More Thorough Unity Examples?

seonr
edited May 2011 in DotNet
I know the Exit games guys here have admitted that the Unity examples are lacking at the moment, but is there any work being done on new and more detailed ones? Is there an ETA?

I am looking for higher end examples of realtime, multi-player, lots of movement and updates with prediction/interpolation style examples. - Yes, this is a request :-)

Also, our team is made up of a mix of C# and JS coders, as have many concurrent projects on the go and each coder is allowed to choose their own language to code in (seems crazy, but works really well for us)... is there any plans to release JS examples too ?

Comments

  • Good questions. We would like to provide more samples of course. The more detailed ones you are asking for might be out of our scope, however.

    Prediction and lag compensation are solved differently per game type. We would have to choose one game type over the other and maybe it won't help for your game in the end. That's why we are a little shy when it comes to certain game type demos.

    Currently, we work on our developer network. After that, we might add a Unity Lobby demo first (there is only the one in DotNet so far). Then cover chat or something like that. It will take a while. So, sorry: no ETA yet.

    About JavaScript and C# in Unity:
    I think we can't provide you with good JavaScript samples, as we are mainly C#, Java an C/C++ guys here. I'm not even sure how I would handle the different data types we use in JS, so you would probably laugh about our approach ;)

    If you could, please share your findings with the other users of this forum. I guess there are others interested in this and you might get help as well.
  • Hello Tobias,

    Is there currently in any of the packages a unity example of a morg configuration? Simply put, as many people that are working morg type games only need a simple start which would be ->client connects, enters world, see's other players-their movement, direction and rotation and are able to chat with one another.

    This setup right here would have me on my way already. Instead, I am still fumbling about with the demo. Seems to me that if I were to see something like above, including a chat it would show the differences in communication types, possibly using level 2 or 3 for chat etc.

    I have noticed also in the demo, strange from a Unity perspective that x,y are used for what we use for x, z. so, this from the start was a change. I am still working in the entire x,y,z and a rotation r. Incredible to work with, but being new, simple (simple on your part I think) would have me rolling.
  • We think that in most cases, one solution does not fit for many games. We tried with Neutron, which did a lot of the stuff. It was even more difficult to explain and use than Photon is now.

    If you could do with "parties" or instanced areas, use rooms in Lite. The Realtime Demo exchanges position data. Adding chat is another RaiseEvent with another Event Code.

    If you are looking into creating a world, did you find the MMO Demo? It's in the Server SDK: sdk\src-server\Mmo.
    Server side, it features a different approach than Lite. We have big worlds and in them, regions. A player's interest area defines which updates it gets of the movements around it. Boris also added rotation updates, so this would basically fit your needs.


    A few questions in return:
    How elaborate should the chat be? Just messages in a room? In Lite or the MMO demo?
    Which world should a client enter? Do we need a list? Is it fixed?
    How many players should be in one room or is it a world?

    If we know better what exactly everyone is looking for, we would like to add it.
  • Yes, I did look at the MMO demo, it uses the Unity Island demo which is outdated. It is very specific for the island demo also. The Island demo w/photon is a great tool for someone wanting to see a lot of Photon in action and I admit, it is impressive. :)

    As mentioned above, a simple Unity3d demo with the above mentioned items would be helpful in that a Unity3d user would be able to build upon that code for their own needs, or possible like I would want to do, see Photon working 100% within my own project.

    To answer questions about a possible chat example. I of course cannot speak for everyone but do read a lot on the forums and do notice much of the things I to am looking for, chat of course being one of them. I personally think for an example of photon that it would need to be as simple as possible, one world, one chat box to all in that world. As the MMO demo is region based, for this it might be something others may want to also see the chat region based.

    In all, for me, I would want to see the simple trade of data from a client to the server and sent back to the world. A simple solution with a Unity chat box and see it work right out of the box.

    Dreamora had a great idea in where you take an already existing chat created for Unity and convert it from Unity networking to Photon, however, I personally am unable to do this.

    In all Tobias, as I read through many forums I see the same things coming up over and over, and, I am sure many of you also see these same posts. people working on an MMO in Unity, many seem to have much of their own code but lack the "plugin" to have Photon go by adding a script or two.

    usePhoton/player.cs etc, these were easy to implement, plug and play. Launching the demo and then adding then launching the realtime-demo test application had demo players loading no problem, quick and easy.

    This may be asking a lot, maybe out of exitgames scope even. I just know that as someone new to both Unity3d and Photon that these examples would have me on my way with something to build on.

    sorry so wordy!
  • Hehe. Never mind being "so wordy".
    Thanks for your feedback. And yes, we see some of the requests quite often. We will try to add more demos of course.
    Sometimes we probably try to solve too much at the same time. If we added guilds, teams, areas, friends and ignores and all that. This would be out of scope for us, but a simple chat (simply to anyone in a room or in the area) should be possible.

    Along with the Island demo (which must be fixed by commenting out 2 lines of code, to work with Unity 3), we also have a Unity Grid Demo. It's based on the same shared code, however, so it might be too complicated as well.

    I'm glad you could make sense of usePhoton.cs and player.cs at least. From there, sending a chat message to the others in a room is not far. But it's not meant for the MMO server application.

    I will try to get more time for demos but we're also busy. I keep my fingers crossed :)
  • I agree that MMO is very broad topic. Exampling everything would surely be immense work for Exit Games which should probably be spent elsewhere. Maybe we should build community based portal which would encircle MMO/Unity/Photon development with blog articles/tutorials/guides/demos and all sorts of code even possibly asset store similar to Unity just for this sole purpose. This would basically be self-sustained MMO development covering many areas from multitude of contributors.

    Question is if theres really need and how popular it would be. I'm willing to set it up and contribute as I have all necessary controls and can have it up in few days, but my experience with Unity or Photon, well for now its not enough to make it interesting endeavor whatsoever, but I'm quick learner and C# makes up my living for several years already :geek:. Give me your thoughts on this 8-) .
  • Go from here with MMO/Unity/Photon development blog...