deprecated unity networking system

Question

I have pretty old half done unity multiplayer project. I made it with the old unity multiplayer system that now has deprecated.

now can I complete it with the old unity network? or i need to learn new networking system?

Answer 1

This entirely depends on if your migrating to the new engine? if you are then you may encounter some problems, as i did. But that being said it is dependent on how your doing. The old unity networking was built on a client side server hosting - The idea that, during testing, you would host client side i.e the player hosts. This is still sort of the case now, but unity offer hosting etc, for no fee up to 100 users at one time I think

(For new projects, you should use the new networking system introduced in 5.1. This information is for legacy projects using the old networking system.)

this is from unity's website regarding the legacy networking, they do advise against using the old system if your going to use the new engine.

To sum it up

Yes and no, but yes being the harder route, and no being the easier one (Learning the new networking)

If your going to use the new unity networking, most of it is done in similar ways, if not the same. Unity just has built in modules now to help, so its not so bad i guess.

although this is going to be very opinion based, and i expect downvotes, i want to help :)

Answer 2

In general, changing technology mid-way in a far progressed project is usually more costly than it is worth. It's not just the work of replacing those parts which directly interact with the technology. It's also the cost of learning the technology, learning to use it well (which is usually easier on a green-field project where you have less moving parts around it) and fixing all the indirect dependencies on the old technology (parts of your overall software architecture which were designed around the old technology handling specific things in specific ways, even though they appear quite far away from it). So we developers tend to grossly underestimate the short-term and long-term cost of such a move. Usually it is the more economical decision to just finish the project the way we started.

But on the other hand, introducing new technology can sometimes solve some as of yet unsolved problems in your project.

So my recommendation would be to teach yourself what the new technology has to offer. Then see if there is anything which solves a problem you haven't solved yet and is easier to do than with the old technology.

When your multiplayer system is already working well and your game just needs some polish in other areas, stay with what you have and focus on getting it shipped. But when your multiplayer system is still just partly done, buggy, slow and generally makes you feel miserable when you look at it, trashing it and redoing it from scratch with the new technology might give a payoff.

Just remember the old wisdom in software development: When it sounds easy to do, you aren't aware of all the details yet.