A bit of a tricky one this:
In my photon game, I've been building my world in one scene. Now I realise that for a number of reasons, they may be the need to have a player load another scene. The most obvious reason is, interiors. When a player arrives at a door, he can go through it and, normally, in a single player game, I would load a new scene, for just the interior of the building. and when he goes out that door, we would reload the exterior scene.
There are many reasons for this, firstly you can cheat a bit and have the interior, not be exactly the same dimensions as the exterior, secondly, simplicity, its nce to work in a clean new scene without a having to worry about accidentally destroying things or moving things you cant see cos the scene is so full of stuff. More importantly, it keeps the scenes down in file size, less optimising issues. And finally, lights, I am of course using a clever lighting system for exterior, and it kind of interferes with the lights inside a building (its hard to get very dark).
SO.. whats going to happen if I do just that? a Photon multiplayer triggers an area outside a door, and we fade out camera, load new scene, and fade in with character in new scene.
Is the Photon network lost?, does photon register that someone has left the room? And make that space available for a new player? (in my case the game is for max 4 players)
OR, is a new scene simply that, the same game, but anew scene, could another character follow him in there? (This is a game design issue, I might be able to avoid other characters following in may story. ("Sorry Only Priests are loowed in the Church) etc...
I could do a compromise if it was programming hell. I could keep it all happening in one scene, but have the interiors somewhere far away (under the terrain perhaps) and just spawn the players into these "virtual stage sets". This would solve the "its getting messy" and "being able to cheat" issues, but not lighting or file size.
Just wondering, cos its about time I decided, ONE GIMONGOUS SCENE, or lots of smaller ones.
MArk