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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 6h

I should add "... for now", because I can easily see AI either being used to develop a new engine, or applied to an FOSS engine like Godot to rapidly reach feature parity with Unity or Unreal. The engine can save you a lot of tokens if it already exists.

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 7h

It depends. For small prototypes you don't need a full engine, but once you get into the full pipeline where you have teams of artists working together, playtesters, game designers, level artists, existing engines already have a lot of that figured out. Waste of tokens to have AI remake it.

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 10h

We also use DOTS for a multiplayer project that syncs 1000s of entities and can run on modest hardware. It's not as easy to use but it does make a difference once the entity counts get very high.

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 29/09/2026

Interpolation fixes most of it: Rigidbody interpolation for the common case, camera follow in LateUpdate. We wrote this in 2016 and people still find us through it.

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 29/09/2026

Ever had a Unity object stutter at 200 fps? Update follows the frame rate, FixedUpdate a fixed clock, so some frames get two physics steps and some get none. Is your camera following in the wrong one? #gamedev #unity3d #indiedev

Side by side: a camera and sphere moving in FixedUpdate, without interpolation on the left and with interpolation on the right.

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 28/09/2026

What do you like about colyseus? Is your other project also based on it or it is something else?

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 28/09/2026

What solution did you go with for your multiplayer? A framework, roll-your-own (with or without AI?), or did you build it on photon?

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 28/09/2026

Looks like fun - any war stories from developing the multiplayer physics aspect?

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 28/09/2026

What did you use for your multiplayer tech?

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 26/09/2026

DOTS on unity is a framework, so different from Unity gameobjects. There is porting involved because they are functionally different paradigms. DOTS is a way to use multicore processing on Unity.

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 25/09/2026

We've been looking for a generic solution to it. We've come close on some of our newer stuff, but ultimately each game needs to handle prediction in it's own way.

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 24/09/2026

I've always liked this mechanic more than the first-person build mechanic games like minecraft use. It can be challenging to implement and I don't see many games using it. I can only think of castle story. Nice work!

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 24/09/2026

I didn't see the video it's comparing against but looking at it the normals are smooth and believable.

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 24/09/2026

We tend to do this on controlled entities. Getting the elastic collisions to feel right was a bit tricky, because replay from server state by default smooths out motion discontinuities. This made the bounces off walls, asteroids, and other players feel mushy, so it had special handling.

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 24/09/2026

Snapping reads as rubber-banding, so ease into corrections over a few frames. Most divergence comes from timestep differences and floating point that behaves differently across hardware.

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 24/09/2026

We shipped client-side prediction in kazap.io, and the replay step was most of the work: keep inputs for the round trip, compare with each server update, and when they disagree past a tolerance, replay from the server's state... #gamedev #unity3d #indiedev

Overlay of a client-predicted ship in orange and the server position in white, showing the divergence prediction has to correct.

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 22/09/2026

#ScreenshotSaturday: about 5,000 enemies, every one simulated on the server and synced to each player at 50 to 70 KB/s, no network LOD. Built in a week as a stress test for our netcode... #gamedev #unity3d

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 22/09/2026

What kept it cheap: a transform delta compresses to 7 bits and a full object sync to about 4 bytes. Enemies carry a rotation the game never changes, so it compresses to near zero on its own. Bullets spawn near the avatar, so their positions cluster and pack tight.

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 22/09/2026

5,000 to 6,000 server-simulated enemies in a multiplayer survivors game, 50 to 70 KB/s per player, no network LOD. The surprise in the budget: spawning and destroying objects is about 20% of the traffic. Hundreds of bullets a second, each a spawn... #gamedev #unity3d #indiedev

Screenshot of a multiplayer survivors game with thousands of server-synced enemies swarming the players.

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 18/09/2026

Do you have to do anything special for the terrain performance boost or is it all because of the engine upgrade?

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 18/09/2026

It's a pretty common approach. At least you feel like you're getting some value for the 30% cut you're giving away.

