multiplayer

[gloomy axle]

I just used the 5.4 version tbh

[sinful tree]

This is a tough question to answer. Making your game multiplayer is more than just figuring out sessions and joining players together. The editor itself can allow you to simulate having two players in a game to begin with and should provide you with plenty to start with getting things working in a multiplayer environment without worrying about sessions and EOS yet. You may want to start with simpler ideas in a new project. Like, try getting a simple chat system working which teaches the basics about Server RPCs and multicasting. Next, once you know how to send data to the server, perhaps you want to use some stately variables to represent changing data, like a scoring system, or maybe changing character meshes using OnReps. From there, you start building more and more on those concepts into larger ideas, and once you're comfortable with that, then maybe start integrating what you've learned into your main project and ensure that things are replicated properly, and then maybe consider working out sessions and EOS.

[gloomy axle]

lol

[gloomy axle]

honestly the best way to learn something is to throw together a large idea, break down down into digestable goals, then work from there

you gain great skills from that

that's me personally tho

[amber vale]

It is extremely difficult to make a game multiplayer when it was developed in singleplayer. I'd recommend learning the basics of multiplayer first, so you can decide what you'll need to change about your game (which variables you'll need to replicate, what functions you'll need to RPC, etc.). Then probably create a new project from scratch and re-program your game using that multiplayer knowledge.

EOS is a backend service that you won't need to worry about until much further down the line, when most of your game, or at least its framework, is already finished. Unreal makes it easy to program multiplayer games in a platform-agnostic way. Once you're ready to actually deal with things like lobbies and matchmaking, that's when you'll want to start learning about EOS and integrating an online subsystem.

[gloomy axle]

i would get into advanced steam sessions before EOS tbh

[gleaming sequoia]

I need a guide, preferabbly one that shows the c++ method. Only guides i've found on yt are like 3 years old and I don't want to learn depreciated strategies of making a multiplayer game

[amber vale]

Yeah, for a small game, you can totally just use Steam's OSS. It has everything you need. But if you want to make a bigger game—especially one that's cross-platform—EOS is definitely the way to go.

[amber vale]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOJP0CvpB8w

A few years old but still by far the best networking guide out there

[gloomy axle]

agreed

i wait for the day Epic develops an AI assist for blueprint nodes

and honestly that sounds really easy to do

[amber vale]

You mean like copilot?

[gloomy axle]

someone could just write a plugin for it

yea

copilot, but generates blueprint nodes

blueprint nodes can be represented in code already

[amber vale]

I've never used any autogen for programming besides intellisense so idk

[gloomy axle]

intellisense is pretty great by itself tbh

i use copilot for more vague stuff

or if i dont want to use google when im on a project lol

ok i think i decoupled the data and ui

[neat prism]

Does anyone have a really solid write-up, sample project, or git repo where I can check out how they make smooth server-client projectiles for third person games? I am focusing on listen server applications. This week I tried a bunch of things from google, but I keep ending up with laggy results. This is one of the last multiplayer things I'm struggling with in my game so I don't mind a long read.

[gloomy axle]

Lira?

[amber vale]

You want client-side projectile prediction, which is pretty complicated. This is how Unreal Tournament does it: https://github.com/JimmieKJ/unrealTournament/blob/clean-master/UnrealTournament/Source/UnrealTournament/Public/UTProjectile.h

That's the only sample project I know of that does predicted projectile movement.

[neat prism]

Awesome link, I saw someone say "go look how UT did it" but couldnt find this (maybe I didnt google enough).

cheers

[dry dove]

do you bielive that paxdei made with UE can handle 7000 players in a single shard + mobs ?

[sinful tree]

It's probably not utilizing Unreal Engine's multiplayer system.

[dry dove]

They say yes

A single zone server is a Dedicated Unreal Server that handles the simulation of a specific part of the world, e.g., one home valley.

