Photon Server and Redistributable Clarification
Options
Greetings Exit Games developers,
We are developing Astral Terra and releasing on Steam Early Access in a few months. We have been back and forth a bit on our Network Technology - we have tried uLink and are in the process of trying Photon. We have a few questions that have been hard to find/obtain answers to. Tobias had mentioned in another thread that he would be posting some more info on Redist a few months back but I have not seen that info posted.
Question 1: Our game works similar to Terraria, Minecraft or Planet Explorers. It is a Unity based, procedural smooth voxel sandbox. We want players to be able to host their own game, hence us switching from our current Photon implementation (cloud) to Server and Redist (players should be able to each fire up their own server from their game machine and host friends, just like the previous mentioned games). I thought Photon Server would allow this but here is the question: If player A starts up a multiplayer game (we have to find the code to make Unity fire it up the server on the backend when we select multiplayer), has player B and C join, when player A leaves will player B and C be thrown out of the game or will the server, if not shut down, allow those players to continue to play together in the online world. The idea is that our players, like Terraria and Minecrat players, should be able to fire up their server, play and then exit the game while leaving the server running so that other players can continue to play while they are not in game. Can Photon Server with Redist do this and does it do it out of the box or will it take some custom code on our part? We have of course a non-authoritative setup.
Question 2: 500 server limit for the Redis sever licence may be a little low (for close to the same price, $200 more, uLink gives you unlimited servers when your self hosting license). When we go over that 500 server limit, what will happen to our service? Is there a cap on the back end that prevents the 501st server from going up? We want to make sure existing players are not effected when the cap is hit. Thanks again for the cool product and support!
We are developing Astral Terra and releasing on Steam Early Access in a few months. We have been back and forth a bit on our Network Technology - we have tried uLink and are in the process of trying Photon. We have a few questions that have been hard to find/obtain answers to. Tobias had mentioned in another thread that he would be posting some more info on Redist a few months back but I have not seen that info posted.
Question 1: Our game works similar to Terraria, Minecraft or Planet Explorers. It is a Unity based, procedural smooth voxel sandbox. We want players to be able to host their own game, hence us switching from our current Photon implementation (cloud) to Server and Redist (players should be able to each fire up their own server from their game machine and host friends, just like the previous mentioned games). I thought Photon Server would allow this but here is the question: If player A starts up a multiplayer game (we have to find the code to make Unity fire it up the server on the backend when we select multiplayer), has player B and C join, when player A leaves will player B and C be thrown out of the game or will the server, if not shut down, allow those players to continue to play together in the online world. The idea is that our players, like Terraria and Minecrat players, should be able to fire up their server, play and then exit the game while leaving the server running so that other players can continue to play while they are not in game. Can Photon Server with Redist do this and does it do it out of the box or will it take some custom code on our part? We have of course a non-authoritative setup.
Question 2: 500 server limit for the Redis sever licence may be a little low (for close to the same price, $200 more, uLink gives you unlimited servers when your self hosting license). When we go over that 500 server limit, what will happen to our service? Is there a cap on the back end that prevents the 501st server from going up? We want to make sure existing players are not effected when the cap is hit. Thanks again for the cool product and support!
0
Comments
-
Hey,
sorry for the late response here.
1. The rooms are open as long as any player is them. No code changes are required from your side. In future versions, we will also have rooms that can be "kept alive" for some time even if all players left and they are empty.
2. We don't want to disappoint customers as well - neither you nor your players. There is no automatic blocking if the server cap is reached. We do gather some statistics about used licenses and if we suspect that someone deliberately violates our license terms, we will reach out to the customer and see how we can solve the situation.
For the pricing / number of servers: please drop us a mail at developer@exitgames.com and let us know what you need - we are always trying to have competitive prices. :-)0 -
Thank you for your input Nicole. We will be experimenting with this over the next couple weeks - I'll probably have more questions.
Have a great weekend! 0
![[Deleted User]](https://wa.vanillicon.com/v2/a2145153dca14f6987b6e846db7bacab.svg)