Take your gaming development skills into the online multiplayer arena by harnessing the power of Unity 4 or 3. This is not a dry tutorial - it uses exciting examples and an enthusiastic approach to bring it all to life.

Overview

• Create a variety of multiplayer games and apps in the Unity 4 game engine, still maintaining compatibility with Unity 3.
• Employ the most popular networking middleware options for Unity games
• Packed with ideas, inspiration, and advice for your own game design and development

In Detail

Unity is a game development engine that is fully integrated with a complete set of intuitive tools and rapid workflows used to create interactive 3D content. Multiplayer games have long been a staple of video games, and online multiplayer games have seen an explosion in popularity in recent years. Unity provides a unique platform for independent developers to create the most in-demand multiplayer experiences, from relaxing social MMOs to adrenaline-pumping competitive shooters.

A practical guide to writing a variety of online multiplayer games with the Unity game engine, using a multitude of networking middleware from player-hosted games to standalone dedicated servers to cloud multiplayer technology. You can create a wide variety of online games with the Unity 4 as well as Unity 3 Engine.

You will learn all the skills needed to make any multiplayer game you can think of using this practical guide. We break down complex multiplayer games into basic components, for different kinds of games, whether they be large multi-user environments or small 8-player action games. You will get started by learning networking technologies for a variety of situations with a Pong game, and also host a game server and learn to connect to it.Then, we will show you how to structure your game logic to work in a multiplayer environment. We will cover how to implement client-side game logic for player-hosted games and server-side game logic for MMO-style games, as well as how to deal with network latency, unreliability, and security.

You will then gain an understanding of the Photon Server while creating a star collector game; and later, the Player.IO by creating a multiplayer RTS prototype game. You will also learn using PubNub with Unity by creating a chatbox application. Unity Multiplayer Games will help you learn how to use the most popular networking middleware available for Unity, from peer-oriented setups to dedicated server technology.

What you will learn from this book

• Use Unity networking for in-game player-hosted servers
• Create cloud-based games with Photon Cloud
• Employ dedicated servers for massive multiuser environments
• Make game logic server-authoritative
• Deal with latency and unreliable networks
• Use PubNub for HTTP-based push messaging
• Employ Player.IO to persist game data to the cloud
• Use various forms of networked entity interpolation

Approach

An easy-to-follow, tutorial manner that uses the learning-by-example approach.

Who this book is written for

If you are a developer who wants to start making multiplayer games with the Unity game engine, this book is for you. This book assumes you have some basic experience with programming. No prior knowledge of the Unity IDE is required.