[gloomy axle]

what's paxdei

[dry dove]

I think the server just calcul the position & actions from players, and other actions are calculated with another server

[twin juniper]

Google

[gloomy axle]

yes i know google exists

[twin juniper]

google it then

tf

[gloomy axle]

next time you ask a question, im gonna turn on a notification on my phone to make sure to tell you to google it

[sinful tree]

What they define as a single "Shard" doesn't mean a single unreal game server based on their diagram. They'd be running multiple intstances of game servers that represent what that "shard" is. So it's not 7000 people running on an Unreal server. And while yes, this is a way of handling "massive" multiplayer games in Unreal, you won't be playing with all 7000 players at once. It's easier to break up the population into much smaller groups where you probably will only have 20-50 people in one server at a time, and they even mention there will be zone transitions which means there will be a loading screen of some kind, and they say a limit of 150 players in one server, but I think they are being very generous with that though it's not necessarily impossible. Any further communication outside of this one server is not happening within Unreal's networking system.

[twin juniper]

lmao, it's just becauseI also didn't know but I found out on google... haha

[gloomy axle]

if they use a server fleet would they even use epics EOS

that's enough coding for today

im gonna go buy a ribeye and chips

appreciate your help brother @sinful tree ❤️

[woven basin]

This question comes up a few times on this channel. I'll give you the answer I've given previously; the way Fornite and other popular games is to actually have the client do the shoot local mechanics predictively (sound, animation, smoke etc), but the actual projectile is only spawned by the server and then replicated to all clients, including the original shooter.

So it "feels" instant, but its actually server only firing. The client does not spawn a projectile locally predictively, only the server does authoritatively.

If its good enough for Fortnite, then it is likely going to be good enough for your game too.

[worthy oak]

being rude yet spending all day asking the same question over and over again alright

how about you google your inventory or use one thats working and has way more features than yours will have

[twin juniper]

I wasn't trying to be rude, I was trying to be what a lot of people tell me here

[worthy oak]

you are not in a position to do that

[twin juniper]

sorry for that, you helped me a lot and I thank you a lot ❤️

[worthy oak]

of course thats what we try to do here help out

[limber oak]

Yo, my sdk for linux builds only fully supports centOS? the server will have no issues running on Ubuntu?

[woven basin]

Ask on #linux

You’ll get better answers there

[gray blade]

on client side, in order to have as little delay possible for example playing a sound. is there a difference picking RPC or rep notify

[dark parcel]

Most of the time you do play it locally

Eg foot steps, gun fire, yada2

Shouldn't involve networking

The only networking part is the movement, the foot step sound play whenever the feet touch the ground respective to each machine.

[gray blade]

ok i see, cause im trying to make it feel more responsive when an AI is hit with a meele attack, Im already doing something like you said for the blood splatters

[sinful tree]

Variables may take a small amount of time to be sent where RPCs are sent immediately.

You could probably get away with the audio and blood splatter be something that isn't networked and just handled locally when the client detects that the AI was hit.

[neat prism]

I’ve read that and I have tried setting up something extremely basic using the path prediction node (toying around in bp). I’m not at my desk so I might not be using the right node name. I guess I’m just looking for an example framework that does that and I’m hoping that the UT repo that I was linked shows me something usable

[distant talon]

Anyone know where the options in the game mode's PreLogin function get input by a connecting client? Trying to pass some arbitrary prelogin data when connecting to a steam session.

I'm using the JoinSession call at the moment when the clients connect, it has no options field. i figure it's logic that runs way later in the join process, however i'm having trouble finding where. I traced it back to UWorld recieving the options from some kind of URL in the connection request but, hmm

[woven basin]

The way it works is;

• Player presses "shoot" on the client
• Client checks if player has ammo etc, not dead etc
• Client decides "yep, you can shoot", play sound, play smoke, do "shooting" animation, RPC to server "shoot". But no projectile actually spawned.
• Server receives "shoot" from client a few ms later depending on ping.
• Server confirms player has ammo etc and is not dead etc
• Shoots does shoot logic - i.e. spawning projectile, which replicates to all clients, deducts ammo etc.
• Server multicasts to all clients except original to "shoot" for the original player, to spawn the sound, smoke, etc

something like that

[fathom aspen]

I believe you are looking for GetGameLoginOptions. More details here: https://wizardcell.com/unreal/persistent-data/#passing--parsing-data

[distant talon]

Oh very nice find, thanks. i'll do some testing and see if it works.

