multiplayer

[rose pollen]

so I am using the advanced sessions plugin with steam and it is working well. I'd like to use AWS for my backend and am using the AWSGameKit plug in to set things up, but by default they only support either creating accounts with email/password or using facebook as an identity provider. Does anyone know of a good tutorial on using steam instead so that steam users don't need to create an account to play?

[zenith wyvern]

im trying to make the third person template multiplayer, but when i create a pawn and possess it on any client other than the first, the camera is 99% blak

you can kind of see in the black, but its mostly just black. its just spawning the default pawn and possessing

input works, i can move the pawn from the black client, but cant see it

[cedar finch]

@chrome bay So are there any specific things I need to set in the moving platform's details settings or in blueprint in order to make it work? I'm assuming "can player stand on" should be true. Then when it comes to moving the platform I'd guess the server would have to control the movement. Would having a CMC on the moving platform break anything? I ask because in some scenarios such as a moving vehicle, you may want to be able to drive it, but still allow players to stand on it.

I'm just trying to make sure theres no little setting or checkbox to get the "base" setup correctly for clients to smoothly stand on them and then I'll focus on the replicated movement. But I feel there will always be a fight between server and client on where the moving platform is due to server Authoritative movement. Unless you have any ideas on that.

[prisma pelican]

unable to select focus on one of the editor windows, even alt tabbing doesnt work, the editor window nevers show up front

checked that the player is spawned in as well as the controller, alt tabbing can see the editor window of the client but cant bring it forward or select it, every other editor windows works normally

anyone else experienced this?

[twin juniper]

How does unreal's networking listen server relay information to the peers? Is it just relaying inputs from one peer to all the others, since they're all running the same logic they should expect similar results? Or is it sending entire frames of data?

[hollow eagle]

https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.1/en-US/networking-overview-for-unreal-engine/

[sweet ore]

can anyone tell me why sprite only jittering so hard while player is not? how can i fix this

[thin stratus]

What is the sprite attached to?

@sweet ore

[thin stratus]

Put them as children of the mesh

Everything visual in Multiplayer should be a child of the mesh

Cause the mesh is interpolated

The capsule is teleported

[sweet ore]

thank you so much is does fix it

👍🏻

[chrome bay]

Ultimately it's impossible to sync the platform - because the CMC is simulating ahead of the server, while everything else in the world is simulating behind. So long as the thing you are standing on is network addressable, it shouldn't be too much of a problem - aside from the fact that you will get a correction whenever you leave the platform. AFAIK it's unavoidable though - the CMC and the platform are operating in different frames of reference.

If the platform is part of the world at startup, you shouldn't have many issues while standing on it - but you will initially get a correction since when you land on it, the server + client will have the platform in different positions. You could try simulating the platform ahead of time locally to avoid it, but then the platform will just constantly snap backwards instead.

After that initial correction things should be relatively ok

[cedar finch]

I was just curious because so many games new and old have moving platforms of some kind. Whether it be an actual platform like in a mario style game, or giant vehicles like the scarab in Halo where you can get on it and walk around, or even sea of thieves pirate ships. It's a cool feature but I couldn't find much about it anywhere accept a few posts complaining about clients jittering while moving/standing on the platform.

I read a response online that said, "Make the char a child of the platform while standing on it, unparent when they hit jump and copy velocity from the platform to the char at that instant. Did this in a similar situation and it worked well over the network with 150ms simulated lag."

But I wasn't exactly sure if that was possible in blueprints alone, or what it really meant lol

I wasn't sure if it meant the inheritance type of parent/child relationship, or something else

[chrome bay]

I assume they mean attach it, but I don't see how that would work

[cedar finch]

No clue. I thought the CMC runs a tick looking for the floor or "base" and the "jitter" issue with clients is probably the network issue of movement you described above

But hey, Sea of Thieves does it somehow. So they're either faking it, or figured if out somehow lol

I'm going to keep playing with it. If you figure anything out let me know. It's funny how what seems like a simple feature like moving platforms can be such a hassle.

I wonder of client Authoritative movement would work? You might see your friends jittering or floating lol but it might fix the individual users experiences. Idk

[azure hollow]

Hey guys I've created a simple multiplayer system to just play on the same network and it works fine. All clients can join and move.
The issue is, the player who creates the session cannot move once he spawns BUT it is possessed and has a valid player controller. Any suggestion on this? Only the host cannot move 😦

[quasi tide]

Check input mode @azure hollow

[azure hollow]

first thing I did...it's not that the issue

[quasi tide]

Then show your code

Everything is just conjecture.

[azure hollow]

on the player controller

on the game mode

I am travelling from one level to another and in the previous level I am using another player controller but I don't believe it's the issue...because clients work fine

[pearl bear]

Hi all, what is the best way to replicate anim montage. I tried to use Multicast but client doesnt see anything

[short arrow]

Multicast bud

You Probably didn't do it right

[pearl bear]

For example, when my character uses a spell, I want her movement speed to increase. Is multicast relevant for this?

probably not because of if another player join after multicast execution that player cant see this update

In this case, it makes the most sense to update this variable on the server and mark it as replicated.

I wonder if my way of thinking is correct?

[short arrow]

That's not really what you asked in your first question. Replicating montages definitely is done through multicasts most of the time, any status effects should then be done through the server

You are correct in the way you're thinking though

But, I'm pretty sure multicasting a montage is the only way that isn't Mediocre.

[pearl bear]

so purely cosmetic things should go into Multicast

[short arrow]

Depends on what you mean by cosmetic,. Anything that is temporary should be multicasted

Someone throwing a punch would be a multicast because only people around need to ever know about it

And after it's done being thrown it's irrelevent.

Something like opening a door that never closes would need to be rep notified and not multicasted, so people who come into relevancy in the future can receive the update that the door is open

Hope that makes sense

If it's persistent then rep notify, otherwise multicast.

[left wagon]

Has anybody here developed multiplayer servers using agones in AWS and could land a hand? I'm very confused as to how to set it up correctly.

I managed to run agones in kubernetes using their examples but don't know how to set up a configuration for autoscaling when the player count hits the maximum allowed per match.

[zenith wyvern]

only the first player has working lighting. other cameras are black. what am i doing wrong?

[vague fractal]

You are not dynamically spawning the light, right ?

[pearl bear]

btw is it possible to run multicast rpc from uobject

[vague fractal]

It is, but you need some setup for that, take a look at this pinned message <#multiplayer message>

[pearl bear]

is it logical

[vague fractal]

Wdym by that ?

[pearl bear]

I have a design in my head to rpc from the uobject, but I'm not sure how logical it is.

Could there be any negative effects or limitations?

[vague fractal]

I mean, i did it and there's this site to teach you how to do it, so there are use/cases :D

Whenever it's good to do it is not possible to say for me, not experienced enough to judge that

[pearl bear]

😄 thanks

[dire lagoon]

I have this same issue, does anyone know how to solve it? https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/steam-subsystem-with-advanced-session-never-travels-on-join/612723

[zenith wyvern]

no, its the third person template, trying to add multiplayer to it

[vague fractal]

Any chance that you are using the steam sockets ? (https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.1/en-US/using-steam-sockets-in-unreal-engine/)

[vague fractal]

Hmm, then i'm not sure. Was just my first guess due to multiplayer

[dire lagoon]

no I'm not using the steam sockets

[vague fractal]

Ah ok, i did used them and i also got a join problem, thought it might be the same here

[dire lagoon]

Did the join session of advanced friends game instance work well for you?

[twin juniper]

So all clients including listen server runs the same logic but when weapon is fired by a peer it tells the host, host then tells all the clients spawn a projectile from player1. Since they’re all running the same logic the projectile follows the same path on all the clients. So the listen server isn’t sending full frames of information just any critical information you that the server should handle

[vague fractal]

I actually don't even use the plugin as i'm doing it in C++, so i didn't had the need to expose it to BP 😅

[twin juniper]

But I’m guessing UE uses client side prediction and interpolation to keep data synched?

[quasi tide]

No. You have to implement that yourself if you're not using CMC or GAS

[hollow eagle]

First, get rid of the "peer" terminology. It implies P2P which unreal does not support out of the box. Unreal's networking is client-server - you have no peers, you only have the server and clients, where clients cannot talk to each other directly (and thus aren't "peers").
You're also thinking a bit too high level - unreal's networking is entirely focused around the replication of objects (which only the server can do), variables on those objects (also known as replication, again something only the server can do), and RPCs (calling functions on remote machines, which can be done only between clients and the server or vice versa). Anything beyond that - prediction, interpolation, etc is functionality you are implementing on top of the networking framework.
The built-in character movement component has built in support for prediction, but it implements that for itself. You have to implement it for anything else that hasn't already done so.

[torpid girder]

hello, i am trying to understand why my OnRep_Characters doesn't trigger when i set the var

    UPROPERTY(BlueprintReadOnly, ReplicatedUsing = OnRep_Characters, Category = "Avalon|Data")
    TArray<FAvalonCharacterData> CharacterData;
---

  DOREPLIFETIME(UAvalonCharacterSelectComponent, CharacterData);

i 've set the var with

  CharacterData = Data;

but i never hit the breakpoint on OnRep_Characters

[quasi tide]

In C++, you have to call the OnRep yourself for the server

[tender gale]

What Duroxxigar said, the OnRep doesn't execxute on the server/listen-server because it isn't being replicated

[twin juniper]

Thank you for that explanation I guess my question is if the server tells a player spawn a bullet from this origin with this velocity is it then telling the clients every frame the position of that bullet or do the clients just follow their own logic in firing it?

[hollow eagle]

depends on how you implement it

it wouldn't be every frame, to start - network ticks don't happen every frame for every actor

But you'd want some degree of client prediction on projectiles or else they'd look choppy, with resolution for when the server does send the occasional position update.

I don't remember if the built in projectile movement component does any of this for you.

[graceful flame]

If you don’t see the bullet does it even need to be a projectile in the first place? Could a simple line trace do the job instead?

[steady cape]

Sure

[twin juniper]

How often do you think server should send position updates? Like once every 10 frames or so?

[hollow eagle]

it depends ™️
and you wouldn't generally implement that yourself, it happens as part of replication.

[twin juniper]

I see ok

[dark edge]

Sometimes you want projectile motion even if you can't see it

Battlefield/Arma/PUBG

You shouldn't be using the stock projectile movement component though, it's not great. Whatever you end up with would be something doing line traces on tick

[steady cape]

I mean, if you're not going with realistic bullet travel, you don't need to

[ebon hinge]

my relative location and rotation arent being replicated to other clients in this code. it works locally but everyone else just sees me put my hand to my head where the components default position is

[torpid girder]

I was expecting to see it trigger on the client, server starts a player controller, it makes a call to load in the account details, sets the var and that should replicate down

I am playing as a listen client

But I am sure I did this before

[obtuse temple]

I'm working on a metabolism system on a dedicated server. Which would be more performant? 1. Setting individual 5 second timers on characters that handle the metabolism logic on the character or 2. Make a component in the gamemode that "ticks" each actors metabolism every 5 seconds. I imagine having lots of players with individual serverside timers can lead to performance problems.

