This week I worked primarily on strengthening the startup process of the Peer to Peer network connection method. Initially during the startup process if any of the ping messages sent failed to be received, especially if due to latency and a race condition I started listening after the message was sent, then the Peer to Peer connection would also fail as a result. However, now the machine that is sending the ping messages will not only retry sending, but will also retry the connection negotiation process as well. From what I have seen so far the machine sending the ping messages hasn't failed since the change. There was, however, an exception to this when the machine receiving the messages loses all communication from the machine attempting to send them. This only happened twice but that is still enough to warrant an investigation. I will likely need to add a timeout that re-attempts the connection end to end.
Another problem I found was that when I tested peer to peer games with more than 2 players joining at once the whole Unity engine would crash. The obvious conclusion would be that the two people joining at once would be too much traffic for the NAT traversal plugin I am using to handle but even when I changed it so connections would be made synchronously, one after the other, the issue persisted.
The final change made was refactoring the server from a massive block of Javascript into many smaller Typescript classes. This ensures that the server can be both easily understood and modified. It was getting a bit out of hand :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pusoANI9FC4
Pending tasks are now
- Finish and Test Peer to Peer
- Complete network game lobby UI (make pretty and complete all network game modes).
- Complete network game restart UI (make pretty).
- Research player skins.
- Research different arenas and backgrounds.
- General tidy up and enhancement of look and feel..