Is PhotonCloud Suitable for my needs?

C64

Hi,

I have a physics movement based game in Unity3d (V4). My research for networking games that use Physics is that I would have to use an authoritative server to make sure that all players experience the same physics movement so that players are in the correct place etc.

From what I can tell to do that I would need an actual server running Unity for physics, however it seems that PhotonCloud uses a different method for networking games and as such physics will not work. Is this correct? If so are there any recommendations on working round this for PhotonCloud. Is it a case of creating my own Photon Server? I would like to avoid setting up servers etc as I am already at capacity learning so many other aspects of Unity3d.

If I have to use Photon Server, then are there any recommend hosts that have installed/ pre-configured Photon Servers?

As a last resort, I could change my game to not use physics. If I did this, would using PhotonCloud then be a realistic option?

I have researched this but seem to get conflicting information or the posts are old and things may have changed since then.

All advice appreciated.

Thanks

C64

Tobias

Difficult question

You are correct about Photon and server side physics: We don't run any in the Photon Cloud. You could integrate a physics engine with the server SDK but have to host this yourself and you need to export the level from Unity and much more.
This is a lot more work than running a Unity instance as server.

You could try to make one client authoritative and let it update the others. But this setup doesn't guarantee the lowest lag possible and this is likely bad for physics. It won't look good, if your physics is corrected every now and then.

I would try to avoid using physics in a game-relevant way. Use it for effects or whatever but not to base your whole game on it. This is really difficult to get done right.

C64

Thanks for the advice Tobias! I will have to think about it, but at least I am aware of the conditions.