[winged badger]

It wouldnt

Central object ticking all metabolism object is slightly more efficient

You will have extra cost if each metabolism is a standalone replicated object that will dwarf any timer/ticking cost though

Evaluating objects for replication is not cheap, timers are

[obtuse temple]

Thanks. Its just a few OnRep floats in an ActorComponent on the player, I only need to send them to the client for UI updates

[winged badger]

If you want efficiency, GS component with FastArray doing replication for all metsbolisms would be a way to go

[obtuse temple]

Whats GS?

I know about FFastArraySerializer

[winged badger]

GameState

[obtuse temple]

Ah derp 😄

[winged badger]

You make a metabolism struct thst also has a weak pointer to component it has data for

And use that as fastarrayitem

[obtuse temple]

Cool thanks, I'll see what I can cook up

[ebon hinge]

any ideas?

[winged badger]

Yeah, you never told the server what the position is. Use Unteliable RPC when you do

[ebon hinge]

no it doesnt work. ive tried it. the clients dont receive the update

[winged badger]

There is no Server RPC i can see there

[ebon hinge]

thats a function

its called set aim socket

[dark edge]

Show the rest of this

I'm guessing other clients don't know which socket is aim socket

[ebon hinge]

@dark edge right here

[dark edge]

show when clients would run Set Aim Socket

[dark edge]

So when is another client supposed to Set Aim Socket?

You should use an onrep

on bIsAiming

OnRep_bIsAiming -> do the aim stuff (whatever set aim socket is doing)

then jsut set that boolean to replicated with skip owner (if you want some half-assed prediction)

[ebon hinge]

sadly that isnt working either

its interesting though, if i have isAiming true by default, then the gun spawns in the same spot for me locally

[dark edge]

Then in OnRep_IsAiming, use IsAiming to select the position or whatever

the IsAiming onrep should do everything that is implied when aiming

whatever that is, moving IK stuff, anything like that

[ebon hinge]

yeah it doesnt work

[dark edge]

you don't use IsAiming anywhere in your SetAimSocket logic unless you've changed it since you last screencapped it

you need to use the bool in your Set Aim Socket function to choose between aiming and non aiming positions or whatever

[ebon hinge]

i use it to interpolate the ADS animation

it works

switching between positions isnt the problem

its the replication

specifically the relative location and rotation

i think thats where its hanging

i got it!!

[noble sentinel]

Why my game sends players into different instances of same level when I use servertravel?

We are in same level but we cant see hear on interact with each other

[dark edge]

what was it

[ebon hinge]

i set the socket in my animbp on spawn but it wasnt recognizing it. looks like it automatically replicates in there. i just had to set a delay of 0.1s so i could load in before it sets the socket

then i just do the function again on right click

kinda weird but ill take it

mission accomplished

its a bit jittery for the other clients but i dont care at this point

not really noticeable

damn i fixed the jitter too

[torpid girder]

this is strange, i can see that the authority is updating a var, but the OnRepl function is still not being triggered

if (WasSuccessful && GetOwner()->HasAuthority())
    {
        CharacterData = CharactersPackage.data;

        if (CharacterData.Num() != 0)
        {
            ChosenCharacter(0);
        }
    }

CharacterData has been configured with

DOREPLIFETIME_CONDITION(UAvalonCharacterSelectComponent, CharacterData, COND_None);

that should as far as i understand replicated any time CharacterData is set?

it didn't even trigger if i start a separate server

[noble sentinel]

I really need help about this, I cant solve it for a month. When a player enter level change zone, players will server travel but they cant see or hear each other, and when a player finishes that bugged level, only he will travel to next level. Whats the problem?

[torpid girder]

i thought BeginPlay was called on both the client and server?

oh i am stupid 🙂

[jade patrol]

sounds like all players executes the server travel command, only the server should run it. here is a tutorial with more info about server travel and how to fix seamless travel issues https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25oY0k081dk

[torpid girder]

helps is i set replication to true 🙂

[pearl bear]

    TArray<USpell*> SpellSlots;```

Anybody who tried to replicate TArray of uobjects?

TArray has null values when I tried to use them in multicast

[grim rain]

hello can someone help me make this work on multiplayer? the server spawns it and it attaches but the client doesnt see anything or get their own falshlight

[snow hatch]

anyone know if with a auto save system thats a plugin do you need to add each function you want to be saved or does it just pull that from what the players state is?

[prime pawn]

Still learning replication, how do i correctly get player controller in multiplayer, I know this is incorrect. this applys to host, & not to the correct client

[pearl bear]

Can I replicate UDataAsset?

[shadow arch]

Anybody have any ideas as to why when i play as a client my AI doesn't wake up but when i play as a listen server + client my AI reacts to client correctly?

[fathom aspen]

A pointer to it

[fathom aspen]

How does DumbellHoldable relate to the PC? answer that question and you got your answer

[dim trail]

should I be using the WithValidation tag more liberally?

im just returning true on most of them

[fathom aspen]

Depends if you really need to validate the data

[noble sentinel]

Im trying to make level change when a player enter the level change zone, but how can I make it triggerable correctly by a client?

as clients cant trigger server travel

[prisma snow]

your player pawn should be replicated and therefore, the server is the one that know when it enters the zone

[noble sentinel]

There is a lot of things to replicate, which ones you mean?

[prisma snow]

it is already replicated (replicates, replicate movement)

[noble sentinel]

these was not ticked

I ticked them now

should ı left them unticked?

[prisma snow]

depends, this is not soemthing I'm familiar with. If the component that triggers the overlap is the capsule, I guess it needs to be replicated

And character movement too

Idk about mesh

[zenith wyvern]

It turns out all my additional clients get black cameras because UE runs all of them 'under the same process'. If i uncheck that, they work fine (but everything is slower). With that in mind, is there an obvious reason my lighting doesnt work in multiplayer when 'run under same process'?

[prisma snow]

We have no issue with cameras in PIE, same process - however we had issues with render targets

[jade patrol]

are you familiar with RPC ? you can create an event that runs only on server, for example if you have a sphere you can check collisions on server only and on server you execute the command to travel, smth like this

[noble sentinel]

That would help me to enable level change with only server, thanks! But I also have a problem, even I trigger it with a server player, players are going into same map but they cant see hear or collide each other, how this is possible?

[jade patrol]

like i said only the server player needs to execute servertravel command, the clients will follow. not sure why players dont see each other ... do you use seamless travel option?

[noble sentinel]

yeah, I think seamless travel is enabled if no additional steps required. But I dont understand how its possible to send people into same level but different instances

They are literally in seperate worlds, and one can use server travel again without affecting other after that point

[noble sentinel]

well, I made same exact of it but

How I am 3/2, I have one listen server and one client

[jade patrol]

😄 you have 3 characters in the collision somehow

[noble sentinel]

can it be my point light :d

it wasnt

...

Fixed it

But I think I need to change execute command to server travel node

[jade patrol]

for seamless is a bit more complicated, i'm checking now how to do it, did it long time ago ...

[noble sentinel]

yeah, I used server travel node when its true but still nothing happens

[jade patrol]

ok so i've checked, you have to have a transition map in the project settings maps & modes advanced section

and seamless works in standalone mode, not in pie

like this 😄

so after this, if the player is still not visible, do you have some extra setup for the pawn ? or do you use player state to keep the player model customization or something like that?

[noble sentinel]

I cant try this as in standalone one players always going back to main menu as its steam connected, I think I will try it with packaging a beta build to steam, thanks for help, that player counter saved me.

[pseudo tusk]

Anyone know how time dilation effects multiplayer? From what I'm reading it makes anything clock based act wonky and usually would effect all players?

[noble sentinel]

This worked, it finally working as it should be, thank you very much

[zenith wyvern]

From a player controller, is the only way to change a variable an RPC? On click I want to set a variable on the server, which replicates

[prisma snow]

yeah server RPC

it is a common flow (and recommended): Client RPC requesting to set some value, and server recieves the updated value, validates if needed, and sets+replicates it

[latent heart]

You can optionally predict a positive response from the server. You will have to rpc out a negative response from the server to tell the client it didn't happen as well, though, if it fails.

That prediction wouldn't do anything destructive or whatnot. Maybe start playing an animation or whatever, but not kill anybody, use items, etx.

[stoic lake]

is it possible to multicast from the gamemode?

[prisma snow]

nope, GameMode is not replicated

[stoic lake]

okay thanks

[cinder orbit]

My sprint logic works on multiplayer for the host but not for player 2. isSprinting is a variable in the third person character BP, which is also where this logic is located.
What should I change?

https://i.imgur.com/0JSJTti.png

[cinder orbit]

Looks like this setup works, but im not sure if multicast means that now whenver 1 person sprints everyone will be sprinting.., but at least player 2 can sprint now:

https://i.imgur.com/482iSZx.png

[low helm]

Multicast is definitely wrong

Just have the client change his run speed right away, and send a message to the server only to do the same

[cinder orbit]

Ah gotcha, ty!

[keen kraken]

Hello! not sure if this is the right place to ask but it's related (would ask in rendering branch i guess) The question is there a built-in way to interpolate actors transformations between replication frames. so for example i sync actor every ~0.1 seconds (or it varies depending on lag etc) and i want to have smooth visual transition clientside for this actor. does unreal engine has such capabilities included or do i need to implement my own code for render thread which will do the interpolation between previous and current transforms every render frame? the goal is to have relative smooth transitions independent from client actor transform updates. (this is how it's done in all proper games) because i played paragon and creep units did move without interpolation (you see how they jump from position to position) and this made me wondering if it's a "hard" task to accomplish. Sorry couldn't find anything in google right away.

[prisma snow]

The character movement component should handle this, with prediction/extrapolation as well. Not sure if this is what you need since it is a very complex movement system mainly for FPS games

[keen kraken]

hmmm so i guess i would need to implement it on my own, thanks!

[prisma snow]

why?

I mean, what are you planning to build?

[keen kraken]

because char movement is more coplex makes "a lot" of tests (traces) etc

so if i want a more performant way to smooth actors i would for sure use something specially designed for that

it would be a mistake to you char controller for units if the quantity of those units is above 100 or similar

you need some lightweight alternatives

[prisma snow]

Not sure if the floating pawn movement controller would handle it

[keen kraken]

but my question was a general one

[prisma snow]

Yeah it falls appart for those quantities

[keen kraken]

if unreal engine does have interpolation for synced entities

[prisma snow]

From what I know there is no built-in alternative, but coding the stuff manually is not difficult

[keen kraken]

as it seems "it doesn't"

[prisma snow]

I did it once for a test

[keen kraken]

yes

[prisma snow]

Writing the movement itself will be way harder than the interpolation

[keen kraken]

yes i know

[prisma snow]

The worse parts are if you want prediction and extrapolation

[keen kraken]

for simpler entities you only need interpolation

extrapolation can be usefull for time critical targets

to hide latency etc

[prisma snow]

yeah

I only wrote interpolation that time, with some buffering for the updates from the server

Also, grouping the updates using a network manager was much more efficient than doing individual RPCs

[jade patrol]

i used in the past smooth sync plugin that handled the interpolations pretty well and optimized

[keen kraken]

in the case you have C++ access (like we do) it's better to implement it directly on the objects. thank you for the answers!

