Multiplayer
This week, had me integrating multiplayer support. I can say, that the client and server are now there, and multiple clients on a LAN can now connect to each other. I wrote my own custom built UDP client and server, so there isn't any dependency on network assets from the asset store, or Unity's network API.
How Multiplayer Works
The way it works is how Mojang did it in Minecraft. You simply start a game, pause it, and the pause menu has a "Start Server" button. Press that, and the running client becomes a server too. On another client, probably on another PC, just click "Multiplayer" on the main menu. You can be in single player mode, and instantly change to a multiplayer game, without going back to the main menu. As other clients connect, their players start appearing in the server/client too.
Chat is there too. You can type to all clients who are connected on the LAN in the game together.
Its tested with about 10 clients so far (ran out of memory on the PC with so many clients running), and I just put in placeholders for all remote clients running around on each client.
I'll update this post as soon as the testing for network on Android is done. We have Unity Pro for PC, iOS and Android already, so networking should be possible once we start releasing alpha versions.
Also, I'll be making the server discovery on the LAN autonomous, which means any clients that choose "Multiplayer" from the main menu, will scan the LAN for the server without needing to put in the IP address first.
Dynamic Infinite Terrain
The other coder has been working on the infinite terrain routines this week. Thats coming along nicely.
