Search Unity

  1. Megacity Metro Demo now available. Download now.
    Dismiss Notice
  2. Unity support for visionOS is now available. Learn more in our blog post.
    Dismiss Notice

uLink Free announced! Help us decide its features.

Discussion in 'Multiplayer' started by MuchDifferent, Dec 16, 2012.

  1. Xsnip3rX

    Xsnip3rX

    Joined:
    Aug 29, 2009
    Posts:
    197
    Honestly, i disagree with everyone here, i don't think there should be a CCU limit for the free version, instead if your game studio generates a revenue of say over $15,000 annually then they should be required to buy the full version which i think is around 550 euros on your website.

    My Reasoning for this is simple, if people are using Unity Free then they obviously don't have $1500 to buy Unity Pro, however, if their first game is a success then obviously they'll invest into Unity Pro and some tools such as uLink, and whatever else they need for their game, many people out there like making games without restricting the amount of users that can play at once, for example, my game, i plan on having 3200 players per server, it may or may not be a realistic number, but i do have a large fan-base and i would like to use uLink for my project, mainly for the fact that it is nonrestrictive when it comes to CCU's.

    Again, this is just my personal opinion and i don't think it matters much to anyone except myself and my fan-base.
     
  2. Ashkan_gc

    Ashkan_gc

    Joined:
    Aug 12, 2009
    Posts:
    1,117
    Well your argument seems a little unreasonable cause current uLink version somehow forces you to host servers and if you have the money for servers (a few hundreds of dollars per month) to host 3200 players then you should be able to aford 550 euros as well.
    It was different if uLink was a P2P game tech like badumna or source engine/unity's networking with NAT which allows for player hosted servers in a more realistic manner.
     
  3. Xsnip3rX

    Xsnip3rX

    Joined:
    Aug 29, 2009
    Posts:
    197
    Umm, uLink forces you to host servers on your own machine yes, but what if you can pay the ISP out of pocket, or players chip in via donations or whatever to host on better servers? my Argument is no an argument, it is an opinion and my point of view, people can go and buy a cheap computer from walmart or something and put the server application on it and run that, it doesn't have to be fast or anything, all it needs to have is an internet connection, preferably a fast one, so in the end i think that your argument seems unreasonable, people in this time and age don't have to go and buy anything anymore, most good things are open source or free in today's world (at least on the internet)
     
  4. Ashkan_gc

    Ashkan_gc

    Joined:
    Aug 12, 2009
    Posts:
    1,117
    It needs to be good and fast to run a game with huge amount of players and most of your costs are bandwidth and internet costs which you are aware of their requirement on the project.

    Yes there are many good free/open source stuff out there but it's not about everything. Just a few examples
    1- There is no good open source portal like sharepoint for real organizations
    2- Open office or anything else aren't comparable to MS office
    3- ubuntu is good but still the amount of software on it is not comparable to win/mac and to do real work you need visual studio, unity, maya/max , photoshop ... which none of them run on it.
    4- gimp/blender/... are good software but are not the best and not comparable to their commercial counterparts.


    In this day and age people still need money to live and those who donate you are included so a realistic view shows you that all services, products or anything requires cahs flow to keep going forward. Unity can have a free version cause they did it after some years in industry and free is only for one of their platforms and they actually removed the $200 version which wasn't making much profits. The business model of providing anything for free until someone makes money can work for people who indies are not their main business/source of revenue like epic and crytekk.

    I'm not aware of MuchDifferent's marketting strategies and the amount of money that they want to make from indies compared to selling more expensive lisences to big guys so i can not comment on the viability of this for them from this point of view but again from a user's point of view if you look correctly you'll need some money to launch and keep alive a multiplayer game. It's different from releasing a single player android game and putting up updates once in a while if it worked. You need money from any source for it and the amount of money is much higher than the 550 euros of the license (which i don't know if will remain 550 or not).

    Oh and opinions in discussions like this should have logic and argument behind them, otherwise why should it matter and why you should write them. Of course i love to have anything for free and then when i made money using them i'll give something back, but what others can make if all of their customers think like me?