[rose pollen]

can anyone recommend a good tutorial on authenticating through cognito with steam so that steam users don't have to make an account to play (but non steam users can still play via email/password)? It seems like this must be a very common need but google isn't showing me much on how to do it

[dark edge]

@cinder orbitSprinting like that will NOT work well in multiplayer with lag, but it'll sort of work

it'll be janky

[vivid egret]

Suppose you have 3 players connected via LAN listen server. Each one has a ready check button widget on their viewport. You store their "ready state" in the GameState with a boolean array. ie PlayerID1 is stored in index 1 with their associated T/F ready state. How do you set this up to replicate so each player can see when the others are ready? I cannot figure this out for the life of me, Ive tried everything I can find on google and discord and nothing seems to work.

[tender gale]

All you should have to do is set the book array to replicate and that’s it

Then the clients can check the value from the game state

And make sure you’re setting the game state’s ready value from the server (with a server RPC), so it’s most just being set on the single client’s game state

[dark edge]

You store their ready state in their playerstate

The STATE of the PLAYER is that they are ready

[tender gale]

That’s a better structural change and would go with what Adriel said

Though storing and accessing them from the game state shouldn’t have any issues, so I would personally figure out why that’s not working for learning purposes and then move them to the player state

But it’s up to you

[prime pawn]

how do i cast to character player in multiplayer

All i cant find is Dont cast to character player

cause its getting an index of 0

but cant find on what to do instead

[agile loom]

You can get the controlled pawn (player character) from the controller (player controller)

[boreal apex]

Curious if anyone knows how to easily receive a clients location in the world and print it to the hosts UI without the need of a complex array or map system, For context i am building a simple progress bar that shows the players % from start to finish in a racing game. I tried just getting any character in the world not equal to my owned pawn and if true i print out the last location. It works from the client to host, but not from the host to client, im thinking that maybe im using the wrong place to communicate this information for something like this. but Im curious if anyone has done anything like this or knows what im doing wrong. Im using strictly blueprints btw. (happy to share snips of code or vids if needed)

[silent valley]

Store the information in PlayerState. This is available for all players.

The host knows the position of all players (clients and self). On the host, compute the percentage complete, assign to the playerstate for each player. This information will be replicated to all clients so they can see the % for themselves and all other players.

[boreal apex]

ahhhh no way! I literally tried that exact thing but in the game state and not the player state, and it works perfectly now! THANK YOU

[silent valley]

Nice! Seems like you were v close 👍

[boreal apex]

Yes, I could feel it lol, thank you very much

[peak swallow]

Hey people ! Do you know how to connect two gamepad controller to two different players in local ?

So far I've made this ...

But when i connect two gamepad, both the player 1 and the keyboard control the first player ( even when the option inside the settings menu is tick ) and when adding a second controller, it controls the first player as well but the first controller doesn't control anything anymore

On an old forum this guy said that two player controllers had to be created, but how and when ?

[peak swallow]

Actually, I think that the unreal engine doesn't want to recognize a second gamepad because even in the project settings, when trying to add an input, only one of the two gamepads is recognized

[thin stratus]

There should be no need for the third PlayerController

Creating a second player with the node you screenshot should be enough

[peak swallow]

I tried but it doesn't, I just have another splited screen but none of the two newly created player reacts to any input

[willow cargo]

Are actors spawned from Gamemode also replicated to clients? (the actor has 'replicates' turn on)

[willow cargo]

This doesn't seem to be working for me with dedicated server

in my gamemode I have

My TestObject actor is just the default actor with Replicates enabled.
Looking at the world Outliner of my connected client does not show any TestObjects

[fathom aspen]

Set it to AlwaysSpawn just in case, and there is nothing more to that

[fiery eagle]

void UMPActorComponent::FinishReloading()
{
    if (MyCharacter == nullptr) return;
    bLocallyReloading = false;
    if (MyCharacter->HasAuthority())
    {
        if (GEngine)GEngine->AddOnScreenDebugMessage(-1, 1, FColor::White, FString::Printf(TEXT("FinishReloading")));
        CombatState = ECombatState::ECS_Unoccupied;
        UpdateAmmoValues();
    }
    else
    {
        if (MyCharacter->IsLocallyControlled())
        {
            ServerFinishReload();
        }
    }
    if (bIsFirePressed)
    {
        Fire();
    }
}```

Hi I need #introductions on this

is it a proper way to Implement Finish reloading. CombatState Is set to Replication using RelicatedUsing=SetCombatState but for SomeReason iam not Getting ECombatState::ECS_Unoccupied Set everytime it skip some of the time so i added a RPC to call FinishReloading to make it work is this the correct way. As after adding RPC ECombatState::ECS_Unoccupied is setting Reliably.

[vivid egret]

Maybe I don’t understand player state then. Does each player have their own player state, or does the player state represent all players? From what I can tell every player has their own, so I can’t request values from a specific player, or atleast I don’t know how to approach that.

[tender gale]

https://cedric-neukirchen.net/Downloads/Compendium/UE4_Network_Compendium_by_Cedric_eXi_Neukirchen.pdf

Every player has their own playerstate

The GameState has a list of every PlayerState you can access

[vivid egret]

Hmm okay that makes sense. But how do you know which player state is bound to which character? Suppose you had 100 players how would you ever parse them; thankfully I only have 3

[thin stratus]

Pawn and Controller have pointers to PlayerStates

Pawn only if possessed

In C++ (maybe even BP by now), PlayerState also has a pointer back to the Pawn

The Owner (GetOwner()) of a PlayerState is the Controller

Obviously GetOwner only returns a valid pointer if you call that on the Server or the LocalClient

Cause PlayerControllers don't exist for remote clients

All of this comes with the little problem of PING, which is why C++ is a lot nicer here.
Most if not all of those variables have OnRep functions in C++ to ensure they are valid if you need to do anything on them

Controller <- PlayerController and Pawn <- Character, so that goes for those two too

[tender gale]

These are the two main resources I'd recommend reading/watching to fully explain networking and replication

https://cedric-neukirchen.net/Downloads/Compendium/UE4_Network_Compendium_by_Cedric_eXi_Neukirchen.pdf

https://youtu.be/JOJP0CvpB8w

[fiery eagle]

Need help Understanding why is OnRep_CombatState() is Not Setting CombatState To unoccupied Reliably on the client Side if using simulated lag.

[vivid egret]

Thanks this is helpful!

[vivid egret]

So here is the code, I tried using a RunOnServer RPC to tell them gamestate to update if a player is ready at the index of that players ID. In the second image, you can see ID 1 (presumably the host) dosnt know when ID 2 (presumably a client) is ready.

I probably need to just sit down with the documentation on this for a few days until it clicks. But for now, what do you recommend so that all computers know everyones state?

The weird thing is, a few weeks ago I was casting to the GameMode for this and it worked fine. but then one day it just crapped out even though i hadnt changed any code

[tender gale]

You’re doing the server RPC in a widget blueprint, but widgets are only on the client

[vivid egret]

Im missing something, I read on forums you have to use RunOnServer from client actors or they wont work

[tender gale]

Something I did want to add. This setup will not work if there is any latency issues, the client will have a ton of rubber banding. It only works when testing it locally

which you can test yourself with the "Enable Network Emulation" option in the Editor Settings

https://youtu.be/RtQRMcupJs0

this video also shows it off around 11:30

[thorn trout]

I can't find a solid answer on if steam offers dedicated servers for multiplayer and if it does I can't find a cost

Can anyone clarify this for me?

[quasi tide]

Steam probably could

[cinder orbit]

Got it, ty!

[marble fox]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/839664416865386566/1087093289699790868/image.png

Why is it just showing on the client that does it?

Isn’t this getting called on the server ?

[prisma snow]

Matbe the client has authority over APlayerCharacter

[marble fox]

I’m doing the exact same thing when I pick the weapon up but it gets destroyed on all clients so

[prisma snow]

I'd use the debugger to see what is going on

also maybe check Net Mode for extra debugging information

[fathom aspen]

I've just dropped this, so thought you might be interested:

https://wizardcell.com/unreal/multiplayer-tips-and-tricks/

[twilit radish]

9/10 delay nodes are scared of this one simple trick.

Awesome work though, looks nice. Still scrolling through it though ❤️

[fathom aspen]

Thanks Thom, glad you like it!

[tender gale]

Great writeup! I have a couple questions,

Is there a reason you didn't include the GameMode class in the data sheet going over all the gameplay framework actors in point 1?

[fathom aspen]

Good point! Reason is I only put there Actors that are replicated as it's mentioned above the data table ^^

GameMode isn't replicated, so replication settings are irrelevant 🙂

[tender gale]

Ah that makes sense! I missed the replicated part

Then with 2. Beware of GetPlayerXXX(0) Static FunctionsPermalink,

or that you’re doing local multiplayer (split-screen) only, then you’re good to go

I'm still new to networking so I could be completely incorrect, but isn't this the opposite where it's fine in MP (for the most part) and not good in splitscreen? From what I've tested it's okay to get the player controller with index 0 in a MP scenario because as long as they are only one local player it will get the correct controller.

It's only when you're doing splitscreen that there are multiple local players meaning it'll only get the first controller when the logic would usually want to get all of the splitscreen players

will end up returning different results based on the context, usually being:

Listen-server: The listen-server’s PlayerController.
Dedicated-server: The first client’s PlayerController.
Client: The client’s PlayerController.

Basically going off what I said above, it sounds like it would get the correct player controller you want outside of the Dedicated server, but otherwise you would want calling GetController from a Listen-server to get the listen server's controller, and the client to get the client's controller.

[thin stratus]

@fathom aspen Did you actually see that GetGameLoginOptions stuff I pinged you on?

[tender gale]

I still avoid the static functions regardless in situations where I'm setting up logic in an object that is replicated just for better clarity and the other points you made, but getting the player controller in a UMG widget (only on the client) should be completely fine in a MP project

It's just when you do splitscreen it doesn't work since there are multiple local players in a client

[marble fox]

yup well, i got no idea

Why this aint working

its so weird, Before when i used Unreal i just did it on server and it like always worked, The weird part is im doing the EXACT same thing when i pick an item up but its working there

Wait i dont even think the server is getting called, let me print inside them and see

nope its getting called

[fathom aspen]

I see where the confusion stems from. With GetPlayerXXX(0) static functions I meant the function itself and not the fact that the index is 0 (it used to say GetPlayerXXX(PlayerIndex) before, but I changed it). Those functions were initially made with local MP in mind. So you assign the PlayerIndex to the entity you're trageting. You can use them just fine in online MP, but as I mentioned there, they might fail you in a couple of scenarios. You might have not faced them yourself, but it's just a matter of time ^^

[fathom aspen]

I did: #multiplayer message
I will update it real soon, good find, thanks heaps!

