Best way to network several player owned units at a time...

RedMintus

Hi,

In my prototype each player moves around the level with a few friendly characters following them (could be up to 10). So you move around while friendly characters authoritative to you follow you through the map, each of the four players in game also have this.
At the moment I just have each 'follower AI' individually updating their positions to the network via the stream update. I'm looking to ramp up the numbers (I wanna push 20-30 for each player). While I'm doing this, I'd like to know if it would be best to instead have a sort of "FollowerAISync" script that sends all their positions to stream instead of having a separate update for each one.... Would this reduce each player's load on the network?

Example:
Instead of having this for each guy...

 private void OnPhotonSerializeView(PhotonStream stream, PhotonMessageInfo info)
    {
        if (stream.isWriting)
        {
            stream.SendNext(followerAI.transform.position);
            stream.SendNext(followerAI.transform.rotation);
        }
        else
        {
            TargetPosition = (Vector3)stream.ReceiveNext();
            TargetRotation = (Quaternion)stream.ReceiveNext();
        }
    }

Would it be better to list these guys and update to the stream by looping through the list?

 private void OnPhotonSerializeView(PhotonStream stream, PhotonMessageInfo info)
    {
        if (stream.isWriting)
        {
            foreach (GameObject follower in Followers)
            { 
                 stream.SendNext(follower.transform.position);
                 stream.SendNext(follower.transform.rotation);
            }
        }
        else
        {
            foreach (GameObject follower in Followers)
            { 
                TargetPosition = (Vector3)stream.ReceiveNext();
                TargetRotation = (Quaternion)stream.ReceiveNext();
            }
        }
    }

Feedback would be greatly appreciated.