    And the fun fact is i'm writing this while MD might love your idea and choose to provide their software like what you said for an unknown reason but i don't think it works.
     
  5. Bariel

    Bariel

    Joined:
    Mar 8, 2012
    Posts:
    34
    Sorry but your logic doesn't follow for a few reasons:

    - I am using Unity Free but can quite easily afford Unity Pro I haven't bought it yet because right now I don't need any of the Pro features, the Unity model works on giving people enough of the tool to develop but to hold enough back the really nice Features for Pro to steer people into wanting to buy Pro, if you're suggesting uLink follows the same model as Unity and has no limit on CCU then what features should they not give you?

    Now Unity holds back on the performance tools (profiler, occlusion culling, LOD), rendering options (Deferred lighting, post FX), platforms (iOS, android) and being able to run as a server -- should uLink follow that same model? and hold back features, personally I'd rather have all features but with a small CCU limit so I can build my game fully.

    - a quick test player in uLink with sending nothing other than state synch for the players transform shows around 800bytes per second when running at a reasonable 60fps, so for 3200 players you are talking about 2.56megabytes per second, mutliply that by 8 to convert to megabits which is what network speeds are given in then you are looking at 20megabit per second upload speeds just for sending the players transform. Start wanting them to be able to do more than just move about like shoot, chat, interact, etc and you'll easily double that.

    Nobody will have a connection at home capable of hosting your game so you'll have to pay for some decent hosting or look at using the network LOD functionality in uLink (oh wait you want them to follow Unity's model so groups should be a Pro feature, sorry).

    - You can't run Unity free as a headless server with the batchmode option (it's a Pro feature) and you'll struggle to find a hosting provider with a GPU sufficient enough to run the unity server as a windowed client especially without paying way more than you need to. Guess you'll be needing that Unity Pro license after all. (damn those feature deltas)

    - To sustain 3200 players online you'll need an active community of at least 50,000 people (I'm being really conservative here assuming they play 4hrs of games every day and your game is so good they play that 50% of the time) actually you're probably looking at least double that but if you can sustain 50,000 people in a community then put some google ads on your site/forums, run a kickstarter campaign or paypal donations and you'll soon fund 550 euro.

    Free or open source software is good, but most free and open source things have limitations either in the functionality they provide, it's scalability or in how well they perform their tasks -- yes they're perfectly useable and you can achieve some great things with it but it's never as good as it's paid counterpart if it were then the microsofts, adobe, autodesk of this world would all be out of business by now.
     
  6. Xsnip3rX

    Xsnip3rX

    Joined:
    Aug 29, 2009
    Posts:
    197
    Your cynics aside, my reasoning still stands, and so does my opinion.
     
  7. Ashkan_gc

    Ashkan_gc

    Joined:
    Aug 12, 2009
    Posts:
    1,117
    @Xsnip3rX Can you please show us your website and big fan base? I'm somehow interested. Your reasoning doesn't seem correct to me however and without descriptions you can not say it stands, you can say but people will not accept.

    @Bariel Said very well man!
     
  8. Xsnip3rX

    Xsnip3rX

    Joined:
    Aug 29, 2009
    Posts:
    197
    I added links to my signature just for you, though for future reference this is not the appropriate forum for advertising.
     
  9. Ashkan_gc

    Ashkan_gc

    Joined:
    Aug 12, 2009
    Posts:
    1,117

    Could not open your game's website. It seems that the account is suspended. Correct it please. This is not advertising to add your work to your signature. It can show who you are, what is your background and your area of expertties so it's a good thing to let others know more about you and know what fields are in your knowledge and what fields are not.
    Even if it's advertising and self promotion, it's not bad cause people don't have to watch it.
     
  10. Xsnip3rX

    Xsnip3rX

    Joined:
    Aug 29, 2009
    Posts:
    197
    Yeah, my webhost is kinda greedy, they don't wait until the first of the month when i get my money, try checking out the facebook page.
     
  11. Meltdown

    Meltdown

    Joined:
    Oct 13, 2010
    Posts:
    5,816
    17 followers on Twitter and 518 likes on Facebook, you're a long way off from getting 3200 concurrent users playing your game. As Bariel said you'll need a baseline of 50000+ users to get up to 3200 concurrent, and a very decent couple of servers at a hosting facility.