[marble fox]

Wizard cell you think you could help me out?

[tender gale]

Yeah I wouldn’t use them in any ability or core classes that are being replicated, but it should be perfectly safe in non-networked objects like UMG widgets

[thin stratus]

Ah I missed that. Thanks for quoting the reply. Glad it helps

[marble fox]

This is only working for the client, the weapon switching. Even tho im calling it through a server event

[fathom aspen]

Yeah for the most part they are

But keep in mind that there are always other ways around them!

[marble fox]

Bro what

Why isnt my CurrentWeapon changing even tho im doing CurrentWeapon = NextWeapon

Ive found the problem but yea

[marble fox]

Can anyone tell me why CurrentWeapon isnt changing?

But if i do CurrentWeapon = WeaponArray[1] everything works perfectly.

[marble fox]

Aint no way i just spent 3 hours on 1 line that was wrong 💀

[spark pelican]

I have an issue with replicating a value change on a UObject within an array. I have an array of UObjects that I believe are replicated correctly (SupportedForNetworking(), GetLifetimeReplicatedProps(), and ReplicateSubobjects()). Now, I don't know if this is normal behavior, but if I change a value within the UObject and also change something within the array, like adding or moving an element, it all replicates including the value on the UObject.

[boreal apex]

Hey, im wondering if anyone can help me solve this issue, my progress bars on the top are working fine but seem to have an issue on the client side once the host is a distance away from the client, then re-appears when i get close to the host again. it only seems to happen once they cross my finish line, which is just a bp with a collision trigger that fires an event dispatcher to my game mode saving the time to the player state. The progress bars are set by grabbing getting all actors of my character class, grabbing the actor that is not equal to my owning client, and printing the location stored in a vector on the player state. this is only a 2 player game so im wondering if theres an better way to do it in that case.

[boreal apex]

So I actually did solve this, turns out this type of character needs an always relevant check, which is fine in a 2 player setting where this data always has to be known by the clients. But is odd since im still just grabbing the location set in that player state, not the character. If there is a better way than checking on always relevant to fix something like this, please let me know!

[short arrow]

First off this is amazing, Although I'm curious about number 2. Do you really call Get controller ->Cast to player controller every single time you want a reference to your controller, instead of just calling get player controller? Especially in dedicated server games where get player controller will always return only the clients controller?

I understand this is a best practice article, but do you really do that every single time? Or is it different in c++?

[tender gale]

That is also what I brought up. As long as there aren't multiple local players in one client from splitscreen (Which the article says the opposite?) it should be fine to use

If your project needs splitscreen that won't work, but otherwise I don't see what issues would come up

I could be completely wrong though. I just can't think of any scenarios where it wouldn't function properly

[sinful tree]

Your code here fails as "Get All Actors of Class" would not retrieve the other player once they are out of relevancy, so even if the value is stored in the playerstate, the get all actors of class wouldn't contain the player. To do this differently, you'd need to get all the playerstates and then read their values.

[boreal apex]

okay! il give that a try, thank you

[peak sentinel]

why this is not pinged yet

[fathom aspen]

Of course. It will return the target client's PC but only when called client-side. But what about it being called on the server? It will return the first client's one and not the targeted one (the targeted could be index 3 and you have no idea of knowing that)

[fathom aspen]

Yes. It's not any different in cpp. Casting is not bad

[hollow swallow]

Has anyone got a good guide to create a party system?

[short arrow]

I meant more of you making a game that is dedicated server based, for anything that doesn't get called by the server, it's just so efficient and quick to use get player controller. So you must be very disciplined to still do it the "correct" way

[fathom aspen]

It's not. Imagine it says GetPlayerXXX(PlayerIndex) and not GetPlayerXXX(0) if that what worries you 😉
These functions were literally made for local multiplayer and that's where they should stay.
Them having two landmines in online multiplayer along with that beginners will not be able to know when it's the right time to use them (there is no right time :P) it's much better to say "just avoid them".

I've been enough in this server to understand why they are bad

Peeps don't realize when they are called on the server and they start to panic when they don't get the target Actor they were hoping for 😄

[short arrow]

The way I did it, which worked perfectly was recommended to me by eXi. spawn an actor into the world each time a party is created that contains all the relevant information.

After that you just need to put the lgoic somewhere to request to start a party, invite, join, and leave, etc. For that I just made a party actor component inside of the player controller

[short arrow]

ah rookie mistake 😄

[hollow swallow]

Cheers mate atleast that gives me a starting place

[short arrow]

if you have any specific requests feel free to ask, but I couldn't find any party system worth using

[fathom aspen]

If you know what you're doing then you're good. The related landmine is in a listen-server environment, but dedicated servers could be having something similar... idk

Also what if you happen to want to support listen-servers at one point

It's a good practice to plan for that early and just support it (it's not much of hassle)

[short arrow]

yeah that part is very true haha, we did plan to make the game work as listen server (to help test) and singleplayer.... Took a lot of fixing crap

[fathom aspen]

I blame @thin stratus for not 📌ing it 😛

[thin stratus]

Nani

[fathom aspen]

🤣

[fathom aspen]

Our lord and savior has been summoned

Thanks Cedric!

[peak sentinel]

mission successful

[fathom aspen]

https://tenor.com/view/gta-respect-mission-passed-video-game-mission-complete-gif-17882011

[vague fractal]

I used to have this code here

bool UInventoryComponent::ReplicateSubobjects(UActorChannel *Channel, FOutBunch *Bunch, FReplicationFlags *RepFlags)
{
    bool bWroteSomething = Super::ReplicateSubobjects(Channel, Bunch, RepFlags);

    bWroteSomething |= Channel->ReplicateSubobjectList(InventoryItems, *Bunch, *RepFlags);
    
    return bWroteSomething;
}

But now with 5.1 ReplicateSubobjectList(...); seems to get deleted rather than just becoming deprecated in some upcoming version.
It tells me i should use AddReplicatedSubObject instead, but i'm not quite sure how i have to use this new one.
ReplicateSubobjectList was able to take a whole array, but AddReplicatedSubObject seems to only take a single UObject* now.

Something like this was the first thing which came to my mind, but now i wouldn't check if any wrote happened, so i think that's just wrong

bool UInventoryComponent::ReplicateSubobjects(UActorChannel *Channel, FOutBunch *Bunch, FReplicationFlags *RepFlags)
{
    bool bWroteSomething = Super::ReplicateSubobjects(Channel, Bunch, RepFlags);

    //bWroteSomething |= Channel->ReplicateSubobjectList(InventoryItems, *Bunch, *RepFlags);

    for(auto& InventoryItem : InventoryItems)
    {
        AddReplicatedSubObject(InventoryItem);
    }
    

    return bWroteSomething;
}

[chrome bay]

You don't do it during ReplicateSubobjects - you just add it to the list when you create the item, and it'll handle it

The documentation also states that you need to build the list client-side, which is a) stupid and b) in my experience, unnecessary unless you want to use network replays.

[vague fractal]

Any chance that you could lead me to the documentation ?

[chrome bay]

https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.1/en-US/replicated-subobjects-in-unreal-engine/

[vague fractal]

Thanks

Oh well, thought it will only be a matter of like 2 lines of code to adapt here, but nope xD

[chrome bay]

It does make it a bit easier tbh, but the tedious part is rebuilding the list client-side if you need it.

Fortunately, I don't 😄

I don't see anyway to achieve that in practice without also replicating a duplicate array of those objects most of the time.

Or using callbacks or w/e. It doesn't say whether the order is important or not

[vague fractal]

luckly i'm also not in the need for replays (at least if i understand the replays in UE correctly e.g. like in COD a kill cam?)

[chrome bay]

The demo replays are the things that paragon had (not sure if Fortnite did), where you can download the network data of a game session and "watch" it back

Not sure if it's used for anything else, maybe killcam, not sure

[vague fractal]

Oh, it's meant like that

But yeah, also no need for that so lucky me xD

[chrome bay]

Yeah, just check the notes on it at the bottom. They seem to suggest it's required but I've not had that problem yet for my case

It's dumb really, I see no reason why the system couldn't manage to do that itself.

[vague fractal]

I've just learned last week that the documentations sometimes straight up lie, so i can accept this as another lie 🙃

[chrome bay]

Oh yes of course 😄

[edgy helm]

Hey, is this the place to ask for help?

[fresh saddle]

I’ve got a “Camera Manger” component that spawns and attaches a few cameras on a pawn in its own construction script
However, since updating to 5.1, the cameras themselves no longer maintain their attachment to the pawn. They simply spawn and maintain their world position 😦
Did something change in the new version?

[twin juniper]

Hi, is there any clean design to wait for widgets to be ready before doing any action on Pawn Spawn, I'm encountering a weird situation when giving my weapons on server where sometimes the weapons are given but the QuickBar/Inventory widgets not yet initialised and so don't listen yet to the delegates.

EDIT: i'm sorry I forgot to give any precisions but i'm giving my weapons in "Possessed" event in my Pawn.

[winged badger]

when you instantiate a widget first check if data is already there, if not bind to a delegate broadcast when it becomes available

[twin juniper]

Right, that seems already better than Lyra solution which is just ticking the quickbar

I'll test that, thx !

[winged badger]

ticking also works, its simpler

[quasi tide]

Wow - didn't know you were going to skimp out on us 🙄

(Jk <3)

[twin juniper]

Yeah but the QuickBar is always on the player screen, it's never deactivated, so I don't know if it's a good solution to do that.

I'm trying to tick my widgets the less possible, it might just be over-optimization but yeah idk 😄

[twin juniper]

at least i avoid to do it when i can !

[winged badger]

Construct->TryInit-> if DataReady then PopulateWidget else BindOnDataReadyDelegates and HideWidget

Ticking when its cheap, is acceptable

as long as you're not doing anything crazy

going fully event driven adds code complexity

[twin juniper]

I find it cleaner tbh

It's more readable and understandable imo

[fathom aspen]

Haha, this will steadily grow, don't worry 😜

Check #instructions

[quasi tide]

btw - WC, there is a typo at the start

[fathom aspen]

Pls shoot. Can even use the DMs if you want 😉

[quasi tide]

https://tenor.com/NzDU.gif

[fathom aspen]

Haha I barely proofread it once, so yeah that's expected 😛

@ember tendon pls don't DM me for work offering. See #instructions , thanks.

[edgy helm]

Hey, I am doing a universal call for help on vr multiplayer in unreal engine. I’ll describe it briefly. I have 1 listen server and 1 client. All works fine when there is only server but when client joins the server character now controls the client but remaining from its previous point of view. Auto possess is not enabled. Although, when I have 2 non vr players, all works fine. Is this because simply you cannot test vr multiplayer on one device?