that's a really nice site by the way, lots of good reference

[twin juniper]

bool UInventoryComponent::AddItem(FItem NewItem)
{
    for (int index = 0; index < ItemsArray.Num(); index++)
    {
        if (ItemsArray[index].ItemDataAsset && ItemsArray[index].ItemDataAsset->IsEmpty())
        {
            ItemsArray[index] = NewItem;
            return true;
        }
    }
    return false;
}
```This code doesn't work as expected, it's running fully on the server but it seems like the ItemsArray in the server isn't always correct

I initialize it (the size of the array (Num)) on begin play here in the HUD:

AGASTrainingCharacter* PlayerCharacter = Cast<AGASTrainingCharacter>(GetOwningPawn());
if (PlayerCharacter != nullptr)
{
    UInventoryComponent* InventoryComponent = PlayerCharacter->FindComponentByClass<UInventoryComponent>();
    if (InventoryComponent != nullptr)
    {
        InitilizeItemsArrayServer(InventoryComponent, inventoryWidgetObject->InventorySlots.Num());
    }
}```

void ACustomHUD::InitilizeItemsArrayServer_Implementation(UInventoryComponent* InventoryComponent, int8 num)
{
    InventoryComponent->InitializeItemsArraySize(num);
}```
@sinful tree @worthy oak

the initialize function is in a component in a the player, the bool is the PlayerCharacter.h (not replicated)

void UInventoryComponent::InitializeItemsArraySize(int number)
{
    ItemsArray.SetNum(number);
    ArrayHasBeenInitialized = true;
}

[neat prism]

Thanks I’ll take a stab when I get back on

[twin juniper]

I also didn't enable Networking in my HUD since it's only using a RPC which doesn't need it, I think

[dark parcel]

wdym by enable networking in your HUD?

[twin juniper]

GetLifetimeReplicatedProps function

and #include "Net/UnrealNetwork.h"

[summer rivet]

... the HUD class?

[dark parcel]

is there a point to do that? HUD is not replicated object

[twin juniper]

since the size of the array in the pawn is in the HUD...

[sinful tree]

Why?

[dark parcel]

if you need to have data replicated, store in an object that is replicated

[twin juniper]

for a modular control over the inventory system

[sinful tree]

That's not modular at all.

[summer rivet]

👏 read 👏 the 👏 docs

[twin juniper]

it will be

[sinful tree]

If it's an inventory component the component should have an exposed variable that you can set directly on the component in your blueprints.

You shouldn't need anything telling the component what to do to initialize it.

[twin juniper]

then it's less modular

I'll try

becvause now, the player need to change 2 variable

in the HUD and the Pawn

[sinful tree]

1st Image: Character, doesn't have an inventory component.
2nd Image: I add one.
3rd Image: I have an exposed variable on the component that tells it what size it needs to be.
4th image: I make the component resize itself based on the value that can be set by any actor that has the inventory set to it.

So if I want an inventory that has 5 slots, I change its instance to have the inventory size at 5. I can dynamically add the inventory component to other actors placed in the scene all with varying sizes of inventories, all without them having to tell the inventory what size to be.

[twin juniper]

did you create it yourself?

[sinful tree]

Yes

[twin juniper]

I'm a noob

[twin juniper]

is there a ui with it? that's the hard part

[sinful tree]

UI only needs to represent what is contained in the component.

[twin juniper]

yes but what did you do for that

[sinful tree]

Created UI that represnts the data within the component

[twin juniper]

but it must look good for all inventory size, what did you dop

[sinful tree]

How it looks is second to how the inventory functions. The UI only needs to read whatever data you want from within the component and display it however you want to display it.

[twin juniper]

how is that wrong:

ACustomHUD* UInventoryComponent::GetHUD()
{
    AGASTrainingCharacter* PlayerCharacter = Cast<AGASTrainingCharacter>(GetOwner());
    if (PlayerCharacter == nullptr) { return nullptr; }

    AGASTrainingPlayerController* PlayerController = Cast<AGASTrainingPlayerController>(PlayerCharacter->GetController());
    if (PlayerController == nullptr) { return nullptr; }

    return Cast<ACustomHUD>(PlayerController->GetHUD());
}

[sinful tree]

Why does the inventory component need to know about the HUD?

[twin juniper]

that's just to update the texture on each items

[grizzled garnet]

I've got an actor component which is attached onto the player state, I'm trying to replicate it yet the server isn't replicating to client and the client is creating its own named object instead, any possibility what might be going on? Setting SetNetAddressable() in the component makes the component refs nullptr on the client.

[quasi tide]

UI reads from the gameplay, gameplay shouldn't really ever know anything about the UI

[sinful tree]

