Frequently Asked Questions
Contents
- Which Photon Product Is The Right One For Me?
- What Is The Difference Between Photon Realtime And PUN?
- What Is The Difference Between LoadBalancing API And Photon Realtime?
- Is It Possible To Disable Some Regions?
Which Photon Product Is The Right One For Me?
This is a difficult question to answer as it depends on the game you are making and the specifics of your project. However we can recommend the following:
- Watch this talk by our CTO and founder Chris Wegmann at Unite Europe 2017
- Read the comparison page: "pun vs. bolt"
- Read the comparison page: "photon cloud or photon server?"
Feel free to reach out to us if you still have questions.
What Is The Difference Between Photon Realtime And PUN?
Photon Realtime wraps up all generic features needed for the load balancing of Photon. It is a product as much as a defined workflow to use Name Server, Master Server and Game Servers. Photon Realtime (a.k.a. LoadBalancing) is the basis for many games using Photon.
While Photon Realtime is independent from Unity, PUN adds many comfortable features for Unity and makes Realtime (the lower level) even easier to use.
Both products share the same backend, same server applications, same low-level stuff, same core concepts. At first PUN was meant to be a better UNet (old Unity Networking): preserve a similar API with a more solid backend and rich features. Then it slowly diverged and became the number 1 solution for multiplayer on Unity.
While we do have a Photon Realtime Unity SDK, PUN has more high level out-of-the-box features like:
- Magic Unity callbacks
- Extra Unity components that serialize and sync. networked objects for you: most important one PhotonView
- PunRPC
- Offline mode
- ...
Read more here.
However, while PUN supports webhooks and persisting room states, it is still not 100% able to restitute networked objects' state in the scene(s) when loading a saved game. Read more here.
What Is The Difference Between LoadBalancing API And Photon Realtime?
LoadBalancing API and Photon Realtime can be two different names for the same thing. The LoadBalancing API or the LoadBalancing Client API is the programming interface available in the client SDKs we provide for the Photon Realtime product.
Is It Possible To Disable Some Regions?
Yes. It works in the other way around by defining a list of allowed regions. Read more about the "dashboard regions filtering".