[olive crow]

is there any way to get a random available port number that's not gonna return any of the commonly used ones?

[quasi tide]

Just grab a random number in between the normal range of values. IE - one above the common known ones and one at the max port number.

There are only a handful (relatively speaking) of ports that you should avoid. I think like...the first 2000 or something like that.

Otherwise it is free game. Just check if in use, if not claim it.

[olive crow]

I read somewhere using port 0 will make the system set an available one, but not sure if true

[twilit radish]

Pretty sure you can not use 2 VR clients from the same device yeah. I don't even know how that would work honestly, you can't see the view from 2 cameras at once 😛
But in general if you have 2 devices then it should definitely just work.

[edgy helm]

Oh alright then, thanks.

[quasi tide]

I don't think I've heard that before. I'd just go with my approach honestly. Not all that difficult to handle.

[twin juniper]

can we replicate a render target? when a player join, I want the server(player because P2P) send the RT to the new player

[quasi tide]

It is not P2P, just an FYI. Unless you're using custom networking.

[prisma snow]

damn sound expensive/slow

maybe it is not

[olive crow]

Just checked, it seems to work. Same PIE session, 2 clients opened a world with ?listen=0 and have different ports set by the system

[hearty marlin]

Having a weird issue where using the Third Person Template with inconsistent animation pausing for multiplayer. If I turn on replication for the Third Person Character and set Net Mode as Play as Listening Client with at least 2 instances and load something else like a terrain, the player animations sometimes freeze for the other client and looks like the player is sliding around. Anyone else encounter this? Unreal 5.1

[twin juniper]

hmm, what about decompress, how can you achieve that?

[twilit radish]

I mean.. Streaming services like Twitch exist. Obviously it's what they do to make money though so they spend a lot of time and effort on making it work. But it does show that it's definitely possible to have a lot of data at high quality send over a network to possibly thousands of people at the same time. So I would imagine depending on the needs one image shouldn't be too big of a deal 😄

[chrome bay]

GPU -> CPU readbacks are slow asf

If this is in reference to the fog of war thing, just keep the data CPU side

You will need it anyway to determine what is/isn't occluded etc.

And push that to GPU

[prisma snow]

yeah that's what I thought

[prisma snow]

for fow, I'm currently calculating it in both CPU and GPU independently, it is really cheap and maybe passing the data through is slower

[prisma snow]

Yeah, although those are specialized services. Also, streams are not real time, so updates can be buffered and network jitter/mising packets are less impactful.

That said, there's GeforceNOW which seems to be an impressive tech feat, allowing to play in remote computers as if it was yours - so it is definitely possible

[twilit radish]

I'm aware they are usually buffered for packet loss etc. but it was more about the idea of "if you want you can definitely send a lot of data" 😄

[prisma snow]

ohh yeah definitely. But I don't think it is a trivial problem

[weary lichen]

Hey
How can i replicate foliage instanced static mesh component

[prisma snow]

why do you want to do that?

usually that would be on the level and doesn't need to be replicated at all

[weary lichen]

multiplayer game

you can cut trees

pickup rocks

etc

[prisma snow]

well, you should use something like HISM (maybe you already do that) only as a visual representation of the game state. Under the hood, you should have some system with actors or objects that represent those trees/rocks etc, and that hold the related logic. When a tree is removed etc, you use the HISM index to remove the instance

[weary lichen]

yes but replicating 1k+ trees make the network laggy

[graceful flame]

You can trace then cast to hit actor to see if it’s instanced static mesh then based on the material you know if it’s a rock or tree.

[weary lichen]

they spawn at runtime on server

like Ark

idk if you know

[graceful flame]

What does that have to do with what I said?

[weary lichen]

because client will not see the rock

because the server is spawning the trees, rock

[graceful flame]

They change location every game?

[weary lichen]

yes

its openworld

[graceful flame]

How are they spawned?

[weary lichen]

i just add instance

i know that ark is doing it but idk how

[graceful flame]

The location doesn’t matter all you’re doing is tracing during player interaction then checking the hit result for instanced static mesh or not.

[weary lichen]

yes ok

[graceful flame]

And the material lets you know if it’s a rock or tree

[weary lichen]

🤨

its not my problem

i already know how to do that

its network problem

[prisma snow]

the spawn locations should be deterministic and procedurally generated so that you don't need to replicate all of them, just the initial seed

[weary lichen]

Sending a rpc with 1k+ transforms is not possible

[prisma snow]

after that, use FFastArraySerializers to hold the data and only send the diffs

[prisma snow]

yeah indeed, it's too much

[graceful flame]

GameState can generate random locations and place them it’s replicated.

[prisma snow]

the idea is to only replicate the changes, not the whole state everytime. I can imagine that trees and rocks are collected at a relatively slow pace, right?

[weary lichen]

yes

[graceful flame]

Is the landscape generated too?

[weary lichen]

no

only trees, rocks

[graceful flame]

Why not?

[prisma snow]

then it's really cheap to replicate

[weary lichen]

yes okay

for that

i will still need to send all the changes to the client

[prisma snow]

FFastArraySerializers

Please read what I type

xD

https://vorixo.github.io/devtricks/network-managers/

[weary lichen]

can i use that to send everything on join ?

[prisma snow]

yeah

but I would do the initial spawn seed-generated

[weary lichen]

i will just send the 20000 meters away foliages

[prisma snow]

you're gonna collapse the network

[weary lichen]

imagine the numbers of trees to send to a new client after 1 day with 20 players

if i use your method

[prisma snow]

well then you need to optimize more

for example

only send the data for the trees that are near each player

[weary lichen]

so i need to use instanced foliage spawner with a seed ?

and send the seed to clients ?

• the changes

[prisma snow]

• Seed for initial state (maybe optional)
• Send changes when those happen
• Send only relevant data for each player (in a radius for example)

[thin stratus]

@fathom aspen Point 16 of that new doc you posted

That is a small diff that you probably point out

That the OnRep won't call on a ListenServer

[weary lichen]

Okay

Thank you a lot

[fathom aspen]

Oh yeah, that's a very good point that my radar missed! Will point it out, thanks!

[zenith wyvern]

Is there a way to quickly reference the return of that random in, without a local variable?

Dragging off it again is a new random int

[quasi tide]

Nope.

'tis how pure functions work.

[marble fox]

how do i replicate a UParticleSystem? Cause calling it on the server doesnt do anything

[marble fox]

Why doesnt this work

the muzzleflash only shows for the client, not for every client

[chrome bay]

They don't replicate

[dark edge]

Why would it show for every client?

What part of your code runs on non-owning clients?

[marble fox]

how i make em replicate

[marble fox]

Well, I want the particles to replicate, like when i shoot everyone should see the particles

[dark edge]

You need to somehow replicate the fact that you shot

[marble fox]

Am i not doing it via the server event? I mean, If it happens on the server and the server calls it on all clients isnt that replicated ?

[quasi tide]

The weapon needs to replicate as well

[marble fox]

the weapon is replicated

[dark edge]

I don't see a multicast RPC anywhere in here

[marble fox]

ahh i need a multicast

Im still kinda new to this, My bad

[dark edge]

Either that or a burst counter or whatever, but something needs to go from server to clients (skipping owner of course if you're locally predicting)

[marble fox]

Should the multicast be when i shoot on the player ?

[unkempt tiger]

Any function I can override in my component that gets called after the initial bunch comes in?

[dark edge]

The typcial flow is

Owner -> Server -> EveryoneElse

Getting it butter smooth is not trivial, that's why multiplayer is hard

[marble fox]

So i guess, tHis should happen when the player presses M1 (Mouse1)

[dark edge]

Owner:
Input -> Run On Server -> (optional) Local implementation
Server:
RunOnServer -> do the actual logic -> multicast
Everyone:
Multicast -> Local Implementation (if not owner)

something like that

you have 2 rpcs involved to get the fact that you're shooting to go from initiating client to other clients

Owner -> Server
Server -> Everyone Else

[marble fox]

Got it working thanks

[unkempt tiger]

Is it safe to assume PostNetRecieve will have all the replicated properties valid on its first call?

Or could they come in over several packets?

[fathom aspen]

Depends on what those properties are. Look for the latest in pins, it has some replication guarantees

[balmy gazelle]

Someone knows if is possible to have different lighting scenarios levels loaded per client on the same server ?

[fathom aspen]

I think you are able if they were spawned and not loaded

Because loaded means they are loaded on all machines with the same settings etc.

[winged badger]

Everything set in tick object was created will replicate before postnetinit

But...

If that property is a pointer to another replicated object

Then that object also has to replicate on its own before netguid can be resolved

[short arrow]

So is there any way to possibly set an actor component to be dormant or anything similar to it without directly changing the networking settings of the owning actor? My inventory component NetDriver Tick time is absolutely giving it to the server... Lubelessly

please help lol

[gilded vapor]

If the gun plays an animation (that's already replicated) you can just make it an anim-notify (to save yourself the RPC)

[distant turret]

Hi guys for mobile games there are some games that have arena gamemode where u can challange another players character but in offline mode. How to get certain players shown in arena.

[twin juniper]

Question about game state rendering: The client renders or interpolates to the state the server sends but what happens when the server sends a new state during the interpolation process?

Does the client immediately discard the previous state and begin interpolating/rendering to the new state?

Or does it complete the previous state then render the new state?

[fossil spoke]

What do you mean in regards to rendering?

Each Client performs their own rendering based on the information they have at the time.

If something updates information, the rendering state may change.

How this relates to interpolation really depends on what on earth you mean by that.

Maybe explaining what you are asking about in more detail would help give us context to better answer the question.

[marble fox]

no worries, i fixed it

[fathom aspen]

You should be able to control that via AActor::ReplicateSubobjects. It gets called everytime the owning Actor is considered for replication

The new subobject replication system has a new convenient way to do that

[short arrow]

This works in 4.26?

Tysm will look into it!

[ornate pulsar]

has anyone gotten a dedicated server system working with amazon gamelift?

[fossil spoke]

Its better to just post your issue than asking a question like that.

What problem are you running into specifically?

[ornate pulsar]

I am able to get a Linux server compiled and uploaded to Amazon gamelift but when the fleet runs it it fails to init sdk within 5 min

Even though I init it with a plugin

[fossil spoke]

Have you provided all the appropriate prerequisites?

Such as any installers it might need for drivers etc

The UE prerequisites etc

vc_redist

[lusty snow]

If I have a weapon component that is attached to acharacter, and also adds a reference to that weapon component to the character, and then I run WeaponComponent->Fire() from that character -- which also executes a server RPC from that component, how come it says there is no owning connection?

Is there some obvious way to set the owning connection on a component that I'm missing?

[fossil spoke]

Is the Character possessed by a Controller?

Are you calling that RPC on an Autonomous Proxy?