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 18/09/2026

It's similar to an approach we use, and then we use the new prediction to generate a future position to interpolate to. It works well when physics is involved. We have a demo of full-world destruction that is multiplayer - ruins.kinematicsoup.com - it uses this technique

ruins.kinematicsoup.com

Ruins

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 18/09/2026

Wild (figuratively)! What are you using for the multiplayer side?

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 18/09/2026

Showing the ball's destination helps a lot, though you could also just have it always stay below the ball if you want people to anticipate its motion. What's the hardest part so far?

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 17/09/2026

Sounds good! We created a competitor to photon and coherence, so we'll keep an eye open. Maybe we can write a guide on how to adapt it to ours.

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 17/09/2026

Looks like a fun concept. What prediction approach are you using? Converging with input prediction or rollback?

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 17/09/2026

Input exchange scales badly past a handful of peers too, so large sessions and persistent worlds push toward dedicated servers. Host advantage is architectural: it cannot be patched out after launch, which matters the moment ranking or money rides on a match.

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 17/09/2026

The listen-server mistake we see most: sizing the host by download speed. The host uploads the world to every other player, so upstream is the limit, and residential upstream is usually about a tenth of the number on the ISP's ad. What else caps it... #gamedev #unity3d #indiedev

Diagram of a listen server topology: one player's machine hosts the game and uploads state to every other player.

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 16/09/2026

That is wild. Are you using FTDT techniques?

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 16/09/2026

Snazzy! What frameworks does it support?

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 15/09/2026

Six checks, in order: real-time at all? ships on mobile? can you commit to determinism? does money or ranking ride on outcomes? how many players and how big a world? who pays for servers? Strike topologies as they fail. What survives is your real option space.

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 15/09/2026

If your multiplayer game ships on mobile, client-hosted topologies are out. A host needs a stable address for the whole session; phones hop between Wi-Fi and cellular, and carrier NAT reassigns addresses without notice. The other five checks... #gamedev #unity3d #indiedev

Diagram of a dedicated server topology: every client connects to one authoritative server that owns the simulation.

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 13/09/2026

Thanks! We're still figuring doing some game design experiments. The basic formula is there but we don't quite have catharsis yet. Godot is a great engine and it's getting traction. I don't think it will be that long before we see it suddenly get a surge of people.

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 11/09/2026

Building your own is fine, but like anything complex it come at a cost. Premade ones solve part of the problem. I know of at least 3 devs right now who have done multiplayer work before who are each switching to using agenic AI to build that component which numbers the days for premade solutions.

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 11/09/2026

10-15 years ago we were still getting great-looking and great-playing games. Many of them can get a free facelift using new tech like DLSS 5. Remember when the mid-tiers were going extinct? I think we're on the verge of seeing the AAA's go extinct and the mid-tiers re-emerging as the "new" AAA.

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 11/09/2026

Yeah I think there is something to at least having the option to see what the best in the world can do. You'd probably learn some tricks just by watching - if you can stay close enough.

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 11/09/2026

There are quite a few options out there. These days I've been seeing people just use an AI to network their game and skipping the networking frameworks altogether.

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 11/09/2026

Great art style! How long have you been at it?

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 11/09/2026

It's something some games put in, but I think some devs just think it's distracting or disheartening when the top leaderboard player manages a time that no one else can hope to match. Mostly I've seen racing games where you can race your own ghost.

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 11/09/2026

It is wild the first time you get it working. Did you use a framework for it or build you own?

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 08/09/2026

What gamma and linear mean, and how to set Unity up: kinematicsoup.com/blog/gamma-and-linear-space-what-they-are-how-they-differ

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KinematicSoup Technologies @kinematicsoup.com · 08/09/2026

The short version: textures are stored gamma-encoded for human eyes, but lighting math only works on linear values. Mixing the two silently is where renders go wrong. Unity handles it correctly once the project is configured for it.

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