It's also not great, as when you attach an inventory component to something other than a PlayerCharacter, this code fails as the owner will not be the PlayerCharacter but whatever the InventoryComponent is attached to.

[twin juniper]

then what do you suggest me to?

the function should be in the HUD?

[sinful tree]

You don't need the inventory component to know about the HUD.
You can give your widgets references to the inventory components they need to read from, and read the data of that inventory component and display them as you need them to display.

[twin juniper]

I would only like to update the widget when an item update tho

[sinful tree]

So you want the player's inventory to look different from a chest? No problem, but the underlying code for how to read the data would be the exact same, you just need to be able to reference either the Player's inventory or the chests and display them as needed.

[sinful tree]

And you can, you can have your widgets bind to event dispatchers in your inventory that you call when the inventory is changed.

[twin juniper]

that would be from the inventory

[grizzled garnet]

What happens to a player state when the player disconnects?

[twin juniper]

Would that also work for other stuff too? (if the component is on something else)

[lusty aspen]

so i have a hotseat local multiplayer game, where i spawn a player controller for each hotseat player. hotseat meaning only one player is playing at a time, so i'm toggling the visiblity of that players HUD to be true when they are taking a turn.

i'm running into the need for a shared UI, say a scoreboard, that i would like to instaniate outside of my players HUD class. so that if i have 3 hotseat players, they can each have their own HUD, but then there would also be a common HUD for things that are shared. how exactly should i do this?

[woven basin]

The alternative to this is the new ViewModels.

But the documentation is light. I'm exploring it lately, its actually super cool and powerful - but needs a little bit more time to be useful for most

But the ability to totally separate UI from gameplay - its really cool. And super easy to debug issues etc.

[ruby lodge]

Does anyone have any resources or knows discord servers where I can learn about how to develop and deploy an own backend for dedicated servers for my game? I am looking for alternatives for aws Gamelift and Microsoft Azure playfab.

[sinful tree]

Yes. As long as your widgets are given a reference to the inventory component they care about, then you can have that widget display it and its contents however you want.

[sinful tree]

https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/k2mvgn/official_baas_backend_as_a_service_discord_for/

[willow adder]

Does it work if i Package and try it with 2 Pc`s over the Network , because i read something are Different with the In build in (Play as Listener Server).Does Anyone know about ?

[lusty aspen]

i'm also using VMs, its extereamly powerful

highly recommend investing in it if you are early on in a project

[willow adder]

Wich Virtual Machiene you use Hyper-V ?, because i want to test some Scenarios on it.

[lusty aspen]

no VMs as in MVVM

https://dev.epicgames.com/community/learning/talks-and-demos/pw3Y/unreal-engine-umg-viewmodels-building-more-robust-and-testable-uis-using-mvvm-unreal-fest-2023

[willow adder]

Ok thank you Holby i will watch it 👍

[devout sonnet]

On a scale of 1-10 how hard is making a multiplayer game? I'm starting to believe I'm a lot dumber than I previously thought.

[summer rivet]

1

Create a new project with one of the templates and hit play in it should be multiplayer. So that was easy.

[willow adder]

I think we are in the Same Boat (1) Junius , thank you Mathew your Tutorials help me a lot anytime

[candid tinsel]

i got a health system that runs on event tick to check the player health and when the player health is lower than 40 runs injured animation but its not replicating

i tried rpc and it didnt work and i tried rep notify the variable is injured and it doesnt work neither like in the video

does anyone know how i could solve this

[dark parcel]

Stop using multicast on anything that needs to be replicated or sync

[candid tinsel]

i tried without multicast nothing happened with replication

just normal custom event

[quasi tide]

Also - why are you checking this on tick?

[dark parcel]

Well it's not gonna magically fix your problem but using multicast for anything in sync is a sure fire way to fail

[candid tinsel]

fall damage

i might change it later from event tick but i just wanna figure out how to replicate the injury variable to run the event

[dark parcel]

Try to replicate a bool first

[summer rivet]

SO MUCH WRONG

[dark parcel]

Step outside what you are doing rn, and make sure you know the basic

A few tips if you haven't read the pinned resource. Replication only work from server to client

So if you need client to change the value, it needs to ask the server to do it via server rpc. Otherwise the client will only change its own.