    I've done a lot of research the most cost effective host is Leaseweb, they offer some really competitive dedicated server hosting solutions.. and they off EU and US servers too..
     
  12. Xsnip3rX

    Xsnip3rX

    Joined:
    Aug 29, 2009
    Posts:
    197
    Well, i never mentioned that i was going to get 3200 users right away.

    Obviously things like that take time.
     
  13. neopan

    neopan

    Joined:
    Jan 15, 2013
    Posts:
    47
    i have been sitting here reading this thread and then it hit me.. WOW bridge commander 2? awesome

    in any event.. borgserver is the answer for people that complain about the cost (very very small) of uLink

    playerio is nice too, if you do not have the need for more than 45 players per room/zone

    i am right now finalizing my other details to get ready to dive in
     
  14. Ashkan_gc

    Ashkan_gc

    Joined:
    Aug 12, 2009
    Posts:
    1,117
    Most of those who complain have one of these reasons.1- They are not real developers with real projects (real = professional here) so they'll not end up in anything regardless of having uLink or not. 2- The features they want aren't available in other packages and their team is small enough and resources low enough that a free version can help alot at the begining. I think this 550 euros can be paid by real teams after releasing with free or coding with the free trials (which already exists) and getting money for it.
     
  15. kasulogamestudio

    kasulogamestudio

    Joined:
    Mar 22, 2012
    Posts:
    130
    Hello all,
    I am really curious about Unitypark Suite as we are checking some backend solutions here, we were checking PhotonCloud, but probably we will need some DB for users logs and security, time is critical now and we need to pick up a good choice. Photon Cloud looks really nice, I made some tests here and it works well, but I want to know more about this Unitypark... I think @Ashkan_gc worked with it already? Who else got something more to show us... their manual looks nice enough, but I need some more statistics numbers.
     
  16. Ashkan_gc

    Ashkan_gc

    Joined:
    Aug 12, 2009
    Posts:
    1,117
    Hello, Yes i did and many others did as well. the shadowgun dead zone, badanamu ww.badanamu.com kids MMO, some famous kickstarter projects like greed monger and some other interesting projects used it. To learn more about choosing your backend read the article linked below in my signature. Also you can go to our website and take a look at videos in GGJ2013 page which might give you a good taste of making something using unityPark. Keep in mind that with photon cloud you'll not be able to have your own logic on the server so you should either put database connection stuff and many other logics in your clients or have master clients which connect to cloud and use them as servers which means ping time = ping time X 2 which is not fun at all so if you need any kind of authoritative server need don't use photon cloud, photon itself maybe if you don't need unity on the server but not photon cloud.
     
  17. kasulogamestudio

    kasulogamestudio

    Joined:
    Mar 22, 2012
    Posts:
    130
    Thanks Ashkan, I will take a quick look at your videos.
    I am aware of PhotonCloud limitations (about the logic server side), actually PhotonServer could really help us too, but time is trivial now and I want something that could handle some security and connections for me at a faster way (I do believe PhotonServer can help me on that, but I am checking the manuals and Unitypark looks quicker). But, PhotonServer, for now, looks more stable for me, as I can see more examples and also I know a company that is using PhotonCloud and it really works well.

    I am still reading the manual right now and I will have a better idea at the end of the day. I want to make a simple test by myself, about logging, connecting and sharing some clients in an authoritative server and non-auth today to see its features.
    Thanks again for the help.
     
  18. Ashkan_gc

    Ashkan_gc

    Joined:
    Aug 12, 2009
    Posts:
    1,117
    So take your quick look cause the videos will create you a simple authoritative games which connects players which can move and shoot at each other. creating the login using the uLobby system or even your own mysql code is damn simple. with uLobby for now you'll need to install Riak as your database backend which is not hard even if you've not heard of it before. I hope you to be able to create your game in the way you want at the end no matter what you choose but if you choosed unityPark be aware that we are always available in forum.muchdifferent.com to help and if you ever required paid support services, you can contact us as well.
     
