Colyseus WebGL Multiplayer

Technical Evaluation Project • Browser Multiplayer • Real-Time Sync

Unity Colyseus Node.js WebGL Web Hosted

Gameplay

Technical evaluation project — built to compare Colyseus against Photon and Socket.IO for real-time multiplayer sync. Includes player movement, room create/join, multiplayer sync, basic animations, and skin switching. Not a shipped commercial title.

Project Overview

A server-authoritative browser multiplayer prototype built to directly evaluate Colyseus as a networking backend, comparing it against Photon and Socket.IO for real-time state synchronization in a WebGL-hosted Unity build.

My Role & Responsibilities

Built the Colyseus room lifecycle — create, join, and state sync — on a Node.js backend
Implemented synchronized player movement and animation state across clients
Built a skin-switching system replicated in real time to all connected clients
Deployed the Unity WebGL frontend and Node.js/Colyseus backend as two separate free-tier services

Engineering & System Design

Server-Authoritative State Sync

Colyseus's room-based state synchronization was used to replicate player position, animation state, and skin selection to every connected client, with the server as the single source of truth for room state.

Why Evaluate Colyseus Specifically

Having already shipped with Photon PUN2 and built custom Socket.IO backends, this project was a deliberate side-by-side comparison — testing Colyseus's built-in room and state-sync abstractions against the more manual control required by Socket.IO and the room/matchmaking model Photon provides out of the box.

Impact & Results

Working real-time multiplayer sync (movement, animation, skins) fully in-browser
Hands-on comparison data across three different multiplayer networking approaches
A live, clickable WebGL proof-of-concept — no NDA, fully open source

Gameplay & Source

💻 GitHub Repository

🌐 Live Playable Demo

⚠️ Hosted on free-tier infrastructure — if idle, the server may take 30–50 seconds to wake on first load. Refresh if the initial connection times out.