[candid tinsel]

so from that code what could i change to improve it

[summer rivet]

Are you running the rep notifies on a server event or specific. from something that only runs on the server?

[dark parcel]

You can forget the entire code and try to replicate a value first between all client. If you can't do that don't go further you will just get lost.

[willow adder]

Does someone know why my Client Window Camera not working i spawn the same class 2 times ,Server Class shows correct , the Camera is a Component inside the Class

[normal raven]

Hey guys, in my project the terrain is procedural (Using RMC), and is spawned separately on client and server. Since it's not technically the same actor (even though it's in the same place) there are some weird warnings about the client's location.
Here's an example:
LogNetPlayerMovement: Warning: ClientAdjustPosition_Implementation could not resolve the new relative movement base actor, ignoring server correction! Client currently at world location X=235.000 Y=0.000 Z=-4159.850 on base RealtimeMeshComponent

Is there a setting I can change to fix this? This same issue also makes the clients see each other as constantly falling

[candid tinsel]

you mean replicating a value with rep notify or in general?

[dark parcel]

Rep notify is just a function that is called when a variable is updated

[candid tinsel]

yea i know but rep notify has replication option

[dark parcel]

Sync a bool between all clients. Have each player the ability to change its bool value and make sure the update is sync between all machines.

[summer rivet]

@candid tinsel Keep them on none unless you know what you're doing.

[grizzled garnet]

Whenever SetNetAddressable() is set on for any object it no longer becomes referencable client side?????? (replicated pointers are breaking)

[candid tinsel]

i replicated the bool value by using server and multicast events and it worked but is there other ways than that

[neon summit]

all you need to replicate is to set the variable on the server. If you set on server it replicates to clients.

[lusty aspen]

learning RPC + variable replication will get you very far. like 3/10. the hard part is client side prediction, which is like 11/10

the main feature of the character movement component is client side prediciton, so if your game is humanoid and you can get away with modify that, then your in luck. if your character is non humanoid or physics based your going to have a very challenging road ahead. big studios with top notch developers struggle to get client side prediction right

[keen hound]

is there any way to only get the player camera of the player shooting? it gets both cameras it seems.

[willow adder]

In my Case it is look like live in the wilderness alone is more easy, than build a Multiplayer Game alone 😂

[woven basin]

Can I ask - are you doing this in c++?

I'm trying to work out a few things - specifically how I resolve a UMG to a c++ version of a mvvm

[static charm]

o do i disable all other than steam?

[lusty aspen]

your VMs in cpp can extend UMVVMViewModelBase. most of mine get instanced alongside my model. you want to keep that as one to one as possible, and allow your VM -> views be one to many. deeping on the widget i use the property path or manual creation type. i'd watch that talk i linked earlier if you haven't yet

[thin stratus]

Was there anyone here with NPP knowledge? I know some of you touched it and looked at it. Such as SirKai. I have no one to discuss complex shit with 🥲

[woven basin]

yep - I've watched the video - its really good. The one step I'm confused about is the "manual creation type".

So in my Pawn - I might have a VM that has some pawn related things like Health and Mana. But how do I actually use that with manual creation type to link them up? That's the one step I'm missing

In my UMG - how do I tell it where/how to grab the VM? There seems to be something called resolvers - but I cant find much about it?

[thin stratus]

Iirc it just means you spawn the object yourself and set it by hand. It's been a while though and the last MVVM version of UE I looked at was broken

Also this is a #umg topic

[woven basin]

yep yep - was just replying to earlier topic - but I'll move it over there

[thin stratus]

Yeah I know

[lusty aspen]

i originally came here for this topic. anyone have experience?

[thin stratus]

That's also kinda UMG question

[woven basin]

you can only have one HUD - but in this case, have a GameState with a VM and share that?

[thin stratus]

But in theory you use PlayerViewport vs GameViewport

[woven basin]

lets talk over in #umg

[thin stratus]

You can add player specific UI to that and game specific UI to the other

This is usually used for split screen but I don't see why it wouldn't work here

You just need to hide the ones that aren't current turn related

