New multiplayer transport release

@aabramychev, @larus Hello.

Could you say please, is there any upcoming in near future updates that will allow using secure websocket connection by the uNet. While searching solution on forum we found that many users share same problem and don't know how to solve it.

In our case, we developing game for kongregate with dedicated server (based on unity also) and we can't initiate secure wss connection between client-server-kongregate

 

About the new features.
Replay is simply great for finding bugs and profiling, specially if we want to implement a priority feature and see how that works when users play that is simply the most awesome feature one can have in his arsenal to attack these issues. Anyone who wants to know more, look at the video "I shot you first" from the halo team on GDC vault (it is free).

The simulation, I think external tools are good enough but this can not hurt.
About stats, definitely it is great to have them.

I am not sure how this can be done yet since I did not give enough thoughts to it but I would like to have a system to prioritize messages to be sent based on external factors so having stats like how many bytes have been sent and how much is the guessed bandwidth of a connection helps a lot when writing those kinds of stuff so the congestion control should be transparent in LLAPI.

Thanks for all of the hard and great work. Soonish I'll test a few projects using the build to see how it works.

 

Contacted both @larus and unity support a week ago about getting the server library and have yet to hear a response, would really like to get this for my project. @aabramychev any help on this? Or anyone from Unity that can assist it would be appreciated.

 

Same for us. Waiting for answer by our request on wss support.

As we replied on personal message, we could advice some ideas how it may be impemented, but we'll need to discuss it via skype\mail and see source code that is responsible for that part of unet.

 

Any update on the Standalone Simulation Server?

 

I've tested the latest build with the new transport the 5.4.3f1 and the UDP setup worked flawlessly on windows but on WebGL, first client connected then server kinda got hanged and second client could not connect and when i close the server, it thinks it crashed (probably due to the hanged state). I have the dump files, will file a report and then will email Alexey

@other guys here, it has been holidays , they'll answer you when they come back.

 

Hi folks,

I just dealt with a support ticket regarding access to the new server DLL that was discussed on the 12/13th December.

Free support aren't able to give access ourselves. Having discussed with the Multiplayer team, we would suggest forwarding your request for access to multiplayer@unity3d.com alongside information of your project and your full intentions for the DLL.

 

But what about the Simulation Server? Any updates?

 

Why does the signature of NetworkTransport.Receive

Code (CSharp):

1. public static Networking.NetworkEventType Receive(out int hostId, out int connectionId, out int channelId, byte[] buffer, int bufferSize, out int receivedSize, out byte error);

take bufferSize as a parameter? Arrays _do_ have a length in C#. The entire LLAPI feels like it was designed to be a C-API not a C# API. Returning errors as `out byte error` for example.

 

Hey thanks for your answer,

I think the API is nicely designed overall. It just feels a bit C/C++ish.
Maybe it would be possible to have function overloads that directly return an NetworkError enum as an out parameter without breaking the API. But I don't think its super important.

Thanks
Pragma

 

About the API my IMHO is that since the code that you write using LLAPI is Cish anyways, you manage buffers and do things like that, It is ok for that too be Cish unless you are using new .NET stuff like Span<T> and similar constructs which make it possible to write the low level code in C# and on .NET itself like the new ASP.NET core's framework which is mostly on managed code.

In our situation I actually prefer it to be C like when it acts like C and sounds like C, to me it is good that it looks like C to remind you about all things which you should care about when you are modifying that part of code.

 

Hey,
I'm sorry if that has been answered before but:
Is it safe to call NetworkTransport.Receive and NetworkTransport.Send
from a thread that is not the unity main thread?

 

Nice work alex, web sockets via SSL sounds very interesting.

I am curious, does that mean that SSL is or will be usable for non-websocket connections some day? This would be very useful for any game that uses passwords (or other sensitive data).

 

Was just curiosity. SHA should probably be good enough to send around passwords.

 

Is the new transport also going to be in a version of Unity 5.5?

 

Unity appears to ignore general UDP packets. I need to send data from my server to a Unity client, but unless the message originates from Unity, it's ignored. Could you tell me the format of the packets sent from Unity so I can decode them and send messages in the proper format? Is there a struct or something I can use to format my custom packets?

 

Just noticed the new NetworkTransport is in 5.6b8. Good job guys, seems very promising

 

I am currently using Unity 5.5 along with NetworkTransport for may Dedicated Server and Client code and was wondering about SSL due to I will be sending usernames and passwords when they log in, which ends up being sent over UDP Packets via NetworkTransport, so this would need to be encrypted.

So how in Unity beta 5.6 would I be able to use SSL with NetworkTransport?

I know in .NET I had to use System.Net.Security.SslStream along with AuthenticateAsServer and AuthenticateAsClient and use the private and public RSA Keys.

