I was excited to see that just as I was getting ready to start my first networked multiplayer Unity project, Unity was releasing their new Unet networking APIs. “What great timing!”, I thought. However, I was a total noob when it comes to working with sockets and communicating over a network and after playing around with Unet’s HLAPI (High-Level API) it quickly became clear to me that I’d have to dive deeper to get the functionality that I was looking for. So I began to read the documentation for the LLAPI (Low-Level API) which was not pleasant at all. After seeking advice and guidance from everyone I found shake down I managed to get everything working, connecting, and sending messages to and fro.

So here is my tutorial on working with Unity’s Unet LLAPI in C# for networking noobs. There are 4 main parts to any socket networking setup, opening a socket, connecting to another socket, sending messages and receiving messages:

Starting a “Host” (or Opening a Socket)

First make a new Unity project, 2D or 3D, it doesn’t matter for this tutorial. Then add an Empty GameObject to the scene and name it Transport. Then add a new C# script to the object and open the script.

We’re going to setup our socket right as the application begins so let’s begin in the Start() method. First thing we want to do is call initialize on the NetworkTransport class (don’t forget to add using UnityEngine.Networking to the class):

public void Start() { NetworkTransport.Init(); ...

Next we just follow Unity’s documentation and add the ConnectionConfig. For most situations using the default config is fine, so let’s just go with that:

... ConnectionConfig config = new ConnectionConfig(); ...

Up next we need to add a channel and keep the channelId handy so we can use it later for sending/receiving. To do this we’ll add an int member variable to the class (not just the Start() method). We’ll also use the QosType of Reliable when setting up our channel. You don’t really need to know what this means right now (read: I don’t know enough about what this means and I still survive):

int myReliableChannelId; // above Start() ... myReliableChannelId = config.AddChannel(QosType.Reliable); // within Start() ...

This next part pretty much just sets the max number of connections allowed on your soon to exist socket:

... int maxConnections = 10; HostTopology topology = new HostTopology(config, maxConnections); ...

and finally we open the socket. One of the main stumbling blocks when trying to understand the LLAPI based on Unity’s documentation is that many thing are just named poorly. For starters, there is NetworkTransport.AddHost(). This doesn’t actually add a “Host” like the HLAPI does. This command actually just starts up a socket, I’m pretty sure they should change the name of the method to AddSocket, but who am I?? When we start the socket we have to tell it which port to listen to and in this case we use port 8888. Also the AddHost() method returns an int which is the “HostID” but screw that name we’re going to call it what it is, a SocketId. This SocketId also has to be accessible from other methods in this class so let’s put it up with the channelId:

int socketId; // above Start() int socketPort = 8888; // Also a class member variable ... // back in Start() socketId = NetworkTransport.AddHost(topology, socketPort); Debug.Log("Socket Open. SocketId is: " + socketId); } // closing curly for Start()

And with that we have our code which sets up a socket! It’ll run right away when you click the Play button in Unity. You should see the debug message appear in the console, probably with the socketId of 0. It’s not that cool yet but we’re getting there.

Connecting to the socket

Once our socket is open we use it to connect to another socket, typically on another device. We can worry about getting another device in the mix later. For now, let’s just write our Connect() method.

int connectionId; ... public void Connect() { byte error; connectionId = NetworkTransport.Connect(socketId, "localhost", socketPort, 0, out error); Debug.Log("Connected to server. ConnectionId: " + connectionId); }

We need to keep the connectionId available to all methods because later we’ll use it to send messages. NetworkTransport.Connect() … connects us to another server (Hey! They did a proper job naming that one!). We pass in our socketId, the ip for the remote device (in this case we’re just connecting with ourselves, like a long weekend alone in the woods), the socketPort of the remote machine (same as ours in this case), 0 (I forget what this is but whatever), and if there is a problem we get an error out.

The Unity documentation mentions that we can check the error with:

if (error != kOk) // wat?

But I have no idea what kOk is and judging by all the red squiggles it certainly isn’t a byte. If you know what kOk is please tell someone (preferably me) we need to figure this out people! Basically, I just include the out error parameter because I have to.

I used my Android phone as the remote device but you can use another computer if you have one available. But for now you can do most of your testing by connecting to your own socket (I’m sure there is a rude joke in there).

Lastly, go into Unity and add a UI button and set the OnClick event to fire off our Connect() method. If you don’t want to do that I suppose you can just call Connect() at the end of Start() after our code that adds the socket. That would be good enough for now if you don’t want to make the button.

Sending a Message!

Finally (half of) the thing we actually want to do! Here we turn a string into a stream of bytes then send those bytes out our socket connection.

public void SendSocketMessage() { byte error; byte[] buffer = new byte[1024]; Stream stream = new MemoryStream(buffer); BinaryFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter(); formatter.Serialize(stream, "HelloServer"); int bufferSize = 1024; NetworkTransport.Send(hostId, connectionId, myReliableChannelId, buffer, bufferSize, out error); }

Quick run down: Declare another (unused) byte variable called error. Create byte array called buffer and set it’s length to 1024 (this is the max length of our message when it is in byte form). The next 3 lines do the conversion from string to byte array. I don’t know the details about it, but it works, so it’s good enough. We also send over the size of our buffer byte array as an int (which is bufferSize). Lastly we put all the stuff together, starting with out class variables hostId, connectionId, and myReliableChannelId then adding the rest.