In BPs it's literally AddToViewport vs AddToPlayerScreen or something like that

[lusty aspen]

yeah i also was thinking this. would work but then i lose the ability to have different HUDs with attached to different gamemodes. i imagine i would have to make a system that decides which of my HUDs to add to the viewport based on which gamemode i'm in.. and that sounds messy? unless theres a clean way i'm missing

i'm tempted to modify the engine to only make player0's HUD and call it a day. surely someone has crossed this bridge before

[lusty aspen]

i heard Dave Ratti i believe his name was no longer working at epic and NPP basically died when he left. really wish we had a proper pattern from epic to follow for this. i went down the path of learning as much about CMC as i could and watched some GDC talks and just recently got something that i consider good enough

[karmic briar]

time to make a discord to discuss about NPP

[lusty aspen]

speaking of complicated shit though, do you have any experience or know anyone doing async physics work on it's own thread? @thin stratus or anyone else

[karmic briar]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/789655312525164607/1245413278965043250/ezgif-3-7ea676455d.gif

[lusty aspen]

@karmic briar in your experience what was the limiations of NPP

[thin stratus]

NPP is still being developed and used. We use it in a bigger project atm

[thin stratus]

No sorry

[lusty aspen]

interesting. they just pushed Mover2.0 in 5.4 though? have they been pushing any updates to NPP?

ohhh just realizing Mover is using NPP. damn i need to look at all this again. any good resources you've found on NPP?

[thin stratus]

No, I spent 1-2 weeks writing everything out on a Confluence Page + Whiteboard.
I need to get a full udnerstanding of it to patch the stuff it lacks.

[lusty aspen]

i wonder how long it will take for docs 🤣

but i totally feel that. that's how i wrapped my head around CMC in the end but there was deff a good playlist or 2 that helped

[thin stratus]

NPP and Mover is being worked on, slowly. There was a push by SirKai to add smoothing for FixedTick and there is a bunch of stuff that can be improved over all. I'm eager to also patch it up a bit, but I don't have the time at the moment. And the work I put into it at the moment is part of client work, so I would need to redo it at some point to be able to have a public repo of it.

They also added some new stuff for MotionWarping on ue5-main iirc, but nothing concrete.

There is a lot of stuff somewhat missing in Mover and NPP that CMC had, but it's "fine".
Examples are MoveCombinding, or handling BasedMovement in a better way (CMC has a lot of code to handle jumping on and off moving stuff).

[distant talon]

it doesn't seem like prelogin options set here are ever forwarded to the server when using the sessions system, the GetGameLoginOptions function never gets called in my debugger. It appears the function is only called in two places, in lobby beacon client and in PendingNetGame, but after testing it seems like these paths are not used with sessions... Something somewhere else is getting called, and i can't find where. Wherver it is, it's populating with "SplitscreenCount" and "name" options but nothing i specify. Prelogin does run but of course the options field is empty. (Not testing in PIE)

I suppose there might not be a way to send my options to prelogin, in which case, anyone know alternative options for running a bit of pre join validation before allowing the client to connect? I'm very hesitant to do "allow it to join, wait for an RPC with the required data from the client, then decide whether to kick it".

So maybe there is something sessions/steam sessions specific i'm missing?

[dry gust]

When I do DrawDebugBox() it draws it fine. But when I detach the controller using F8 playing as Listen Server it stops rendering. Running in Standalone doesn't stop it and the box is visible even in the detached mode.
Is it possible to replicate a debugging geometry or something? I really need it to work in the detached mode

[shadow geyser]

Hey everyone, I'm really new to motion matching, and I'm wondering if it could work in an online multiplayer mode (if that's even possible).
If my understanding is correct, motion matching tries to find the best animation piece and predicts the future animation based on the player's current input and velocity.

This means that the player's movement is tied into the animation itself and not the game logic (again if I understand correctly).
I wonder if it's currently possible to make it replicated in a state that's good enough.

Usually, in host/server-client mode, the client predicts; there's the whole client-side prediction.
But with motion matching, in real networking scenarios, I could imagine there potentially being a lot of teleporting, changing animations quickly because it's not as straightforward as, for example, transitioning from idle to walk—just two states.

