Croquet for Unity Set to Transform Multiplayer Game Development With “No Netcode” Solution

Croquet Corporation, provider of Croquet OS, the Multiplayer Platform for Web and Gaming, announced Croquet for Unity, a JavaScript multiplayer framework for the Unity Platform that provides developers a transformational new way to build and operate innately multiplayer Unity experiences without writing and maintaining multiplayer code or deploying servers. It gives Unity developers access to Croquet and its unique Croquet Multiplayer Network global infrastructure. Croquet for Unity will be demonstrated in conjunction with the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, and will be available for early access Beta in April 2023.

With Croquet for Unity, developers have no networking code to build or maintain. Croquet’s unique Synchronized Computation Architecture eliminates traditional servers and server-side code. Instead, users connect through the Croquet Multiplayer Network, a collection of stateless microservers called Reflectors which are available globally on four continents that drive bit-identical experiences among players.

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The key to understanding Croquet is that it is not just synchronizing state, it is synchronizing the evolution of state over time. By synchronizing computation itself, Croquet not only eliminates the need to transmit the resulting state of complex computations like physics or AIs, it also eliminates the need for specialized data structures to be used for synchronized properties, or having to mark certain objects to be synchronized. This makes writing multiplayer code very similar to writing single-player code, since the full game simulation runs on-device.

That code is executed in a shared virtual computer that runs bit-identically across every client so everyone stays perfectly in sync, while each player has their own unique point of view. Because the lightweight reflectors can be located on the edge of the cloud or on the MEC in 5G networks, they provide lower latency than traditional network architectures. Computations historically done on traditional servers are done in synchronized computation on each client, dramatically reducing bandwidth and improving latency.

“Multiplayer games are the most important and fastest growing part of the gaming market,” said David A. Smith, Founder and CTO of Croquet. “But building and maintaining multiplayer games is still just too hard. Croquet takes the netcode out of creating multiplayer games. When we say ‘innately multiplayer,’ we mean games are multiuser automatically from the first line of code and not as an afterthought writing networking code to make it multiplayer.”

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Croquet’s goal is to make multiplayer game development as easy as single player. With no netcode to develop or manage, developers can focus on the player experience. They further benefit in lower overall development and deployment costs, faster time to market and better player experiences.

In addition to reducing costs and complexity of multiplayer development, Croquet also delivers shared, multiplayer simulations that have heretofore been impossible. Examples include shared real time interactive physics, where the multiuser physics become an essential game mechanic; perfectly replicated non-player character behaviors, where even complex actions and user interactions are identical; and complex game player interactions, where users can dynamically collaborate to create, modify or destroy their worlds while the game action is live. These simulations have been impossible to deliver over traditional networks due to bandwidth limitations and their inherent complexity. Croquet also enables multiplayer Unity development in JavaScript, opening up development to a large pool of new developers.

“Having worked on multiplayer games in a variety of engines, I’m well aware of the pain of setting up servers and synching player experience. Croquet has enabled me to write complicated multiplayer games by myself without even thinking about the netcode,” said Brian Upton, Croquet’s Chief Creative Officer and game designer for Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon. “I code the game like it’s single-player, and when a second player joins it just WORKS. And there’s no bandwidth limit to the number of simulation objects, which opens up the possibility of new genres of multiplayer games with interactive physics or crowd AI.”

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