Help Needed to Get Started

Hi,
I am new here. I am generally comfortable with Unity. Have tried a tutorial on Unity networking.
I am looking for
1. Suggestion for product selection
2. Suggestion for sample project, considering my requirements.
3. Suggestion for version management

My needs:
1. 2 to 4 humanoid player RPG. More like shooting game.
2. Voice chat.
3. I also want to be able to "take a copy" of the audio clip recorded from microphone. (i.e. if I use Photon voice, I still want the ability to read audio buffer , through a callback or other means, though Photon voice could do everything in the background to manage the voice transmission.
4. Later I want to add AR/VR abilities (if there is a sample project with all these, it is great)

Questions and concerns:
1. Now Unity's networking seems quite messy with the HLAPI being deprecated without any replacement yet. I want something that works with Unity 2017.4 or any other stable version.
2. I saw in documentation that Photon Voice and PUN are like different products. To use Photon voice, I should start fresh with Photon voice (without PUN).

Considering these, please suggest the best sample project and the best asset (Photon Voice?) and the best Unity version to start with.

Thanks a lot for the help.

Regards
Ishwar

Comments

  • I also intend to add simple text chat to the same later, with features like emojis and stickers. Considering these, please suggest the starting point, tutorials and sample project. Thanks in advance.
  • JohnTube
    JohnTube ✭✭✭✭✭
    Hi @Ishwar,

    Thank you for choosing Photon!



    What you are looking for:
    1. You can do what you want using Photon Voice 2. It includes PUN2 and Photon Chat in a single package.
    2. I'm not sure we have the right demo for your needs but we have demos per product. Also, there is a showcase of products made with Photon.
    3. I'm not sure about what you mean with version management exactly so I will answer everything related to versioning.
    a. Import and update Photon Voice 2 only, do not import PUN2 or Photon Chat separately. We always update the Photon Voice package to include the latest versions of PUN2 and Photon Chat.
    b. You can use git or any other VCS. Our assets should not be shared in a public repo however unless we agree to that.
    c. Photon Cloud uses virtual applications where you can split your user base per AppVersion. PUN versioning is special as by default different PUN versions can't talk to each other. You could also force client updates using custom authentication.

    Your needs:
    1. PUN2 can easily do this.
    2. Photon Voice 2 can easily do this.
    3. This is possible using Photon Voice yes.
    4. PUN2 and Photon Voice 2 are AR/VR ready, lots of customers use Photon in their AR/VR projects already. We are preparing one but no ETA sorry.

    Your questions and concerns:
    1. Photon Voice 2 works with Unity 5.6+.
    2. I think you should work with Photon Voice 2 and PUN2 together. The integration is easy.
  • Thanks a lot for the response. I started with Photon voice 2. I am amazed with the level of documentation and the demos as part of the imported asset. Great stuff !
    I initially ran into issue of 'BestRegion' (my clients joined different regions and I was clueless initially). Soon got it resolved.
    I also noticed that Photon solution exists for several years now and some of the concepts were taken into official UNet. I studied Unity Unet also a bit. The command Cmd concept is bit complicated and also now they obsoleted it already. Photon RPC seems lot more intuitive.

    Thank you for creating such an amazing solution !! I will continue to build what I am trying and get back if any other queries. Thanks once again !