anyone has any thoughts on this?
thanks!

[slim jay]

I am firing a rifle in using a set time event. Even if I set the timer to 0.01, I still feel a slight delay when firing in the game. Is there any plugin or method you know of to make it react faster?

[twin juniper]

basically the widget inventory reference is currently handled by the HUD and it will update with a delegate...

[dark edge]

Why the timer?

Show your code between the input and the rifle firing

[dark edge]

Absolutely not

That's a mess

[slim jay]

What do you recommend

[dark edge]

First, decide on if you want to predict shooting or not

currently you're relying on a round trip between the client and server before the shot happens

that's part of your delay

also why do you have a timer and delay and why is GetSurvivalCharRef an interface call?

[rustic sable]

Should a spell projectile be spawned both on server and client? Someone was doing it this was on YT but not sure that's the best way.
All the logic is happening on the server, on the clients I really just need the niagara system to replicate the movement.

I see the NS spawn on all the clients but even with the Movement Comp set to replicate in the projectile the vfx don't move on the clients

[slim jay]

I am using two different fire events. For the first one, which is single fire, I set the timer to 0.01 to avoid delay. The other one is for burst shot, and it is set to 0.15. The delay is set to 0.2 seconds to prevent spamming

[dark edge]

Both firing modes should fire the first bullet instantly

the only difference is how many bullets they fire if you don't let go of the trigger

1, many, or infinite for single shot, burst, or automatic

[dark edge]

Start with just spawning a replicated actor on the server

[slim jay]

this prefict has to be on c++ right

[rustic sable]

Spawning replicates to all clients and the server detects collision, just can't the vfx to move on the clients.

[sinful tree]

Is the niagara system attached to this actor?

[rustic sable]

indeed, it is parented to the sphere component responsible for collision (collision only checked on server since the logic is there, on the client I only care about the visuals) . This all works in single player mode, probably one thing I'm missing.

Since the movement itself isn't replicating tried replicating the movement component itself and activating via MC. I know this is the wrong way to do it but just testing things. This however didn't work either

[sinful tree]

The actor is marked to replicate and is "replicates movement" enabled?

[oak pond]

whats the best/safest way to replicate something that needs to be updated constantly? for example the players aiming direction, an actor that doesnt have a built in movement component, anything that can move freely without something like that

my best guess is fire a server event every half second then lerp it or something but idk

[gloomy axle]

If I wanted to replicate the physics of an object, say disable simulate physics and transport to clients hand location, how should I replicate this?

cause currently this works perfectly on the host player

cients can see that

but the host cant see when the client does it and it doesnt go to the clients hand

[oak pond]

yeah I guess we got a similar question

[sinful tree]

Aiming is already replicated through GetBaseAimRotation.
Actor location can already be replicated by the engine with a movement component, just tick "Replicate Movement" on the actor and you can set its location as you please on the server and it'll replicate the position to clients. It only gets tricky if you're wanting to handle client prediction which the engine does have built somewhat for you which is the character movement component.

[oak pond]

yeah Im specifically trying to avoid typical replication like that I essentially want like a ghost system

I cant have my player being rubberbanded all over the place every time they use a dash ability or something

[gloomy axle]

This might be better for help, here's my player controller's blueprint
https://blueprintue.com/blueprint/5240_jt-/

And the AddToInventoryData
https://blueprintue.com/blueprint/l4kvvfxk/

The flow I'm asking about starts at the IA_Interact

• IA Interact Started
• Is SlotEmpty
• If so, OnServer Add to Inventory
• Add to Inventory Data
• Add to Inventory UI

idk why blueprintUE misaligned everything lol

But essentially, that flow works perfectly for the host and clients can see the host actions, but messes up when the client does that flow

any ideas?

[gloomy axle]

damn i killed the chat

[twin juniper]

what does IA mean? @gloomy axle

[gloomy axle]

input action

[twin juniper]

what doesn't work?

[gloomy axle]

essentially the attach actor to actor doesn't work as expected for the client

it doesn't teleport to the clients "HandSocket"

it does however for the host

[twin juniper]

is the actor replicated?

[gloomy axle]

yes

[twin juniper]

