Okay, so today I wanted to mess around with Mirage’s tier match feature. I’d heard about it, but never really dug in, so I figured, why not?
Getting Started
First, I fired up my Unity project with Mirage already installed. If you haven’t done that part yet, you’ll need to do so. Grab the latest version from their site, and the installation process is like other Unity packages.
Once Mirage was in, I needed something to actually, you know, match. So, I created a super simple scene – just a couple of cubes, nothing fancy. The important thing is I added a NetworkIdentity component to make it simple.
Diving into Tier Match
Now for the fun part. I created a new C# script. I made a new C# class that inherited from InterestManagement. This is important to handle the matching logic in the new class.
I add the attribute [AddComponentMenu(“Network/InterestManagement/Tier/TierInterestManagement”)] to make my new class appear as an option on add component menu.
Next, I wanted to adjust how often the server checks for matches, so I played with the “Rebuild Interval” setting in the Inspector. Lowering it means more frequent checks, I set it to 0.5 seconds.
Setting Up the Tiers
To the new C# file, I add public int NumberOfTiers = 2;. The tiers are from 0 to 1, 0 means high priority and 1 means low priority, you can set this value to any other positive integer.
I add another public float TierDistance = 10;, the distance is per tier, so it would be 0-10 for tier 0, and 11-20 for tier 1, and objects inside the same tier would have high visibility, otherwise, it would be low visibility.
Seeing It in Action
I hit play, and… it worked! I don’t add any debug code for now, and I can see the result, I was pretty stoked. I moved one of the cubes around, and sure enough, the other client only saw it when it was within the visibility radius I’d set up.
Some Final Thoughts
This was just a basic test, of course. The tier match system in Mirage seems like it could be super useful for handling larger, more complex worlds. I can imagine using different tiers for different types of objects, like having a high-priority tier for players and a lower-priority tier for, say, distant trees or something.
I’m definitely going to keep experimenting with this. There are probably a bunch of other settings and tweaks I can make to really optimize things. But for a first try, I’m pretty happy with how easy it was to get something up and running!