[lusty snow]

Not currently, just have some input mapping. Just starting to learn! Yes I am calling the RPC on an Autonamous Proxy -- a client. Do I need to call SetOwner somewhere?

[fossil spoke]

If the Character isnt possessed then it wont have a NetOwningConnection, the Controller (PlayerController) is the NetOwningConnection.

It cant be an AutonomousProxy if it doesnt have a Controller possessing it.

[lusty snow]

Got you, starting to make sense. So once I integrate a controller I should be good to go and could probably even execute the RPC directly inside the weapon component without using a reference in the character or controller?

[ornate pulsar]

how do I get a ue4prereq file

cause its not creating one when i build

[lusty snow]

Thanks by the way, Matt. This stuff is not so apparent scrolling through documentation or google as a newbie

[fossil spoke]

Prerequisites can be found in the Extras folder in the Engine directory.

[fossil spoke]

If the Character is possessed by a Controller, any component on the Character can call RPCs.

[ornate pulsar]

cant find it (Im using UE5.1 built from source)

[ornate pulsar]

found it

thanks bb gurl

[ornate pulsar]

do you know the required files for getting a linux server to run this when its uploaded to a amazon gamelift fleet

[fossil spoke]

No, you may need to do further research on your own to determine what you need.

As this was only an example of something that maybe required.

[ornate pulsar]

alright

[fossil spoke]

Not a direct indication thats the issue.

Follow this tutorial series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOy0xYaP3wA&list=PLa1dM5bPQv0u2IWZRIxtRqwWVJNOUtlbF

It is very thorough.

[ornate pulsar]

he did a windows server, im doing a linux server

[frail barn]

if i have a damage logic inside a controller, where i must place an event dispatcher, to update an HP bar widget, in a pawn, which takes damage, or in a widget?

[kindred widget]

Why is a controller handling the damage logic instead of the Pawn? The dispatcher should go on whatever is holding the health. The widget should be able to bind to that.

[frail barn]

why pawn?

[kindred widget]

The controller is a networking and control input class. It shouldn't matter if a pawn is possessed by a Player, Possessed by an AI controller, or even not possessed at all. They should still be able to take damage. Putting your damage code in a controller when it relates to a Pawn isn't a good idea.

[frail barn]

why its matters at all, who is possessed a pawn, to takes damage?
its just reducing a variable

[tender gale]

The player controller also persists between deaths/restarts, so it would make sense to only have the health component/data on the pawn since it has a limited life span

It’s also common practice because what if your player controller possesses a different pawn like a vehicle that would have different health?

[frail barn]

each pawn has own health

[tender gale]

Wouldn’t you want all of the logic related to health/damage to be encapsulated all in one place?

So you don’t have to go running around between actors/classes to find what you want

You usually have a specific health component on the pawn to make it modular, and then all logic related to health goes in the component

[frail barn]

i dont see a problem here at all
controller does damage, pawn receives damage
nothing complicated

[tender gale]

For the sake of following what each classes purpose is and keeping a clean code base. Doesn’t it make sense to have one class/actor contain all the relevant data that controls it?

To answer your original question though, the delegate/event dispatcher would go in the pawn with your current structure

[frail barn]

it is
pawns has stats and overhead bar, and logic to change bar, when they receiving a damage
they need nothing more

[tender gale]

Alright lol

[kindred widget]

So.. are all units invincible when you don't possess them? Are you duplicating code for your AI?

[frail barn]

no and no
they taken damage normally

[kindred widget]

But how, if your damage code is in the controller?

[frail barn]

what do u mean - how? they have a variable "HP"
when they taking damage this variable is reduced

[tender gale]

You said the damage logic is inside the controller

If a pawn isn’t being controlled, how can it take damage?

[kindred widget]

But you have said the code for reducing that is in the controller.

[frail barn]

why do they need to be possessed to take damage? they dont need that
its kinda joke?

[tender gale]

Is the logic to handle damage in the player controller or pawn?

[frail barn]

rpc to do damage is in a controller

[sterile plaza]

How far into a quick and dirty prototype/doc do you all start networking your stuff?
Obviously the sooner you support networking, the less effort it is to add more networking.
But making sure it works adds a non-trivial amount of work to a rapid prototype.

And maybe you discover the whole thing sucks before you even add mp? Assuming the game can work 1p.

[tender gale]

For me if it’s a MP game then it’s always been a requirement to make sure it works in multiplayer, even if it’s prototyping

It could vary though per project

[sterile plaza]

That's my natural inclination, and that's probably what I should be doing with my new little hobby project.
But at work I've found that people (designers/producers) want quick and dirty prototyping so you can be super fast. But, while you can write some hacky 1p code that's a bit buggy and it's acceptable, that doesn't really fly for network code.

Which is an argument towards not adding it right away. But again, that's a bit to unique to our game that had designs that could be tested 1 we wanted to prototype (although we eventually tested in MP).

[abstract pike]

Hey does anyone know how to get the equivalent of this working for UE5?
UE4Editor-Engine!GPlayInEditorContextString

Or maybe it's a rider issue instead of ue5, does anyone have it working with Rider?

[bitter swift]

Is there a property or function that lets all players know that this character is receiving movement input? Or will I have to make a replicated var for that?

[livid sluice]

I have a weird Issue, from what I understand about replication, this should work?
As in the print **should **fire on all clients and server.
But it only prints on the server.
(The actor has no owner and is already placed in the world )
Any clue as to why would help.

Ah managed to figure it out. I needed to add a delay after the switch node to give time for everything to sync and catchup

[vague fractal]

In here https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.1/en-US/replicated-subobjects-in-unreal-engine/
net.SubObjects.CompareWithLegacy gets mentioned to compare the new list with the old method at runtime, but how exactly should someone use this ?
Since i'm going to adapt to this new system it seems helpful if i just knew how it's meant to work 😅

[quasi tide]

To be honest - once you get a grip on networking in general, it's not much more work to get a quick n' dirty networked prototype done in Unreal.

[pure ocean]

Guys I have a question. What do you suggest is the best way for a beginner making a multiplayer game. I want to do a arena game with different weapon types. Like sword and archer for example. Would you recommend to make weapons which the character can pick up and these weapons have the abilities attatched to them. Or should I make multiple character blueprints as a "hero" the player selects in the main menu ?
It's a little bit difficult finding a course or tutorial that provide a clear path towards this

[quasi tide]

Because there isn't a "best" way. It's w/e way for your specific game design

If you want my actual advice, it'd be to not do multiplayer as a beginner.

Learn the engine first. Learn its framework.

Then do multiplayer.

[pure ocean]

Yeah that is definitely the best way, and I do appriciate that advice. But I'm too stubborn 😅

[pure ocean]

Do you have any suggestions for where I could find more up to date information about it though? I would greatly appriciate it

[quasi tide]

Check the pinned resources.

Start out with cedrics network compendium. It's the networking bible. Many people have made games off the knowledge in that alone.

The two pinned posts for WizardCell's blog is really good too.

Then for some of the more advanced stuff, you can use vori's pinned blog.

Alex Forsythe's video is also very good.

[pure ocean]

Okay amazing! That is really helpful

[quasi tide]

All of these things are pinned in this channel

[pure ocean]

Didnt even think to check the pinned, really thank you! This is what I need. I just need to know the fundementals so I can create the exact things I need. tutorials are great but in many of them I just copy whatever the person is doing without understand why it's being done

[quasi tide]

Even with all of these resources, lacking an understanding of the underlying framework and lacking actual tangible practice will still cause you headaches.

All that said - if you still want to continue with networked games...welcome to one area of game development where the singular goal is to figure out how to not do it.

(The less networking you can figure out how to do, but still make your game feel good, the better)

[pure ocean]

Hehe sounds fantastic. I am ready to smash my head against the wall

I will give up and just make a singleplayer game if I run into obstacles that I literally cannot get past. But at least so far I've slowly been able to learn and figure out the issues I have faced. Atleast now I can replicate anything that is directly programmed in the character blueprint. but I dont want every player to have the same weapon and character appearance, so from what I understand I need to create datatables and enumerators and blueprint structures

[unkempt tiger]

So I have a component that within its EndPlay, does some logic on its owner. However I don't want this logic to be called if the actor is being destroyed.
I noticed that when the actor itself is destroyed on the server, the cleanup procedure on the client first destroys the components, then flags the actor as bIsBeingDestroyed, and only then removes the actor. It seems like components have no way of knowing whether or not their owner is being destroyed from their EndPlay scope, are there any workarounds to this?

[weary lichen]

Hey

i'm trying to replicate an Array of struct using FastArrayReplication but it does not replicate

[prisma snow]

have you followed Vori's article?

[weary lichen]

some things inside are old / not working for me

i followed everything

[prisma snow]

weird, I only used ffastarrays once, but it was recently and had no trouble

dunno if it was 5.0 or 5.1

Everything looks fine at first glance

[weary lichen]

The only different thing is the PostReplication override

[tender gale]

If you haven’t already I would look at lyra since it uses then

Which is an up to date example

[weary lichen]

i will check

[pearl bear]

I have a multiplayer game that consists of three independent zone. Players can be in zones independently of each other. I have questions about loading these zones and level streaming.

How should I approach level streaming in multiplayer game

My game is based on listen server, so server always have to load when client in any zone

but client will only load own zone

[graceful flame]

What’s a zone? A level?

[pearl bear]

yes

They all levels

[graceful flame]

Sounds like it’s starting to get into mmo territory which means you’d need to have a backend service keeping track of which zone the players are in. Not sure how that would work on listen setup.

Why can’t it be one big level using world partition?

[weary lichen]

Still not working for me

its same

as lyra

almost

[pearl bear]

Its not like MMO, I have four floor and each of them includes a lot of assets

[weary lichen]

PreReplicatedRemove, PostReplicatedAdd, PostReplicatedChange are not called

idk why

[chrome bay]

You sure you're actually modifying it on the Server?

[weary lichen]

Yes

I'm calling the cpp functions from blueprint

And i check Is Server before

[prisma snow]

@weary lichen plz no DM, I'd rather discuss it here

I'd debug first using the blueprint debugger and your IDE's debugger to see what is going on

[gloomy tiger]

You guys know any way to monitor for PlayerArray changes @ GameState?

I mean, would like a delegate or something.

[chrome bay]

There's not, but you can create your own and add a delegate

AddPlayerState and RemovePlayerState are virtual

[gloomy tiger]

Sounds good. Thank you Jambax!

[knotty relic]

I am having a strange issue recently, while testing my multiplayer using null subsystem with 2+ windows locally.

If I lose focus or unfocus the window as the listen server, players cant find the server or connect till I refocus the listen server; even if its just clicking into the window for a second and switching back.

Any ideas on what might be causing this?

