What this book covers
Chapter 1, Unity Networking – The Pong Game, introduces the concept of reliable UDP communication, and different types of servers employed by games. It covers Unity Networking, and creating a networked two-player Pong clone.
Chapter 2, Photon Unity Networking – The Chat Client, covers a third-party alternative to Unity Networking. It introduces the concept of the cloud-hosted game servers, simple matchmaking, and friends lists. It also covers the creation of a simple chat client.
Chapter 3, Photon Server – Star Collector, introduces dedicated servers for games. It covers creating a Photon Server application, connecting to a server, using the request/response/event system to communicate, and creating a simple Star Collector game.
Chapter 4, Player.IO – Bot Wars, covers an alternative dedicated server system. It introduces the database features of Player.IO, how to create a Player.IO server, connecting from Unity, and creating a simple RTS-style game with persistent user stats.
Chapter 5, PubNub – The Global Chatbox, introduces communication over an HTTP messaging service. It covers benefits and pitfalls of HTTP for communication, using the WWW class to communicate via PubNub, and creating a chatroom application.
Chapter 6, Entity Interpolation and Prediction, introduces the concept of server-side movement physics and potential issues and solutions. It covers client-side movement prediction, and how to smooth the motion of remote entities.
Chapter 7, Server-side Hit Detection, introduces the concept of server-side hit detection for shooter-style games. It covers the reasons behind target-leading problems in many online games, and how to resolve the issue by rewinding the game state.
