i am pretty new to game dev but a guy offered to pay me for a game and i now im here adding mult after doing my reasearch i saw alot of videos mention and use photon and the thing is the shortest one was 2 minutes long, now ive been dabling in the Programming community long before i actually started programming and i know that mutliplayer is smth that is hated amongst Programmers sicne u have to host a server on google then i dont know, some use the steam api but i found out about photon and the thing is it seems to simple to actually work
#Is Photon good for basic multiplayer?
trail shale
this is the tutorial in question
it seems to easy somehow
now yes if i were to make a game that is mostly relying on multiplayer then yeah i would deff programm my own stuff using the steam api but the thing is i have a glorified 3d clicker and people also said how it is just basically a "call of duty zombies knockoff"
but its like 20 times worse
hearty yew
I haven't used photon, but whenever I see a video saying something complicated can be done in 5 or less minutes I'm always skeptical. I have used unity netcode for game objects and the initial setup isn't bad, but I will say, whatever you pick the initial setup is probably the easier step, the harder part is figuring out how to pass data properly between server and clients. Code monkeys has some good videos on how to set it up, you could easily get the initial setup done in a day
nocturne narwhal
i am pretty new to game dev but a guy offered to pay me for a game and i now im ...
You dont need to host a server on google or use steam api. (Things like this are used for matchmakers or relays, it’s something you can return to later) You can simply direct connect with an ip adress. Photon is a great piece of software. If youre brand new I would recommend netcode for gameobjects because it makes simple common things like syncing state, sending data and rpcs to and from the server/clients and hosting/connecting very easy
However NGO doesnt scale particularly well in my experienec
Its very easy to sync state and data but doing lots of complex stuff in larger projects can be a bit cumbersome compared to other networking solutions (fnr, photon etc)
obsidian basin
Multiplayer, in general, regardless of solution, is fundamentally not easy, just like how a helicopter may be "easier" to fly than a military jet, neither are very "easy" to fly, there are tons of consideration when it comes to multiplayer, from security and anti-cheat to data management and transfer, connecting players, syncing your game actions, the actual servers themselves (which usually requires a paid subscription plan) and multiplayer projects usually require thinking about every part of your game in a different way
That said, I would argue that PUN2 is technically one of the more "beginner-friendly" solutions to get something simple setup, though beyond the basics, things can get complicated quickly - PUN2 is also in a "dev" state where it no longer receives updates, so it can be viable for simple games, though usually Fusion is suggested as a PUN alternative and there are lots of other alternatives (with varying support and cost), depending on the network demands of your project, though I would be careful of short tutorials that promise a "easy" fix - 2 minutes is just not enough time imo to teach anyone anything technical - none of this should sound discouraging though, just that multiplayer extends the complexity of any game, a project that should take a few months, could now take a few years, just keep that in mind
hearty yew
^yes, I'm working on a multiplayer game right now and it's taking me a lot longer
nocturne narwhal
The points Dibble made are really great ones and are pretty important to sort out.
Ask the person youre building this for how they want the multiplayer functionality to work precisely snd go from there
If its « matchmaking, persistent data/progression and autoscaling servers » vs just « get a friend to connect to each other using a steam relay » your outlook on how you approach it changes a lot
Its a big task for someone new to gamedev.. there are also a lot of security concerns that youre probably not aware of and even less so how to fix them
That said for the solutions themselves NGO is good for beginners and simple projects (codemonkey video is great as mentioned) but still expect things to be quite difficult
trail shale
Oh fuck, yeah i didnt count in an anti cheat nor protection of someones personal data