NetworkAnimator and Proximity

[MrGadget1024]

Shouldn't NetworkAnimator have Proximity control? Maybe we don't want to notify every client in the game world about lights going on in a house someplace when it happens but any client that comes near later should then get the updated states?

[TwoTenPvP]

Should have yes. I have too little experience with the inner workings of the Animator to write a full animation syncer at this time. I'll have to look into it at some point. At the moment it's just a port of the HLAPI's NetworkAnimator. Thus I cannot guarantee the quality or reliability of it. (Unlike the NetworkedTransform etc which has been written from the ground).

I'm guessing the NetworkedAnimator's main purpose is character animation sync. For things like lights etc, you are probably better of using SyncedVars and manually triggering your animations in the hooks.

[MrGadget1024]

For things like lights etc, you are probably better of using SyncedVars and manually triggering your animations in the hooks.

If a game-wide state machine doesn't sync when player connects, then you'll have to bump SyncedVars up to 65535 because a decent sized game world will have more than 255 doors on buildings alone, never mind lights, locks, weather, and the dozens of other values each client needs to know about the world at all times.

The value of a scene FSM is that it can have many parameters, mostly bools, that collectively describe the server's view of the game and the clients need to sync with that so it can show the player what it should (or should not) see. For such an FSM, the NetworkAnimator would be on a GO in the scene and all clients get all parameters on connect and all subsequent changes. I think that's how the HLAPI version works now, or at least how it's supposed to work.

Alongside the above, there would be NetworkAnimator's attached to server authority PC's and NPC's that should only sync to others nearby, otherwise they'd soak bandwidth unnecessarily telling all clients about every move they made. Limiting that scope would be same as for NetworkTransform, but for the checked params instead of pos / rot. You're not trying to share the actual moves of arms and legs...the clients will do that on their side. It's just the params you're sharing.

[TwoTenPvP]

The limit of 255 is PER NetworkedBehaviour. That is, if you have 255 syncedVars defined in a NetBehaviour. You can still have MANY instances of that NetworkedBehaviour. Btw, the HLAPI's SyncVar limit is 32

You would have a NetworkedBehaviour similar to this:

class LightComponent
bool state = false; <- SyncedVar

func myStateHook 
if(state)
animator.SetLightsOn();
else
animator.SetLightsOff();

As stated. The current NetworkedAnimator is a plain port of the HLAPI's animator. It has the same functionality but no more.

As for the last 2/3 of your message. I don't quite understand. What's FSM? And the states are synced via SyncedVars. Not the animator.

[MrGadget1024]

For Proximity, copy lines 30-32 from NetworkTransform into NetworkAnimator, and lines 167-180 would replace line 101 in NetworkAnimator, using the correct command:

SendToClientTarget(NetworkingManager.singleton.connectedClients[i].ClientId, "MLAPI_HandleAnimationMessage", "MLAPI_ANIMATION_UPDATE", stream.ToArray());

I think that's all there'd be to it?

[TwoTenPvP]

Yea probably. I'll sort that.
However, don't use NetworkAnimator for non realtime state updates. They will not replicate on new Clients etc. Use SyncedVars for that. But i'll be sure to add proximity at least.

[MrGadget1024]

FSM: Finite State Machine

Upon further review, those lines 167-180 need to be in a new method called from all 6 places where SendToNonLocalClientsTarget is currently used.

[MrGadget1024]

However, don't use NetworkAnimator for non realtime state updates. They will not replicate on new Clients etc.

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/UNetPlayers.html

The player object passed to NetworkServer.AddPlayerForConnection on the server is automatically spawned by the system, so there is no need to call NetworkServer.Spawn for the player. Once a player is ready, the active NetworkIdentity objects in the scene will be spawned on the player’s client. So all networked objects in the game will be created on that client with their latest state, so they are in sync with the other participants of the game.

Anything in the scene the server controls (lights, doors, locks, weather, etc.) is going to be a NetworkIdentity object. A scene object with a NetworkIdentity and a NetworkAnimator would be spawned to the client on connect, as far as I understand.

[TwoTenPvP]

TwoTenPvP@368d719

Yes, NetworkIdentities (Or NetworkedObjects as they are called in the MLAPI) have all their SyncedVars synced.