  19. kasulogamestudio

    kasulogamestudio

    Joined:
    Mar 22, 2012
    Posts:
    130
    So, you are a member of Unitypark team? :)
    I will take a look, dont worry. I have very good experience with networking (not actually with MMOs, but now is the time, lol), I used SmarFoxServer in the past and native networking in Unity, everything has its pros and cons.

    I plan to use every piece of Unitypark (uLink, uLobby, uGameDB). I am very interested in uGameDB also, because I checked and looks like a database where I can store everything, specially for user datas, right?

    Thanks again for the help
     
  20. k0mbain

    k0mbain

    Joined:
    Nov 1, 2012
    Posts:
    22
    Yes, you can store anything you need in Riak database. It simply keeps your objects serialized with Json, so it's very flexible. Riak is very fast and its power is that it can be runned on several machines inside a cluster. Its very reliable and fault resistans.
    We are also using UnityPark for MMORPG. The great thing with this is that it uses Unity builded exe to run authoritative server, which means you can have physics based features on the server. IE on our project we have a non-targed combat system based on colliders.

    If you want to take a closer look visit www.gloriavictisgame.com
     
    Last edited: May 19, 2013
  21. kasulogamestudio

    kasulogamestudio

    Joined:
    Mar 22, 2012
    Posts:
    130
    Thanks, I am already checking some options.
    We did some tests with PhotonCloud already, during the last week, now I am trying with Unitypark.

    Cheers
     
  22. HopE

    HopE

    Joined:
    Jun 17, 2013
    Posts:
    3
    Any news regarding uLink free? Would love to use it for my new project.
     
  23. k0mbain

    k0mbain

    Joined:
    Nov 1, 2012
    Posts:
    22
    You can use current version's 30-day trial as long as you don't give the game to players. So for in-team dev and testing purposes you can use it for free. The trial is not ending within 30 days, we've used it for a few months and finally we've bought an indie license.
     
  24. HopE

    HopE

    Joined:
    Jun 17, 2013
    Posts:
    3
    thanks good to know, but it would be also great to know if there will be a uLink version that is more suitable for small projects or even a cloud version like photon has.
     
  25. jasonMcintosh

    jasonMcintosh

    Joined:
    Jul 4, 2012
    Posts:
    74
  26. yunspace

    yunspace

    Joined:
    Nov 8, 2010
    Posts:
    41
  27. J_P_

    J_P_

    Joined:
    Jan 9, 2010
    Posts:
    1,027
    Any updates on uLink free? I'm researching my options for an upcoming online FPS title. I don't expect to need the other services included in the current license (uZone, uTsung, etc), so I'm just interested in uLink.
     
    Last edited: Jul 20, 2013
  28. Ashkan_gc

    Ashkan_gc

    Joined:
    Aug 12, 2009
    Posts:
    1,117
    @Yunspace Currently there is no cloud available. Due to lack of interest that plan calnceled but something else might be in works, however these days getting windows Azure or AWS virtual machines is really easy. Even they have pre installed Riak images i think.
     
  29. primejapes

    primejapes

    Joined:
    Feb 12, 2014
    Posts:
    4
    Is a free version of ULink still in the works?
     
  30. Tethys

    Tethys

    Joined:
    Jul 2, 2012
    Posts:
    672
    Greetings and well met Ashkan - Thanks for your links and help in the forum. My project manager wrote you guys yesterday as we are looking at obtaining some help with uLink integration. The developer we hired has been on it for a little over 2 months and we still aren't where we need to be so taking a look around at finding some help. :)
     
    Last edited: May 6, 2014
  31. P_Hansson

    P_Hansson

    Joined:
    Jul 4, 2012
    Posts:
    31
    Yes, I believe it turned out to be complicated to get the legal matters and a new licensing model sorted out along the way, thus the delay. I believe the end goal is "have no/few players? => don't pay anything, have a lot of players? => pay enough to support continued development and maintenance". :) I believe there's also market specific issues such as Koreans interpreting free in one case as free in every case, literally... So what we wanted to do in Europe and NA might not be appropriate for other markets. Anyway, don't quote me on this stuff as I'm not continually updated with the latest info, I'm spending time locked into a dungeon working on PikkoServer.
     
