Croquet Corporation has announced a new partnership with Unity, through which the companies are releasing Croquet for Unity, a new JavaScript framework which provides developers with new ways to build and operate multiplayer games on the Unity platform.

Croquet for Unity lets developers create multiplayer games without building or maintaining networking code, utilising Croquet’s Synchronised Computation Architecture to eliminate traditional servers and server-side code. Instead, players can connect to games through the Croquet Multiplayer Network infrastructure, where a collection of stateless microservers situated in four continents allow for identical experiences among players.

“Multiplayer games are the most important and fastest growing part of the gaming market,” said Croquet founder and CTO David A. Smith. “But building and maintaining multiplayer games is still just too hard. Croquet takes the netcode out of creating multiplayer games. When we say ‘innately multiplayer,’ we mean games are multiuser automatically from the first line of code and not as an afterthought writing networking code to make it multiplayer.”

Aiming high

Croquet and Unity hope that by simplifying the process of creating multiplayer titles, developers can focus on the player experience while helping accelerate development.

In addition, Croquet states that its framework delivers shared, multiplayer experiences previously thought impossible due to bandwidth limitation and their inherent complexity, such as real time interactive physics and complex NPC behaviour.

The framework also allows for multiplayer Unity development in JavaScript, letting more developers take advantage of the technology. Croquet notes that the framework will be particularly useful for small and independent developers looking to break into the multiplayer scene who may otherwise be limited by the lack of in-house networking and backend development expertise.

Croquet will be demonstrating the framework at GDC, while the framework will enter beta in April.

We listed Unity as one of the top 50 mobile game makers of 2022.