Unity : Shimstar ; reloaded

OK let's try to create a multiplayer space game with 6 degrees of freedom.

I am not sure to follow the right way to create a game from scratch, I will write articles depending of what I consider to be important to know to create a multiplayer game, with physics.

SkyBox

Because, I like to be in the atmosfear, I ve created a skybox using SpaceScape to grab 6 textures.

I create into a folder, named Materials a new Material called skybox. In the inspector, choose the shader (skybox/6 sided)

Next try to add your 6 images to have in the preview your skybox.

Now you can go to the top menu "Window", and choose lighting, to make your new material effective to your scene :

Modify light configuration, to have an ambient light to light your object into the scene.

Networking in Unity

A game is at first defines by different scene. A player will play into one scene, and can travel scene to another scene.

In a configuration of one server, and multiple client connected, you will have a server running for each scene you will create.

The client will loadLevel and connect to the server it needs.

Server must have authority on physics, and will receive input from client, and broadcast results to all client who needs it.

You don't have a global server which manage a world with subscene. It is important to understand this.

Indeed, you will to manage to connect to a scene, and to disconnect from the scene, to connect to another scene running elsewhere (different IP, or different port).

In Unity, each object of the scene, can have multiple component:

• mesh
• material
• scripts

You can associate as much of script you need, to manage behaviour of the object.

For example, you will have 3 scripts:

• network identity : standard unity script which provide an unique network identity
• network transform : standard unity script which manage the data transfer of position and rotation of the object
• your behaviour script : custom script, with your specific fields, and function to manage custom behaviour

Unity will manage network behaviour on object possessing networking script.

Next Step

I will try to describe enough in details the different mechanism, during construction of the game.

I will show you how to manage a connection scene, and connect to a server.

After that, I will show you how to manage physics through networking.