NetworkDiscoveryUnity

Network discovery for Unity3D.

Features

• Simple. 1 script. 600 lines of code.

• Uses C#'s UDP sockets for broadcasting and sending responses.

• Independent of current networking framework.

• Single-threaded.

• Tested on: Linux, Windows, Android.

• Can lookup specific servers on the internet (outside of local network).

• Has a separate GUI script (NetworkDiscoveryHUD) for easy testing.

• Has support for custom response data.

• By default, server responds with: current scene, game server port number, game signature.

• No impact on performance.

Usage

Attach NetworkDiscovery script to any game object. Assign game server port number.

Now, you can use NetworkDiscoveryHUD script to test it (by attaching it to the same game object), or use the API directly:

// when your game server starts, initialize the network discovery
networkDiscovery.EnsureServerIsInitialized();

// register listener - this can also be done from Inspector
networkDiscovery.onReceivedServerResponse.AddListener((NetworkDiscovery.DiscoveryInfo info) =>
{
	// we received response from server
	// add it to list of servers, or connect immediately...
});

// send broadcast on LAN - this is used when you want to refresh the list of servers
// when server receives the packet, he will respond
networkDiscovery.SendBroadcast();

// on server side, you can register custom data for responding
networkDiscovery.RegisterResponseData("Game mode", "Deathmatch");

// when your game server is stopped, shutdown the network discovery
networkDiscovery.CloseServerUdpClient();

For more details on how to use it, check out NetworkDiscoveryHUD script.

Inspector

Example GUI

Further improvements

• Measure ping - requires that all socket operations are done in a separate thread, or using async methods

• Prevent detection of multiple localhost servers (by assigning GUID to each packet) ?

• Add "Refresh" button in GUI next to each server

• Catch the other exception which is thrown on windows - it's harmless, so it should not be logged

• Make sure packet-to-string conversion works with non-ascii characters