Capacity check: Photon Cloud - is it suitable for my game?
Hi all,
Since I'm just beginning to investigate networking options, and the people here probably know the most about what the Photon servers/PUN are capable of handling, I figured it would be valuable to spec-out my game's requirements and get guidance on the best approach.
I'm currently building a game with the following requirements:
These will be the only objects of importance with regards to network communication.
I was planning on using the Photon Cloud to host my game. My thoughts were that a single player could broadcast the state of all active physics objects on a periodic basis (perhaps every 1 second, to prevent divergence due to Unity's non-deterministic physics engine - this is a wild guess). Given this, I would have the following broadcast each second, in the worst case:
[list=2]
[*]50 objects/second by a single player to all other 3 players (equivalent to 5 objects every 1/10th second)[/*]
[*]1 character's state 10 times a second by all 4 players to all other 3 players[/*][/list]
Given savvy networking code and optimizations, is this a scenario that the Photon Cloud Servers are appropriate for handling for an optimal user experience, or is the physics engine something I really need to have running server-side? Does anyone have any guidance or suggestions?
Thanks!
Since I'm just beginning to investigate networking options, and the people here probably know the most about what the Photon servers/PUN are capable of handling, I figured it would be valuable to spec-out my game's requirements and get guidance on the best approach.
I'm currently building a game with the following requirements:
- 2-4 simultaneous players (characters), requiring constant update
- 15(average) to 50(peak) physics objects (most will be inactive at most points, but up to 50 peak active physics objects is worst-case)
These will be the only objects of importance with regards to network communication.
I was planning on using the Photon Cloud to host my game. My thoughts were that a single player could broadcast the state of all active physics objects on a periodic basis (perhaps every 1 second, to prevent divergence due to Unity's non-deterministic physics engine - this is a wild guess). Given this, I would have the following broadcast each second, in the worst case:
[list=2]
[*]50 objects/second by a single player to all other 3 players (equivalent to 5 objects every 1/10th second)[/*]
[*]1 character's state 10 times a second by all 4 players to all other 3 players[/*][/list]
Given savvy networking code and optimizations, is this a scenario that the Photon Cloud Servers are appropriate for handling for an optimal user experience, or is the physics engine something I really need to have running server-side? Does anyone have any guidance or suggestions?
Thanks!
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Comments
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I really like how you summed up your network activity. Nice job
We don't have too much first hand experience with physics in-game. Take this as educated guess.
If your characters can move the physics objects around concurrently, then the physics engine is not your biggest problem and you have to sync the objects much more often. Due to the lag in synchronization, the character positions each player has will differ per client. Imagine 2 clients think their characters are kicking the physics object around "first". The object might move in totally different directions on both clients and you have to fix that.
If it's clear who can affect which physics object, then you will have much less trouble.
Aside from that, the Photon Cloud will be able to send those updates. You might have to fight lag a bit and see find out the "control" scheme (who moves which item).0
