coherence 1.2 - Introducing Support for Unity's MPPM and ParrelSync

Springtime has come to Malmö, so happy spring! It's even happier for us, because we get to release this awesome update! Here's what we have for you.

Integration with Unity’s MPPM and ParrelSync

Attack of the clones!

MPPM and ParrelSync are tools that help development by spawning different instances of the Unity Editor. This is extremely useful for multiplayer development, as more often than not, you want to get a few clients connected to test your game.

When using additional Editor instances, we make sure we don’t trigger automations or edit assets. We mark the so-called Editor clones, so it’s easy to identify them – inspecting coherence components reminds you you’re dealing with a clone, and the Project window shows a convenient icon that differentiates it from the main Editor.

This integration comes out-of-the-box, so you don’t need to setup anything really* (apart from ParrelSync or MPPM themselves).

If you’re using ParrelSync, you need to install it as an UPM package. Our documentation explains this in further detail.

Baking QoL

Baking helps by not having to write the networking code yourself. However, abstracting away from writing network code means you need to generate it at the click of a button at some point. The reality is, we forget! It happens often. So we took a stab at how we could improve this situation a bit. For that purpose, we’re making it visible in the Project Window through our signature Bake icon. The icon becomes a warning when baking is out-of-date, and clicking it will perform a bake operation. There’s no longer a need to remember if/when you’ve baked, or having to dock the Hub’s Baking tab for that purpose.

Schema Inspector

Up until now, inspecting schemas on the Editor was rudimentary at best, and generally not very useful – if you had to debug protocol errors spewed by the Replication Server, it made sense to open the schema as a text file. Our Gathered.schema – created based on Prefabs – is dense and hard to read. On this iteration, we’ve made it convenient to inspect schemas and understand what exactly is being considered, and most importantly, how the definitions link with the assets in your project.

CoherenceSync Header

All GameObjects now show this header. This is quite convenient, as GameObjects on scenes can now be directly converted into CoherenceSync Prefabs. It also allows for performant multi-editing, so you can add/remove CoherenceSync in bulk in a breeze.

A little QoL improvement we shipped in this iteration as well – it’s possible to jump to the CoherenceSync root, in case you’re deep into a hierarchy.

That's it! We hope these updates make your work easier.

You can also have a peek at the full 1.2 Release Notes.