Now that we’ve got our SendSocketMessage() method you can go back into Unity and add a UI button to fire off the method on the buttons OnClick event.

Listening for NetworkEvents (or Receiving a Message)

Last part! We can send a message to other connected devices but now we have to make our application do something when it gets these messages. Otherwise we’re just shouting into the void. We need to always be checking for new messages coming in so this portion is added to the Update() method.

void Update() { int recHostId; int recConnectionId; int recChannelId; byte[] recBuffer = new byte[1024]; int bufferSize = 1024; int dataSize; byte error; NetworkEventType recNetworkEvent = NetworkTransport.Receive(out recHostId, out recConnectionId, out recChannelId, recBuffer, bufferSize, out dataSize, out error); ...

All we’re doing is declaring all the variables we need then setting up a NetworkTransport.Receive() method. Almost all those variables are assigned as a result of a message being received (all the parameters that begin with out). The recBuffer contains the byte array message that was received, while recNetworkEvent is an enum with 4 possible event types:

Nothing – When no messages are received.

– When no messages are received. ConnectionEvent – A socket connection is made.

– A socket connection is made. DataEvent – A message is received.

– A message is received. DisconnectEvent – A device that was connected as told us it is closing the connection.

We’re going to use these event types to decide what to actually do with the messages we receive. So we’re going to continue to add on to our Update() method with a big ol’ switch statement:

... switch (recNetworkEvent) { case NetworkEventType.Nothing: break; case NetworkEventType.ConnectEvent: Debug.Log("incoming connection event received"); break; case NetworkEventType.DataEvent: Stream stream = new MemoryStream(recBuffer); BinaryFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter(); string message = formatter.Deserialize(stream) as string; Debug.Log("incoming message event received: " + message); break; case NetworkEventType.DisconnectEvent: Debug.Log("remote client event disconnected"); break; }

So based on the type of network event we have a few different debug messages display. With the event type Nothing we do… nothing. This message comes in every Update() that a message of some other type is not received so we can ignore it. With ConnectionEvent we just want to be notified of the connection, but in a game you might do something like load a player prefab or display some text that a new player has connected.

DataEvent is the real meat and potatoes. This is where a message is received from a connected device and our application has to do something based on that message. Since our SendSocketMessage() method currently only sends a string we’ll only include code to handle string messages received (it’ll still try to convert any bytes into a string, so if you send something other than a string you’ll get an error or a garbage string (probably? Didn’t try it.)).

You can see that in the DataEvent case we’re doing almost the same thing as we did in the SendSocketMessage() method but instead of making a string into bytes, now we’re making bytes into a string. Once the message is back in a string form we display it as part of a debug message. Bam! Message Received!

Lastly there is the DisconnectEvent type. I don’t do anything with that event type here except log it to the console but you can image using this event as the time to do things like remove a player’s prefab, or display a disconnect message on screen.

Try it out

That should be all you need to get up and running. You have an application that, on startup, makes a socket available for connections. With the press of your Connect button the application uses it’s socket to connect to another device’s socket. Pressing your Send Message button will blast a string message from your socket to the remote devices socket and the remote device will receive the message, unpack it and display it in the console.

I did my testing initially just having my computer running Unity connect to it’s own socket, just as a way to rapidly test things. Because of this I saw the connect message in the console 2x, since one event was made for each side of the connection. After I got everything working like this, I changed the “localhost” to my computer’s IP address then built the project and sent it to my Android phone. I would then run the application in the Unity editor so I could see the console and I used the app on my phone to connect and send the message. It was really rewarding to hit the Send Message button on my phone and see the message appear in Unity’s console on my PC!

Expanding

This post is already super long, but I just want to give some final thoughts and extra tips.

How do I use this to make a game?

You can have another switch statement that executes different methods or series of methods based on the message received. So getting a message like “ChangeToNight” can trigger a method that changes the time in your game environment.

Does the message have to be a string?

No! It can be any object, all you have to do is serialize the object in a similar way to how we serialized the string. For instance I have experimented with sending JSON messages so that I can transport more complex objects. Using JSON .NET for Unity made this super easy.

Where can I read more about sockets?

While trying to figure all of this out I was directed to Beej’s Guide to Network Programming. It’s pretty advanced, written for C++ and I didn’t read much of it, but the What is a socket? section helped clear up some of my confusion about sockets.

I hope this helps some people who want to dive into Unity’s new networking API but don’t know a thing about network programming prior. If you are an experienced network programmer and have noticed things that I am wrong about, or things that could be expanded upon please let me know and I’ll update this guide.