So basically the server had access to both Public and Private Keys and the server would pass its Public Key to the client to use and it all worked fine.

I am currently not too sure if Unity is able to use the above classes due to I have not tried it in Unity yet.

So is this similar to what we have to do here, or is the new way different ?

An example or link would be nice

Thanks

Paul

 

Hello

what is the maximum number of connections that are supported for a single machine acting as a server.
the release notes of 5.6b11 say

Is this the maximum number of connections a single node can handle?

 

ok so for example, 128 would be the max amount of "servers" (in the broad sense of the word) that you could start on a single machine, and each one of them could have a theoretical maximum of 65535 connections?

 

That's fine, I ended up writing my own Threaded TCP Library specifically for my games which uses Threads, Queues, Handlers etc behind the scenes.

I didn't really want to use NetworkTransport for the UDP side and have to use WebRequest or equivalent to request a HTTPS page to handle the secure side of things, which nearly everyone seems to keep saying to do.

Paul

 

That's good to know, that would make Stress Testing Tools easier to make, its not fun having to run 64 clients (over multiple machines) each opening up 16 connections totalling 1,024 connections on the server.

So in theory I could have all 8 clients each open up 128 connections totalling 1,024 connections on the server.
That would be some stress test on both sides

Paul

 

Hello here.
There is something that i do not understand for the moment.
I read about Http, and websocket and how it work.

But i do not understand how the NetworkTransport work when it is not in the websocket mode...
Have you some references for learning the technology behind it ? That will help me to do game/optimize them.

Best regard, a french student who want to learn. =)

 

That was i don't understand, you use UDP, unreliable transport so... but Unet has a reliable channel ( like TCP ? so why not use TCP ... )...
And if you use a similar way as web socket, why have you web socket option ? what the benefit of the two approachs ?

I will strongly read again gafferOnGame. References i used for sync position =).
Thx you.

 

Using UDP instead of TCP for game networking is common knowlegde.

TCP is already reliable, but comes with all sorts of delays and overheads that would make it a terrible solution for fast-paced online games. We need more fine-grained control than that.

So the key is to take UDP as a foundation and implement everything you want on top of it. In games, you'll sometimes need unreliable channels for non-critical stuff to save on performance. So you'll use basic UDP for that. Then, sometimes you'll need different flavors of reliable channels (orderer/unordered, fragmented, only-latest-msg-matters, etc...), so you are free to implement all of these specific things on top of UDP.

In short; UDP lets you do exactly what you need for your game, while TCP is just one big slow thing

 

Yes ok that what i actually do for movement. But i thank you could use differents protocols for a same connection. That is, i suppose .. not possible.

I will strongly study network. Unet give me the motivation.

(You know, my teachers said that you can use TCP for games network......... Poor France )

Thank a lot guys for these clarifications .


Final question : If my channel is reliable sequenced (so NOT TCP HAHAHAHAHAHA ... ), if i send differents messages/RPC of differents objects in it and imagine i have 2 objects o1 and o2.
o1 send p1 and after o2 send p2.
o2 don't need p1 but need p2. If the same reliable sequenced channel is used : o2 will wait p1 to have p2 ?

If it's the case, i can refactor my game for more efficiency ^^ .

 

You can use TCP for games, it is just more appropriate for games that don't depend on fast network response, or games where you need every packet in order. Turn based games, board games, card games, all of those TCP would be perfectly fine. TCP on a fast paced first person shooter though would make no sense, for example.

 

Also if anybody is interested to study, there are multiple implementations of reliable protocols on top of UDP , ENet and lidgren are two of them in C/C++ and C#

@aabramychev great job man! I'm really liking the new 5.6 just because of the new transport layer. You simply rock \m/

 

Hey one question regarding QosType.StateUpdate:

As far as I understand StateUpdate only sends the most recent message in a given channel.
What do I do if I have multiple objects that I want to send state updates for?
Do i have to combine all the state updates into one message and only send one message so the earlier ones don't get skipped? What is the recommended way of doing this?

 

@aabramychev I just updated my multiplayer game from 5.5 to 5.6.1 and I have a two questions about the new NetworkTransport.

1. NetworkTransport.GetCurrentRtt was deprecated, but I don't see any other replacement API. What is the preferred why to query the ping for a connection?
2. Both ConnectionConfig.SendDelay and ConnectionConfig.MinUpdateTimeout seem to do a very similar thing. What is the difference? My understanding is that MinUpdateTimeout defines how long the thread sleeps before sending the next batch of packets and can be changed by flow control, while SendDelay is an additional delay that allows subsequent messages to be grouped together. I think the addition of a send delay makes MinUpdateTimeout superfluous. You could just use one delay and also use it for flow control.