Multiplayer Building Blocks Setup Guide

• Auto Matchmaking: This block helps you prototype Multiplayer experiences by automatically joining all the connected players in the same room.
  • In Photon Fusion integration, this block uses the Shared Mode from Photon Fusion2.
  • In Unity Netcode integration, this block uses the Unity Game Services Relay service.
• Custom Matchmaking (v71): This block allows more flexibility of matchmaking where helps you implement room code (and optionally password) based matchmaking for both Photon Fusion and Unity Netcode. You can integrate it with your own UI and shipping in the production application.
• Friends Matchmaking (v74): This block integrates with the APIs from Meta Platform SDK, users can invite their Quest friends into the experience within and automatically joining the same networking room.
• Local Matchmaking (v74): This block leverages the Colocation Discovery APIs to automatically match all players who physically presented nearby into the same networking room.
• Colocation: This block helps you achieve MR “Local Multiplayer” experiences by building a shared point of reference via Shared Spatial Anchor / Colocation Discovery (v74) / Space Sharing (v77) APIs. All networked game objects spawned in world space/stage space will be seen in the same position by all the colocated players.
• Networked Avatar: This block helps you integrate with Meta Avatars for your experience, working for both MR/VR.
  • Note: The Input Manager used for the Avatars is a Oculus VR Plugin based implementation, it does not support the OpenXR Plugin at the moment.
• Networked Grabbable Object: This block makes an object network synced and grabbable by all the players.
• Player Name Tag: This block helps you prototype Multiplayer experience by introducing an example UI that shows the player’s Quest name on top of their head.
• Player Voice Chat: This block is exclusive to Photon Fusion networking solution. It integrates VOIP with the Photon Voice2 package that allows remotely connected players talk to each other via voice chat.
• Shared Spatial Anchor Core: This block has the core functionalities for creating, loading, erasing, and sharing a shared spatial anchor.

• Unity Netcode for Game Objects
  • Pricing options (for Relay)
• Photon Fusion
  • Pricing options

• Unity Netcode for Game Objects: com.unity.netcode.gameobjects
• Unity Service Relay: com.unity.services.relay
• Unity Service Lobby: com.unity.services.lobby

• Photon Fusion
  • Required by all Multiplayer blocks using Photon Fusion integration.
  • The integration provided with the block is using Fusion2.
• Photon Voice
  • Required by Player Voice Chat block only
  • For this Photon Voice package, as we only need integration with Photon Fusion, please follow the Photon Voice official guide to exclude unneeded files.

• Meta Interaction SDK: com.meta.xr.sdk.interaction.ovr
  • Required by Networked Grabbable Object block, this SDK is included in Meta XR All-in-one SDK
• Meta Platform SDK: com.meta.xr.sdk.platform
  • Required by Colocation / Player Name Tag / Networked Avatar block, this SDK is included in the Meta XR All-in-one SDK
• Meta Avatar SDK: com.meta.xr.sdk.avatars
  • Required by Networked Avatar block
• Meta Avatar SDK Sample Assets: com.meta.xr.sdk.avatars.sample.assets
  • Optionally needed by Networked Avatar block to show Sample Avatars as a fallback for player didn’t set up their own Meta avatars

• Create Test Users and test in headset would help work around the Data Use Checkup if review is not completed
• App release channel must be set up to include the users, and a build apk should be uploaded at least once to the channel to unblock testing Shared Spatial Anchor - and you can iterate with Build and Run from Unity later on once that first apk is uploaded. An important indication of whether this is done properly is that you should see your app shows in the “App Library” in the headset instead of from “Unknown Sources”. If still not working, a restarting of the headset might help refresh the app permission status.
• “Enhanced Spatial Services” setting must be turned on for the headset when testing.

• “Use Colocation Session” disabled - Networking framework based Matchmaking: Use networking framework (Photon Fusion, NGO) based matchmaking, where shared anchors are synced with networking framework so the app setup is a bit more complicited than below. You can further choose which matchmaking option to install in the “Install Matchmaking” option.
• “Use Colocation Session” enabled - Colocation Session based Matchmaking: Based on Colocation Session / Colocation Discovery API which uses Bluetooth and Wifi to find nearby players and automatically create a group for them. Anchors and other information can be shared with local network of Bluetooth/Wifi, and the setup is simplified (see setup section above).

