2022 Update
Hey guys, sorry I've not been active. It's been about a decade since I wrote the first line of code for Forge (which is crazy to think about). Since then, I did what any programmer does, re-wrote it 2 more times (Remastered and Alloy). Alloy is the best version, hands down, but as you may know; I've not been active. Since those days of old I've gotten married, had a child, moved 3 jobs, and spend most of my time in C writing systems code. Also since those days, bugs have not been fixed and pull requests have gone stale. If you care about the "where are they now" sgement, you can follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and our website.
Just because I myself am not actively working on the code anymore does not mean that the code all the sudden can't work. It also doesn't mean that Forge is dead, open source means it's kept alive and well by the community.
Please, join the community lead fork of Forge here (be sure to read the wiki on there), and thank you to @Daneeh and @Zaddo for keeping it going. Please help by contributing to that repository! If not, there are always hundreds of forks to choose from.
Also thank you @NFMynster, just in general; you've been awesome!
You can continue to join the Discord as well!
https://github.com/ForgeAlloyCommunity/ForgeAlloy
In short, Forge Networking is a free and open source multiplayer game (multi-user) networking system that has a very good integration with the Unity game engine. You wanna make a multiplayer game or real time multi-user application? This is the library for you.
Welcome to the most innovative networking solution (which works with the Unity game engine). Forge's network bandwidth is unbeatable, its performance outclasses other solutions, its flexibility is in a league of its own, and, as always, it has no CCU limits whatsoever. Forge Networking is an open source networking solution built in C#. It is completely multi-threaded and was designed to work both inside and outside of the Unity Game Engine but mainly in conjunction with Unity. To get started, check out the links listed below in this readme.
Possibilities
- Unity multiplayer games/applications
- Unity independent applications
- User hosted servers
- Run servers on Windows, OSX, Raspberry Pi, and/or Linux
- Developer hosted servers
- MMO, RTS, FPS, MOBA, you name it, Forge does it
- Master Servers, NAT Hole punching, Web Servers, Cache servers, all the servers!
- Server to server communication, yup
- Spin up servers on demand, check
- Tons of other stuff that I won't list otherwise I will go on forever, yes indeed
If you can name it, Forge most likely can do it :), it is built on some basic principles which makes any idea a possibility.
TLDR
Forge Networking is a networking solution built with the Unity game engine in mind. However, this is actually the 2nd version of Forge so it has some interesting properties. The first original Forge (classic) was built directly inside of Unity and was very tightly integrated with Unity. Once we learned everything we could from that version we opened up a blank Visual Studio project and began work on Forge Networking Remastered. Forge Networking Remastered was completely developed independently of Unity, it was tested and debugged in a C# project. Once it was working, we added Unity integration. This means that you can easily create native C# applications which run on Forge to support your games and applications such as Relay servers, NAT hole punching servers, chat servers, master servers, cache servers, websocket servers, you name it! Forge was developed in a way that makes it easy for you to serialize data in any way that you want. This allows you to make your project as secure as you want or as fast as you need.
Getting Started
Use the links below to learn how to create your first project with Forge Remastered, and be sure to join our active Discord server to talk with other Forge users.
Discord - Join us and the growing community, for talking about Forge Networking as well as just networking in general. Even if you don't exactly use Forge Networking in your project you can get a ton of insight from this community :)
Ways to support the project
- Make pull requests :D
- Contribute to tutorials, documentation, and in the Discord community
- GitHub Sponsorship
Contributors
This project exists thanks to all the people who contribute. [Contribute].
