Handling large worlds on server

[twin rain]

Hello, I'm working on a battle royale game and so naturally the world is pretty large and it takes forever to load. So I'm thinking of doing this approach but before I commit to it I want to know if it will work or not

Server side :
-> first load the game scene normally via scene manager
-> then load terrain scenes additively
-> start session in the game scene once all terrain scenes are loaded

Client side :
-> just join the game scene and load the nearby terrain scenes

Will this work? Also should I consume terrain scenes and move the terrains to main game scenes before starting the session?

Using photon fusion 2

[scarlet bramble]

Might need to ask this over on the photon server, but generally breaking the scene up and loading them additively is the way to go. I'm not sure how photon handles scene management and if clients can be in different scenes from each other.

[willow frigate]

Setting aside the network issues, does unity even have large open world support built into it?

I honestly didn’t think it did. But I have been out of the Unity scene for the last two years.

[scarlet bramble]

Depends on what you mean by built in. You can do a lot with asset streaming and addressables

[eager jolt]

Im new so don't take anything I say seriously.. but an idea I had was maybe, load everyone into a small lobby area (maybe it can load first as a layer or something idk), with most actions disabled while loading the main scene, then once complete move to their respective starting locations for the main scene? This was more of a question than a solution lol

[scarlet bramble]

This wouldn't solve the loading time just hides it in the lobby scene. But it would prevent potential timeouts while the main battlefield is loading

[eager jolt]

Check DM. sent something @twin rain

[willow frigate]

Well I mean you don’t need to write scripts to stream content (material textures, mesh, etc) on demand.

I know it has been done with unity but the framework was custom scripted.

And then you need to write some framework with networking in mind. That expands the complexity.