    Last edited: May 6, 2014
  32. Meltdown

    Meltdown

    Joined:
    Oct 13, 2010
    Posts:
    5,816
    You're not going to get any help from MuchDifferent posting here.
    Email support@muchdifferent.com
     
  33. P_Hansson

    P_Hansson

    Joined:
    Jul 4, 2012
    Posts:
    31
    ^To clarify;
    1. Our forum at http://forum.muchdifferent.com/, we try to handle common issues here as our users are often faster in answering than we are when it comes to free support. It also make answers automatically visible to the wider public which is beneficial for recurrent questions.
    2. support@muchdifferent.com for issues that cannot be solved by that forum.

    Of course any custom support agreement overrides whatever I state here.
     
    Last edited: May 6, 2014
  34. JamesPro

    JamesPro

    Joined:
    Mar 5, 2012
    Posts:
    509
    P_Hansson, Any idea when and if uPikko will be available to Indies? I work for a company that had selected uLink but our design was heavily reliant on uPikko. We could never get a straight answer from anyone concerning uPikko. We were told by some from your company that uPikko would be available it just wasn't ready yet, we were told by others that it required a Revenue share model in order to get it, then we were told by yet others that uPikko wasn't going to be available to Indies. At the same time I was being told here on these forums by some Indie Developers that uPikko was already available to Indies and they had access to it. Needless to say we dropped uLink as a result of not being able to get a straight answer however for future projects it would be nice to know for sure what's up with uPikko.
     
  35. P_Hansson

    P_Hansson

    Joined:
    Jul 4, 2012
    Posts:
    31
    Hello James,

    I apologize for the confusion, the situation has changed quite drastically the past year (as always in MuchDifferent). PikkoServer is since August in active development again, and to the best of my knowledge nobody had access to it prior. However, it is not yet 'finished' for production use, and we are in closed beta with some partners, like Behaviour Interactive and their upcoming Warhammer 40k game Eternal Crusade.

    I honestly can't say at this point when PikkoServer will be available for indies, and it's not my decision to make. It definitely is the case development must finish first before any thoughts on that can be finalized.
     
    Last edited: May 7, 2014
  36. Tethys

    Tethys

    Joined:
    Jul 2, 2012
    Posts:
    672
    No, you misunderstand. Ashkan is with noop army and he offers consulting - which is why my message was directed to him and not on the muchdifferent forums. It's all in his signature. ;)
     
  37. P_Hansson

    P_Hansson

    Joined:
    Jul 4, 2012
    Posts:
    31
    Might add that I recently started compiling and writing the new PikkoServer manual; it should illustrate why PikkoServer is best left in closed beta with a few selected partners for quite some time: http://developer.muchdifferent.com/unitypark/PikkoServer/PikkoServer I.e. major features are simply not finished, and we have not published test data yet. We will from now on be transparent with the progress as it should be an entertaining ride for the coming years. :)
     
    Last edited: May 14, 2014
  38. Meltdown

    Meltdown

    Joined:
    Oct 13, 2010
    Posts:
    5,816
    Will uLink/pikkoServer be offering support for any other game engines besides Unity?
     
  39. P_Hansson

    P_Hansson

    Joined:
    Jul 4, 2012
    Posts:
    31
    Yes. As an example, I have e.g. pure C# .NET pretending to be cell servers in my system tests in some cases. So it's definitely not difficult in itself to switch engines with PikkoServer, the difficulty lies in building an integration that makes sense in the target engine. Unity will remain the most fully featured integration for the nearest future, which is why it's in the manual.

    Edit: Updated manual to reflect this, your input is very valuable.
     
    Last edited: May 14, 2014
  40. MrAntheal

    MrAntheal

    Joined:
    Dec 11, 2016
    Posts:
    2
    Warning CS0618 'RPC' is obsolete: 'NetworkView RPC functions are deprecated. Refer to the new Multiplayer Networking system.'

    Help me
     
  41. MrLucid72

    MrLucid72

    Joined:
    Jan 12, 2016
    Posts:
    962
    Use ClientRpc