A framework for developing network based games using Unity and Ice

Resumen

Nowadays, Unity 3D is the dominant game engine in the market, because it supports the
development of cross-platform games with a high productivity. In addition, Ice is a RPC
framework with multiple programming languages mappings and a good support for load balancing
and security.
Although Unity framework provides networking services for developing network games, these
services are too low level for facilitating the development of multiuser online games. In this
multiuser games, typically users control their avatars and visit virtual worlds in which they can
interact with 3D objects, chat with other users or manage their own inventories of collected objects.
This project presents an online environment framework that is based on Unity and Ice1 RPC
framework. With this framework, developers can build their own multiuser online games or
simulation environments more easily than using directly Unity framework.
The proposed framework provides three kind of general components: client, Scene server and
Online server. Clients and Scene servers implement the game logic relying on Unity framework.
Basically, clients are responsible of player interaction and rendering whereas Scene servers keep
the consistency of the different client views working with shared (network) game objects. On the
other hand, Online server is responsible of the game access, the player account management and
the persistency of the game state across different scenes and game sessions. In addition, the Online
server will support the division of a virtual world into several scenes provided by different Scene
servers. In this context, Ice is employed as a middleware between the Online server and the other
two kind of components.