at www.youtube.com/nooparmy and get GGJ files at www.nooparmy.com
uLink will have a free version soon and currently it's free to try for unlimited time.

About sockets i should say that it's natural for web player to ask for policy server once or at most per UDP socket creation but not per packet send/receive. And yes it's true that you require policy server but not per packet send.

I think even if he came to any conclusions he could not tell them here as owner and maintainer of the chart.

If you need Unity on the server and some additional features like databases and load balancing then go for UnityPark suite of MuchDifferent. If you want something lightweight and flexible without much ready stuff and in .NET then photon is the answer. If you prefer java code on the server then either electrotank or smartfox server can be your solution. Just compare them for yourself and see what seems best.

 

Yes, the chart is stale. I started this before I was hired by Unity and they've been keeping me busy, so I've not had a chance to keep it up to date. I'm happy update any specific information that anyone has. Also, I would be happy to grant editing access to any interested individual. I found that simply having it an open document was too tempting to enthusiasts for one solution to muddle things up for the other solutions.

 

Hi,

I found that some of the solutions needs Unity iOS Pro and Android Pro in order to proceed but some others are unknown.
As I know Player.IO and Photon Cloud need Pro Licenses to run on. Others I am not sure. Or is it everything also needs Pro licenes?

 

I'm going to experiment with opening the page to editing again.

If you find anything that needs changing or is in error and needs fixing, please update the document.

 

AFAIK all solutions, except Unity's built in networking, needs Mobile (iOS, Android etc) Pro license to work. I've also heard that Photon is working on some solution that will work with Unity Free license but I do not know when it will be completed.

 

You can use Scoreoid it's free and doesn't require a Pro license - http://scoreoid.net/

 

Solsken: You are right about the Android and iOS exports. The Photon package will be called PUN+ and unless some new issue shows up, it will be out next week.
Scoreoid looks cool. I love Color Sheep (which is using it). Does it do in-game communication? Looks more like everything account-ish plus notifications but I didn't try it.

 

I just added a library I've been working on for a while now to the chart. https://github.com/jbruening/PNet . It uses lidgren for the actual networking, though its use is supposed to be similar to unity's built in networking.

 

This comparison very nice!!!!!

 

I added some changes, anyway to make an online game, there are more than 1 server program to start:
-a server side backend (as Smartfox, Photon, ulink,r electro server, ...)
-a Hosting service (Amazon EC2, Azure, ...)
-data saving (mySQL, MongoDB, etc ...)

Some games need only to save some objects, and dont require server side logic, this games can use services as Parse.com,
other games can use logic on the backend server, others need a master server (can be a backend server) that can launch game server on the server
(this is usually a server version of the game,running on a Unity instance)....