[unkempt mica]

I did an animation replacement for the idle animation in the quin anim bp, however the animations dont replicate now

is there a way to force them to replicate across

[steady cape]

You can't "replicate" animations

Animations will look at the actor's state and act accordingly

If your animation replacement works through RPCs, you'll need to fire them in "Owning Client" -> "Server" -> "Multicast" order, and play anim montage in multicast event

If it's some sort of state change (like, you have a boolean that is set to true when you're holding down a fire button and false when not), you can play anim montage in repnotify function of that variable

Although, if you have a part of a pawn's state represented by a bool, I assume you'd want to play a continuous looping animation, in which case you need to modify your animation blueprint to read this replicated variable and react to it's change

It depends, because I can only assume what you've done with anim blueprint, but what I've told you should suffice

[unkempt mica]

I just have the animbp edited with a bool to change if the player is holding a cup or not, so im guessing ill have to go with the third option to keep reacting to change the animation?

[steady cape]

I mean, yes, but It's been a while since I've worked with anim blueprints but I'm sure what you're showing me is an anim blueprint

Well, it's a graph of anim blueprint, to be exact

Let me check what's the layout of this, because I genuinely don't remember how it is laid out

[unkempt mica]

From ABP_Manny -> Animgraph -> Locomotion -> Idle

[steady cape]

So, yeah "ABP" should tell you that this is Anim BluePrint

There should be an "Event Graph" tab at the top where you open the blueprint

There's this event that runs when the model is rendered

Here you can read replicated variable and set your "Holding cup" to it

Although, if it's a class default variable or an instanced variable (one you set through "Class defaults" tab) and you don't plan to change it throughout the game, you don't need to make it replicated, as it'll be set for every client to the default value already

[meager fable]

I'm getting this error when joining a dedicated server, any ideas?

[2023.03.21-18.27.38:735][605]LogNet: Error: UEngine::BroadcastNetworkFailure: FailureType = ConnectionLost, ErrorString = UIpNetConnection::HandleSocketSendResult: Socket->SendTo failed with error 2 (SE_EBADF). [UNetConnection] RemoteAddr: ****, Name: IpConnection, Driver: GameNetDriver IpNetDriver, IsServer: NO, PC: NULL, Owner: NULL, UniqueId:  Connection will be closed during next Tick()!, Driver = GameNetDriver IpNetDriver

[swift portal]

I want to create a game where the AI is controlled by an external app. For example I have a rule based system in python that controls an AI in my UE game. What options are there for this. I came across unreal engine's Remote Control which seems promising but what other options are there if any?

[mortal mica]

does anyone know where the "Replicates Movement" is handled inside UEs code?

[quasi tide]

Pawn I believe. Then just search for something like if (bReplicatesMovement)

That'd be where I started my search at least.

Depending on what you're trying to deduce at least.

[mortal mica]

found it, AActor it seems

I was looking for bReplicatesMovement

and it's bReplicateMovement (no s)

😄

[quasi tide]

I could've sworn that flag was in Pawn.

It was either Pawn or Actor

¯_(ツ)_/¯

[mortal mica]

ok and the actual logic happens in AActor::GatherCurrentMovement() it seems

just fyi 🙂

[prisma snow]

I always though it was handled from the CMC (although the net traffic goes through the actor)

But it makes sense bcs actors don't necessarly have CMC

[mortal mica]

im not sure yet if the CMC uses the bReplicatesMovement logic from the actor, there's a chance it does it's own custom stuff

[unkempt mica]

tyyy

[crisp sable]

Networking question.. Most games have a "refresh button" that will scan for any servers hosting a particular game.
__
How exactly does this button work? Does the client ping every single IP address in the internet to find any IP's that return a valid msg that says, "Yes, I'm hosting this game".
__
I know there's a range of ports that Unreal Engine games should use when hosting their games, I guess the client just has to ping those valid ports to check whether that machine is hosting a dedicated server.. How does it know the type of game that is being hosted? does each dedicated server have a unique game ID ?

[fossil spoke]

Generally there will be some type of "Master Server" somewhere that all Servers need to register with when they are providing a session of some kind, this then allows Clients to query that Master Server to get a list of which Servers are available.

Refreshing that list is just making a new query to the Master Server to say "Hey I need an updated list of available sessions"

[crisp sable]

ahh, i see

so when I host an Epic Unreal dedicated server, I'm registering my server with a master server that's hosted by Epic ?

[fossil spoke]

Yes, Epic have a backend which helps facilitate that. However if you are using Steam for example, Steam is also a backend for facilitating the same thing, just on a different platform (Steam).

[crisp sable]

ahh, cheers, thanks for clarifying that

make a lot of sense

more so than querying every single IP in the world. lol

[frail barn]

how to get remote player correctly?
get player controller or get player controller from player state seems wrong, bcz when i'm updating GUI's widget this way, its updated for every client, not for right one

[sinful tree]

Is this code running on the server or on a client?

[frail barn]

multicast

[sinful tree]

Listen server or dedicated server?

[frail barn]

i'm testing it as a 2 clients

[sinful tree]

Ok, so if this is running as a multicast on the pawn, then it would trigger on each copy of the pawn - the pawn that exists on the server, the pawn that exists on client 1 and the pawn that exists on client 2.

Get Player Controller 0 almost always returns the local player controller, so in this instance, it would probably be ok to use in this scenario if you're trying to get the local HUD, on any other clients the cast to MOBA_Controller will fail and not proceed.

The cast to HUD should be successful on the local client that received this multicast, as would the call to the GUIHPupd function, though I don't know why you would have a HUD/Widget element marked to multicast as they do not replicate.

Where your problem likely lies is that there's nothing being passed through other than the Health Points and Health Points MAX values of the pawn that this multicast was called on. The multicast would be received on both clients and execute the GUIHPUpd but with no reference to the specific Pawn that it was triggered on, so both would be updating the GUI I imagine to the same value.

Only thing I'm not really sure of is IsPlayerControlled returning only true on the client who controls the pawn, which very likely could be the case.

Looks like it does return true on other clients, so yea, this code will execute for all players so long as the pawn this code exists on is relevant to clients and it is possessed by a player controller.

Ideally, you wouldn't even be calling a multicast at all to update the UI. Variables replicate on their own which means you shouldn't need to forcibly update these values. You could have your UI bind to the appropriate playerstate/pawn and read the value, so whenever the new value is received, the appropriate UI updates.

[frail barn]

after i disable isPlayerControlled check, i get a bunch of errors
i dont want to use bind, bcz its every frame

[dark edge]

ok back up. WHEN do you want to update this widget?

[frail barn]

when hp of player's pawn is changed

[dark edge]

that's an OnRep

[frail barn]

yes

[sinful tree]

The OnRep can be used to call an event dispatcher your UI then binds to.

[dark edge]

Is the local player's pawn the only HP being shown on the UI?

You can do
OnRep -> is locally controlled? -> true -> get PlayerController0

it's gross but it'll work

better to get owning playercontroller I'd say

but best to bind to a dispatcher

[frail barn]

i know
but in this case i want to know, how to get a ref to a player controller, which controls a pawn at this moment

[dark edge]

pawn has ref to its controller

if locally controlled, the controller will exist

if not, it won't

so YOUR pawn on YOUR machine will have a valid controller. YOUR pawn on MY machine won't

[frail barn]

if i use get player controller in a pawn, GUI updates for every clients

[dark edge]

you aren't filtering by locally controlled

Onrep fires everywhere

OnRep -> is locally controlled? -> true -> (now you know you're on the owner's machine)

[frail barn]

how to set client's controller to onRep?

[dark edge]

what the fuck no

IN PAWN:
Onrep_HP -> is locally controlled? -> true -> get self.controller -> cast to YourPlayerControllerClass -> do UI stuff

gross but it'll work

[kindred widget]

Gameplay classes caring about UI. 😦 Sad day.

[dark edge]

honestly just poll if you're not making EVE Online

or use a dispatcher

hp changes often enough I'd just use a binding

[frail barn]

both clients + errors

[dark edge]

show your code

[dark edge]

Where's that onrep?

[frail barn]

health points is onRep

[dark edge]

Pretty much none of that is what I was saying to do

Is Locally Controlled? is a node

[frail barn]

check for local controller as u say

[dark edge]

but this is just a mess

no

you are checking if Player Controller 0 is a local player controller, which it (almost) always is

[kindred widget]

Also, HealthPoints is a replicated property. OnRep is a function. Adriel is telling you to not use this Multicast here.

[dark edge]

Literally just do this. No multicasts, none of that

[kindred widget]

In general, Multicasts should be mostly avoided while learning. They have very few niche real uses.

[dark edge]

would you multicast WeaponFired or bake it into some replicated variable like a burst counter?

for cosmetics only obv

[dark edge]

you beat me to it

[kindred widget]

Hard to say these days. I haven't messed with GAS enough to keep up on that just yet. When I was messing around I was just using the one actor thingies for it.

Cues

[dark edge]

This is the least gross way to do it tho btw

[dark edge]

Is a cue just a multicast behind the scenes?

[kindred widget]

Can't remember. Thought it was a replicated actor. I remember something about some code reusing the same actor though. That might have been Lyra stuff, can't remember.

[dark edge]

My thinking is its just a multicast with some struct describing the cue but idk

GAS is big

I'm doing Lego Twisted Metal so it's not really a good fit for my project

[frail barn]

@sinful tree@dark edge thank you guys, in the onRep function it works fine. thank you again

[verbal python]

I use the collab view in ue5, when I add "city sample crowd" and proceed to spawn the character Bp_Charactercrowd to the level, its hand is like the picture. Someone please help me.

[meager fable]

I'm getting this error when joining a dedicated server, any ideas?

[2023.03.21-18.27.38:735][605]LogNet: Error: UEngine::BroadcastNetworkFailure: FailureType = ConnectionLost, ErrorString = UIpNetConnection::HandleSocketSendResult: Socket->SendTo failed with error 2 (SE_EBADF). [UNetConnection] RemoteAddr: ****, Name: IpConnection, Driver: GameNetDriver IpNetDriver, IsServer: NO, PC: NULL, Owner: NULL, UniqueId:  Connection will be closed during next Tick()!, Driver = GameNetDriver IpNetDriver

[random heath]

Does anyone know how to fetch highscore from savegame instance and create a leaderboard using PLAYFAB

[elfin copper]

What's the proper approach to deal with weapon attachment when you have a first person and third person mesh? Is it spawning one weapon for each or is there a better way?

[chrome bay]

two meshes

One FPP, one TPP

[elfin copper]

thanks, I thought so!

[quasi tide]

@chrome bay I've been thinkin' about removing the AHUD almost entirely from my game. And just using PC as a stand-in. I often find myself doing client RPCs in the PC to show/hide the UI stuff anyway. Is there any reason to keep using the AHUD in this case? Like, is there some kind of functionality of the AHUD that I don't know that I need until I do?

[thin stratus]

AHUD is 99% debugging stuff

It drives all the debugging your can enable

The on screen one that is

Despite that, you have 0 reason to use it at all imo

At least I haven't used it in the past i don't know how many projects over the last couple years. basically since UMG released.