• “Share Space To Guests” disabled - Via Single Shared Spatial Anchor: Players are aligned against a single SSA that host spawned. This works for simple use cases.
• “Share Space To Guests” enabled - Via Space Sharing: Based on Space Sharing API, all guest players uses the room setup from the host, all room anchors are aligned. This works better for the case where guests also wanted to interact with the environment. For example, guest perform collision with the environment such as splatting a color on a wall, use this option will ensure every player sees the same color effect aligns well with actual wall the same way.

• Use multiple instances of Unity Editor via ParrelSync - it helps symlink your project to cloned projects so iterations are only needed done once.
• Use multiple instances of Meta XR Simulator to test input interactions with MR feature supported.
• Use the Standalone Platform settings in Platform SDK to setup different in-Editor test users (for testing avatar, player name, colocation features)

• All Core SDK versions support the Avatar SDK versions 24.1 or earlier.
• For the Avatar SDKs version higher than 24.1, using Core SDK <= v74 will likely have input issues to run the Networked Avatar block, and with one workaround required as below:
  • Once the Networked Avatar block is installed to the scene, find the [Building Block] Networked Avatar GameObject. This object has an AvatarSDK GameObject as its child, which contains a component called EntityInputManager. Replace the EntityInputManager with a SampleInputManager component from the Sample Assets package, and then set the Body Tracking Mode to None. This is fixed and no longer needed in v76 Core SDK.
• The SampleInputManager component in Avatar SDK used by Networked Avatar block does not support the Unity OpenXR Plugin until v35.2. If you’re using Unity OpenXR Plugin, you need to use Avatar SDK v35.2 or later.

• Since v71 we released the Custom Matchmaking block, its Photon Fusion implementation has a known issue of when working of Networked Grabbable Object block (or essentially Network Objects that exists in the current scene) that the object is not synchronized at all. This is caused by current scene is not embeded into parameters when starting the networking session.
• In v74 the Colocation block with “Use Colocation Session” option enabled also depends on the Custom Matchmaking block which has the same issue.
• To temporarily work around it while we apply the fix in upcoming Core SDK versions, here’re some code changes you could apply to the CustomMatchmakingFusion script on the “[Building Blocks] Custom Matchmaking” Game Object:

        // CustomMatchmakingFusion.cs
        // Step1. define these functions somewhere in the class
        private static NetworkSceneInfo GetSceneInfo()
        {
            SceneRef sceneRef = default;
            if (TryGetActiveSceneRef(out var activeSceneRef))
            {
                sceneRef = activeSceneRef;
            }
            var sceneInfo = new NetworkSceneInfo();
            if (sceneRef.IsValid) {
                sceneInfo.AddSceneRef(sceneRef, LoadSceneMode.Additive);
            }
            return sceneInfo;
        }

        private static bool TryGetActiveSceneRef(out SceneRef sceneRef)
        {
            var activeScene = SceneManager.GetActiveScene();
            if (activeScene.buildIndex < 0 || activeScene.buildIndex >= SceneManager.sceneCountInBuildSettings) {
                sceneRef = default;
                return false;
            }
            sceneRef = SceneRef.FromIndex(activeScene.buildIndex);
            return true;
        }

        // Step2. within several public functions like `CreateRoom` `JoinRoom` `JoinOpenRoom` with `StartGame` call
        var result = await runner.StartGame(new StartGameArgs
        {
            GameMode = gameMode,
            Scene = GetSceneInfo(), // <- Add this line as apart of the StartGameArgs
            CustomLobbyName = options.LobbyName,
            SessionName = sessionName,
            PlayerCount = options.MaxPlayersPerRoom,
            IsVisible = !options.IsPrivate
        });

• FUSION_WEAVER
• PHOTON_VOICE_DEFINED
• PHOTON_FUSION_PHYSICS_ADDON_DEFINED