Nebula

Middleware for dynamically meshed multiplayer game servers, Unity-first: Unity dedicated-server workers that hand entities to each other, an orchestrator that assigns world containers to workers and hosts the control plane, and a gateway clients connect to. One player build runs every role; the orchestrator keeps the control plane and every saved entity in SQLite or PostgreSQL.

Nebula ships as a Unity package, com.1by3.nebula, and a command-line tool, nebula, that installs the package into a Unity project, runs the mesh locally and deploys it to a cloud provider.

iwr https://windows.nebula.1by3.co -useb | iex      # Windows

curl -sSf https://install.nebula.1by3.co | sh       # Linux / macOS

Then, inside your Unity project: nebula setup, nebula init, nebula build, nebula start --open-ui. The docs at nebula.1by3.co have the tutorial and the guides.

Layout

This repository is itself a Unity project (6000.x) with the package embedded, so the middleware can be opened, compiled, tested and built on its own.

• Packages/com.1by3.nebula - the package: runtime, editor tooling (menus, NebulaBuild, world authoring), World/ cell streaming, Runtime/ControlPlane/ the hosted control plane and its mirrors, Runtime/Persistence/ entity persistence, Services~/ the standalone .NET orchestrator and gateway (with the SQLite/PostgreSQL storage), vendored LiteNetLib, EditMode tests. Consumers reference it from Packages/manifest.json (nebula init does this) or embed a copy (nebula init --embed).
• Assets/Resources/NebulaConfig.asset - this project's config; every consuming project has its own.
• cli/ - the CLI's sources (.NET 10, one self-contained executable per platform), its install scripts and the packaging script that builds the release archives.
• website/ - the docs site (Fumadocs). cd website && npm install && npm run dev; npm run gen regenerates the CLI and API references from the sources.
• docs/architecture.md - the design. docs/cli.md - the CLI. docs/prototype.md - how the pieces fit.
• Tools/typecheck.ps1 - Editor-free compile check of every assembly; Tools/smoke-test.ps1 - unattended mesh run that reports handovers; Tools/gen-meta.sh - deterministic .meta files.

The ShooterGame demo that exercises all of this is a separate project (it uses licensed art that cannot be redistributed); it consumes this repository through the package like any other game.

License

Nebula is source-available under the PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0. You can use and modify it for any noncommercial purpose (personal projects, research, education, charities and similar organizations) for free. Commercial use needs a separate license: contact 1by3 at 1by3.co. It is not open source. Vendored LiteNetLib (Packages/com.1by3.nebula/ThirdParty/LiteNetLib) keeps its own MIT license.

Developing

Open this folder in Unity to work on the package; Tools/typecheck.ps1 compiles everything without the Editor. dotnet run --project cli/Nebula.Cli -- <args> runs the CLI from source. A game project next to this checkout can use the working copy directly with "com.1by3.nebula": "file:../../nebula/Packages/com.1by3.nebula" in its manifest.

Releases are tags vX.Y.Z; the CLI's version (cli/Nebula.Cli/Nebula.Cli.csproj) and the package's (Packages/com.1by3.nebula/package.json) match the tag, and nebula init pins the package to the tag of the CLI that ran it.