Unity 6 End-to-End Multiplayer

I am very proud of what the team has been able to cook for Unity 6 Multiplayer. Unity is becoming quickly this unique and incredible end-to-end platform with everything seamlessly integrated. And starting today it’s all in Unity 6 Preview! Unity #unity3d

First of all you definitely want to sign up for the Accelerate your multiplayer prototyping with Unity 6 webinar by Esteban Enrique M. today as we’ll cover much of what’s new with hands on demo https://unity.com/campaign/multiplayer-summer-series

It often gets complicated and slows us down to choose the tech to implement any multiplayer feature. Here comes Multiplayer Center, providing us a curated list of all multiplayer tools and services relevant to your project whenever useful during your experimentations!

Add Multiplayer Center by allowing pre-release packages in the Package Manager settings, and add it to your project. Then go to Window > Multiplayer > Multiplayer Center.

Integration time usually gets in the way to try new things. Multiplayer Widgets are preassembled UI small configurable and customizable templates to add a connected gameplay feature easily, whether it’s a lobby, a session connection, or voice chat!

In Multiplayer Center, the widget package is recommended whenever you have Netcode for GameObject selected. It also works with Netcode for Entities even though Multiplayer Center says it doesn’t. That’s a known issue we’ll correct this ASAP.

When comes the time to validate our gameplay, deployment might get in the way of iteration time too. Multiplayer Play Mode help you validate your gameplay immediately by launching up to four independent processes, light editors, from the same assets on disk!

At some point, it’s time to involve play testers on separate devices. Multiplayer Play Mode scenarios allow you to define complex deployment steps when going to play mode, such as building a dedicated server target, and uploading it to Multiplay Hosting, all in one click!

Multiplayer Play Mode and Play Mode scenarios come with the Multiplayer Play Mode package, that’ll also be recommended by Multiplayer Center for all use cases, since those tools are Netcode agnostics, even for your custom netcode based on Transport Package.

Client-hosted games is excellent to limit costs, but this often means capping number of players, being at the mercy of host disconnection or bad latency. Distributed Authority in Netcode for GameObjects takes care of the burden in a cost-effective and scalable solution!

Distributed Authority has also this incredible power to give control over what client owns what, allowing for fancy latency management strategies, and since simulation is distributed to various clients, that allows to scale beyond the usual GameObjects simulation limits.

Client-hosted is also a very valid scenario for games built with Netcode for Entities on ECS for Unity, but we don’t have a session management service for it yet, we’re working on it. Let us know how fast you need one!

Server-hosted games that needs preventing cheating are now a lot easier to assemble with Multiplay Hosting pre-integrated. That can be with Netcode for GameObjects for simplicity, or ECS and Netcode for Entities for high performance/low latency/large number of players.

Sometimes you want to take control of the netcode implementation. You can get there quickly by leveraging the underlying Transport Package of our Netcodes, which takes care of the low-level networking layer for your custom netcode.

A good example of this with our recent stream with our friends from Enhearten Media for the RTS Sanctuary Shattered Sun. https://x.com/LaurentGibert/status/1816176520638910954

Now you get a working gameplay and it’s time to find out how to connect the right players together. That can be difficult to integrate a variety of third party services. Every company has their own environment, pricing, tech standards…

The Multiplayer Services package has unified everything together in a single Session Management concept and set of APIs! That makes managing lobbies, matchmaking, player authentication and more super easy to add to your projects! Widgets are also amazing for experimenting.

Particular mention about the depth of matchmaking capabilities. You can go very far in the rabbit hole of your gameplay data participating actively in the matmaking, like experience, levels, or player gear, and you can inspect those player matches in lots of details.

When the right players are connected together in the sessions, then you need engagement features. Same here, we simplified a lot how to get Vivox voice and text chat integrated in your projects. Again, through Multiplayer Center or widgets, it’s just a few clicks away!

Voice or text chat can be tough to manage especially if you have a small moderation team. Once Vivox is integrated in your project then you can get access to our AI-powered moderation capabilities to monitor and take action in targeted ways, so your players stay engaged.

We’re at work upgrading our samples for Unity 6, more to be announced soon about it. At Unite we’ll try to show you even lower device specs you could target with competitive multiplayer games. Hope to see you there! https://unity.com/events/unite

The dev team will be here to answer all of your questions on our Multiplayer blitz day August 14th, 2024 on Discussion and Discord, save the date! https://discussions.unity.com/t/multiplayer-dev-blitz-day-2024/1495280