Photon CloudMultiplayer Developer Crash Course

Tobias Schweers

Photon in a Nutshell

• Socket Server and Framework• Realtime, Multiplayer, Cross Platform• 23,000 developers (Indies and AAA)

U4ia (= euphoria)

• Industry Veterans (Dusty Welch, Chris Archer & team)• Free-to-play, AAA, Hardcore, Browser Based Games• „The middleware that gave us the least headache ...“,

Dan MacDonald, Lead Programmer 5

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Photon Unity Networking (PUN)• Unity Networking (UN) is very convenient, simple and

powerful• It is the entry point for most Indies to start Networking

experiments

• BUT it has several major draw backs! UN needs a Master Server to be hosted! P2P leads to NAT/punch-through issues (especially in mobile

networks)! Dropped hosts kill the games and so frustrate players! UN will (probably) never run on the new Unity exports Flash /

Chrome NaCl

PUN Feature CoverageSynchronization2 Position, Rotation, Scale2 Serialization by script2 Buffered Instantiation- Animation

Grouping and Scope- Not supported by server- Events are ignored accordingly

Server Logic2 MasterClient replaces Host(Remark: Photon is just used as „relay“)

RPCs2 From client to client2 By method name2 Receiver selectable2 Buffered

Callbacks2 Player joins, leaves2 Connection states2 Instantiation

Network Simulation2 Lag, Jitter, Loss- Bandwidth throtteling

Additional FeaturesPlatform as a Service (PaaS)+ No server installs with the Cloud+ Transparent load balancing

Properties (Rooms and Players)+ Key-Value collection for custom data (name, etc.)

Runtime Scene GameObjects + Can be instantiated with owner “scene“

Dashboard+ See CCUs, Disconnects etc.

Host Transition+ Remaining players select new MasterClient

Offline Mode+ Same logic for offline gaming