Load balancing concept.

[sberghici]

Michael
I'm a big fan of your libraries(TNet and NGUI) and I'd recommend TNet to everyone looking for the simple and inexpensive network solution for Unity!
I'm about to finish my FPS game using TNet and currently working on load balancing implementation. It goes well however my current solution is not ideal and I'm kind of stuck with the best approach.     
My wish for the future releases is to implement some kind of simple load balancing concept and documentation that exists in other networking frameworks(ie Photon).

[ArenMook]

Load balancing is something you'd use with multiple servers. Ie: if you have a lobby that's aware of 10 game servers, it would direct the players toward the servers with less people. You can easily do this on the client side -- connect to the lobby, get the list of servers, and have the default option for the player be the server with the least number of people.

Next feature I'll be adding to TNet is proximity-based TNObjects. Ie: when creating an object, you can choose the "radius" value, and the object will be created when players enter the radius (along with all the RFCs), and will be destroyed when the player leaves the area. I figure it will be needed for Windward as well -- as there is no point in sending frequent packets of far-away ships.

[chilly]

Awesome,

that is what i was talking about long time ago, regarding AOI/network LOD   support

Aren,

when will you be releasing this new feature?
weeks or months?

[ArenMook]

A few weeks. It's a feature I need for Windward myself.

[chilly]

Next feature I'll be adding to TNet is proximity-based TNObjects. Ie: when creating an object, you can choose the "radius" value, and the object will be created when players enter the radius (along with all the RFCs), and will be destroyed when the player leaves the area. I figure it will be needed for Windward as well -- as there is no point in sending frequent packets of far-away ships.

@Aren
long time no see,  happy 2015 to all

ive been away for almost a year letting tnet to mature before i work on my tnet project.
but seems that the features i was expecting or in the roadmap were never added.
:-(

maybe i am wrong,  but  Aren:
is the feature above regarding AOI or TNet is proximity-based TNObjects  you talked about last year you mentioned it was going to be added 2 weeks after in march 2014?


i looked the release logs and did not see anything related to AOI or proximity feature you talked about.


or maybe is under different feature name?

so my question is did i waited in vane a year for tnet to have its own aoi(area of interest)  or proximity feature you talked about?


please tell me you already added it.


please let me know.

regards

[ArenMook]

Unfortunately no, I haven't. I decided against going with a fully open world approach for Windward because of other issues in Unity (read: cloth bugs), and had to stick with zone-based approach, meaning that this feature was moved off the "soon" list and into the "nice to have".

You can do this yourself without modifying TNet though. TNet lets you send packets directly to specific players by specifying them as the target in tno.Send. So check to see who is near your player and send information to them and not anyone else.

[chilly]

ohh man,

that sucks,

no AOI feature,

its ok, dont worry, i purchased Bolt network engine from fholm,

this nice little gadget has more advanced features for mmo or open world style kind of game.

dont get me wrong, tnet is ok, but very raw barebone base features, so one will need to code all the specifics for any genre type of game.
seems like you finished your windward project hence you stopped enhancing tnet, just what you needed for windward , so seems that tnet has peaked since last year.
hopefully youll rethink and keep on adding more couple of game genre specific features to make it more robust.

maybe in my other next project in a couple of years, hoping tnet gets more mature as i thought it would, but seems to be still the same from last year, i mean genre feature wise.


thanks, have a great 2015

[voncarp]

I have Bolt too.  I also have fholm's Mecanim Network Example which no longer exists one month after purchasing it.  He also made a FPS networking kit which no longer exists.  Both of those assets were paid assets.

The best thing about Tasharen's product is the long shelf life and prompt responses.  I've been using NGUI for almost 3 years and arenmook still answers my questions.

I second this though: AOI/network LOD.

I have a streaming open world game and that functionality would be very useful.   I do agree with chilly in some aspects, even though Tnet is relatively inexpensive and its super easy to use, the more features the better.

[voncarp]

I am glad to still be using TNET.  On the bright side, you can buy Bolt again for $80 to use with photon.

[ArenMook]

TNet 3 already supports areas of interest / LOD via multiple channels. You can join any number of channels at the same time. For example get close enough to a house -- join its channel ID so you can see what's happening inside. Entering a house? Transfer your player avatar from the channel you're in to the house's channel. It's all completely seamless, and "just works". TNet 3 comes with an example covering this.