[prisma snow]

I still like AHUD as interface between PC and widgets. But tbf it couples a lot with PC

[quasi tide]

I have typically been using as the overall UI manager. But...it just feels like including an extra step for the sake of an extra step in networking.

Because you're doing a client RPC from the PC anyway

[thin stratus]

Yeah sure, but that's really just a container then that requires an extra step to access

I would rather move to ULocalPlayer then

[prisma snow]

How do you deal with events that affect multiple widgets?

Maybe delegates on PC which broadcast to widgets then?

[thin stratus]

My hierarchy of widgets is usually:

• One HUD Widget with a Canvas Panel that has all required HUD elements on the screen.
  -- MAYBE a second HUD Widget to split CharacterHUD from GameStateHUD (e.g. no character means no healthbar, but still wanting the match time), but even that can be handled in the single HUD Widget

• Multiple optional Menu Widgets, e.g. Pause Menu or Inventory Menu, depends on the Game. Also includes MainMenu and Lobby Menu fwiw

These Menus and the HUD are all more or less spawned and referenced by the PlayerController OR LocalPlayer

Menus are used to decide what InputMode to use (at least without using CommonUI)

HUD Widgets bind to delegates if they need anything

More or less avoiding any direct access to inner widgets of the HUD

[quasi tide]

My journey with UI management in UE has been:

1. Have one UMG widget that is the "Hud" per se. This manages the creation of everything UI related. This can allow easy designing/placement of all the widgets and the character/pawn manages this

2. Using AHUD for that same thing and designing the widgets with their placement already done.

[thin stratus]

Number 2 is what Unreal Tournament did

They have widgets with pre defined placement settings

And then they add them in a modular way

[quasi tide]

I've overall found that in practice, I often just go through the PC to do UI related stuff anyway. So figured I could cut out AHUD entirely. Just feels like an extra step.

[thin stratus]

And the widget positions itself when added to the panel

but that's a design choice per game

[quasi tide]

Yeah - that's pretty much exactly how I do it these days.

[thin stratus]

If you don't need the modular add/removing, and you can preplace your stuff, then that's not needed imo

Also by now you have the ability to extend widgets in child classes etc. so you can mostly get around this, but still fine if one wants to do it

UI stuff just has to be thought out up front

[prisma snow]

Ahh so basically a root/main widget handles the rest

[thin stratus]

And then there is the MVVM stuff now too

[thin stratus]

Yes, but widgets should ultimately handle themselves

[quasi tide]

MVVM stuff felt buggy to me last I used it - so I haven't touched it since.

[prisma snow]

oh yeah ofc

[thin stratus]

Yeah I tried it and it crashed very often

I stopped it when I had to use a TMap

Cause the docs are like "Handle the Array/Map by making FIeldNotifier functions that add/remove to it"

Then you do that and you get "FieldNotifier functions can't have params"

But I still liked the way you can bind stuff

if they remove the bugs and get it out of experimental then it would be nice

[quasi tide]

It's promising - just needs more time in the oven Fortnite

[thin stratus]

I had one object for like resources in a game (one VM object) and I just got that on Construct from the GameState and after that I didn't need to touch the UI anymore and just talked to the object

[quasi tide]

Well, thanks for the insight @thin stratus. I'm probably going to pull the trigger and just remove AHUD usage like I've been thinking about doing. Just rely on the PC like I do anyway.

[thin stratus]

One thing I would try to avoid is trying to access inner widgets.
Imagine you have WB_HUD and WB_BuildMenu. And WB_BuildMenu is inside WB_HUD.
Now you have an input that's supposed to open and close the WB_BuildMenu.

One thought could be to simply handle the Input in the PC (which is good) and access the WB_BuildMenu instance via the WB_HUD instance that is referenced in the PC.
But that leads to really shitty coding if you have to reach further into the hierarchy.

It's really better to just have a delegate OnBuildMenuToggled or so that the inner widget can listen to.

[thin stratus]

Epic relies a lot on ULocalPlayer

Not 100% sure why, but probably worth reading up on

[prisma snow]

Yeah that is one of the reasons I like the HUD as a "barrier" to avoid PC accessing/knowing about the UI implementation details

[thin stratus]

Yeah but even if AHUD handles it, you would do Widget1->Widget2->Widget3->Widget4->DoSomething()

Preferably after spawning the HUD widget, the game shouldn't touch the widgets anymore

[quasi tide]

I never let anything access the deeper layers of a Widget.

They are only ever allowed access to the main widget.

[thin stratus]

Yeah not saying either of you two do

It's just easy to fall into that trap

[quasi tide]

That will rely any information needed from the inner ones.

[prisma snow]

ah yeah those horrible chains xD

[quasi tide]

Maybe to guarantee that it is the local player for w/e operation they're doing?

I know about the local player subsystem. I've just never really...explored it.

[thin stratus]

ULocalPlayer removes the Server version of the PC

[quasi tide]

Just got it for enhanced input 😅

[thin stratus]

As in, you don'th ave to deal with replication

Cause ULocalPlayer is .. local only

at least If I'm not mistaken

[prisma snow]

yeah bcs coding proper public "interfaces" and encapsulating everything tends to take more time

[quasi tide]

But one would still have to do a client rpc to do any UI related tasks. So I'm not following really.

[thin stratus]

Correct, but I guess anything but that is then at least guaranteed to just be about the local player

It's not that often that you actually target a Widget with an RPC tbh

[quasi tide]

That is true.

[thin stratus]

Also not sure how LocalPlayers work with splitscreen stuff.

But that's a different story

[quasi tide]

Just like Epic - I don't mess with splitscreen much, if at all 😅

[thin stratus]

I had to once

But it's been a few years now

[quasi tide]

I'd have to explore ULocalPlayer to see what it is about. Because it kind of feels like if I use that as my widget container manager, it's the same issue that I'm currently having, but with ULocalPlayer instead of AHUD

[thin stratus]

I wouldn't worry too much and just stay with PC

[quasi tide]

So just took a quick look at ULocalPlayer and...I'm not sure what to actually use it for? A lot of the methods it has is already generally available.

[chrome bay]

Local Player is like a game instance but for a player

[quasi tide]

What would be a usecase for it though? To not bloat the actual GI?

[chrome bay]

Anything player-specific that persists levels etc.

(locally that is)

subsystems relevant to that player

Also quite a lot of online stuff routes back to the LP

[quasi tide]

As in the online stuff that inserts it into the LP, or there is a lot of neat info you can grab from the LP for networking purposes?

[chrome bay]

Well local player has the login options, unique net ID etc.

Anything that takes place without a world context needs the local player since there won't be a controller

Also widgets are all owned by a local player etc.

It contains view info

Lots of things

There's one for each local human player

[noble sentinel]

How to integrate steam invite in steam overlay to the game? Every tutorial I watch using an in game invite instead of inviting from steam? I can send people invites when I host advanced session, but invite do nothing

[vestal grove]

Hi. how to compare players by points in multiplayer?

[graceful flame]

Add variables to the player state then increase or decrease depending on events. Kills, deaths, or whatever counts as score. Then you can use a widget to show those values.

[stable patrol]

is the multiplayer pdf not working anymore that link doesnt work for me. it kinda explain what classes to use and what to put in them

[quasi tide]

Works for me. Maybe you're internet is having issues connecting to the site?

[stable patrol]

i might of save the wrong link can u paste it for me the link u using

[quasi tide]

It's in the pinned messages. I already closed out. Sorry.

[stable patrol]

i look in it i must of missed it

never mind it work

might of been the link i had

[obtuse temple]

Is there a way to detect if a player jumped on the server without a custom RPC? ::Jump and ::OnJumped_Implementation are only clientside.

[ember vine]

Anyone know what this is all about ?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqhhFl5zgA0

[obtuse temple]

Override DoJump() in the character movement component seems to work on dedicated servers 👍

[unkempt tiger]

I'm pretty sure this is just explicit code that checks the timings of certain actions (like firing a bullet) and making sure that the result is advanced by the proper delta time in the very next tick

or actually it might be something more generic, like simulating the world by TimeToNextTick - TimeOfLastInput deltatime before moving to the next tick

[twilit radish]

But then you're still tick rate depended in some way or another, which they are claiming is a thing of the "past". Which is exactly why it's interesting.

But they just don't provide any more info. Sad times.

[unkempt tiger]

by tick rate dependent, don't they just mean acknowledging the user input on the very next tick?

anyways assuming it's something more complicated than what I described makes no sense to me, since it counters the discrete nature of computers. Ticking the next time fix is the only way I see how it's done

[twilit radish]

Well yes. That's exactly why I'm interested in, it's a rather big claim to make lol.

[unkempt tiger]

dont forget that they're speaking in their branding voice, and to the playerbase, not necessarily developers

[twilit radish]

Fair enough. Hopefully they do provide some better context about it on a technical level. Probably still too soon though.

[ember vine]

i want to believe its something really cool but it might jsut be a cope to keep 60tick servers without people complaining

[unkempt tiger]

i've fallen into the 'thinking its something really cool' too many times only to be disappointed, but we can dream. If it is indeed magic, then it makes sense to be coming from the Valve gods

[thin stratus]

Inb4 just more refined net code

All smokes and mirrors

[twilit radish]

Let us have hopes for something cool for once xD

[thin stratus]

Isn't tick rate something very fundamental to PC architecture

The engine has to do a lot of stuff per frame and the time between has to be kept low to get high frames and tick rates

Unless they work around that I don't know what that should be

[unkempt tiger]

yeah you cant do it any other way, it's all in the deltatime floats

[twilit radish]

Plot twist, they reached 1000 tick servers and called it a day 😛

[thin stratus]

"The server calculates" sounds to me like they more or less try to further solve ping issues

[unkempt tiger]

or doubles

their net synchronized smoke tho, now that's pretty cool!

[hollow eagle]

Tickrate is an inherent part of source's multiplayer architecture specifically.
I highly doubt they've gotten rid of the notion of ticks, they've probably just built some smart systems that support substeps based on input timing.

[thin stratus]

The only thing I could imagine is that they found a way to more precisely calculate what happened when between 2 networked clients

Which is impressive in itself

[hollow eagle]

They're likely tagging client actions with more than just the network tick # and doing extra calculations to resolve things with more granularity

[thin stratus]

Yeah

In the end it's also isn't subticks

[hollow eagle]

so ticks are still a thing, lots of systems are still bound to network tickrate, but player input isn't any longer

[thin stratus]

So probably something small enough so the user doesn't notice

[unkempt tiger]

yeah, they probably identify when inputs are fired and send it with the client input, then the server makes sure to subtick that before advancing to the discrete tick

[hollow eagle]

the real question is whether they'll document whatever fanciness they did like the classic source multiplayer networking article 🙂

volvo pls

[thin stratus]

And here we are using UE that doesn't even handle prediction properly

BUT HEY ... UEFN

;-;

[unkempt tiger]

or has no built in decoupling of logic to render frames..