the actor is spawned on the server?

[gloomy axle]

yes

[twin juniper]

when you attach the actor to an actor, that's on the server, right?

[gloomy axle]

holy shit i got it

ok so i made two changes

1. the On_ServerAddToInventory now has a input actor "item"

2. AddToInventoryData takes in that item instead of CurrHitObject

I guess it's because before, CurrHitObject was entirely client side

and the server now knows what the "item" actually is

[twin juniper]

CurrHitObject would prob be 0

[gloomy axle]

yeah exactly

[twin juniper]

how would you add an item without having the item type lol?

[gloomy axle]

huh?

i set the CurrHitObject as the server's item input

[twin juniper]

does it work

[gloomy axle]

these were the changes i made that made it work

[twin juniper]

that seems pretty good, I'm doing quite the same for my system

[gloomy axle]

now i need to do the same for dropping the item

[twin juniper]

Shouldn't the current slot empty check be on the server?

[gloomy axle]

well the client should know if its slot is empty, or if it has an inventory item there

[sinful tree]

It's either you have client authoritative movement meaning the client can basically move wherever they want whenever they want (ie. allowing clients to teleport to any location), or you have server authoritative movement, which means there can be some latency involved as the client presses an input and must wait for the server to respond, or, you have server authoritative movement with client prediction, wherein the client attempts to move before the server would know about it but the movement itself is sent to the server and the server validates if the movement was ok and corrects it if not (and this is basically what the CMC does for basic movement). If you want something more complicated than basic movement, then you have to build it with one of these three ways of doing it, and if you opt for client prediction then you typically have to look into how the CMC handles predicted movement and build your new types of moves into it, or construct your own movement component from scratch that does something similar.

[twin juniper]

Datura, what do you think?

[sinful tree]

Not good. The inventory widget shouldn't automatically assume the item will be added. OnRep of the inventory will tell it if the item was added or not.

[gloomy axle]

oh that makes more sense

[sinful tree]

And yea, you'll want to check slot status on the server as well.

Nothing wrong with checking client side too to prevent unnecessary RPCs.

[twin juniper]

as he told me, the component shouldntr know about the widget

[gloomy axle]

so I should call AddToInventoryUI on InventoryItems rep notify

whenever the server makes changes to the invetory's data

[sinful tree]

Ideally you wouldn't be telling your UI to do anything. You'd use an event dispatcher and have your UI bind to it.

[gloomy axle]

I would make an event dispatcher on the player controller for the ui to bind to that?

[twin juniper]

how would that work when reparenting it for an ai for example, does the AI Widget bind to the same delegate?

[gloomy axle]

the ai wouldnt have a widget

or shouldn't i think

[sinful tree]

You'd have the event dispatcher in whatever is holding the inventory.

[gloomy axle]

hmm

let me test the item drop logic first

[twin juniper]

and what I'm wondering is how to know which widget to show up (the AI widget would be different from the Player's widget)

[sinful tree]

So if it's only your character, you can put the dispatcher on your character. Your widget can "Get Owning Player Pawn" > Cast to Custom Character Class > Bind to Evnet Dispatcher and that bound event can have it read the inventory as needed.

[gloomy axle]

ahh okay

so when the inventory updates, the ui will change each

[twin juniper]

what if we want to use it for multiple stuff and using it modular

[sinful tree]

In your case, you have an inventory component. When you want to see UI involving a specific component, you construct the UI and feed it a reference to the Inventory Component you want to look at. You would bind to the event dispatcher to the passed in inventory component, and then again, have the widget update itself based on the data in the inventory component.

[twin juniper]

using a delegate right?

[sinful tree]

So like.. Let's say I had a chest sitting on the ground that I want to look at.... I can interact with it and know it has an inventory through my Character, and that interaction can signal a dispatcher to "View Inventory" which passess a reference to the chest's inventory component. My HUD could be bound to that delegate and can then construct the appropriate widget and I feed it the reference to the component. The widget then sets itself up based on the data in the component.

It's all about passing references around @_@

And trying to keep responsibility with the things that are responsible for them.

[twin juniper]

delegates are for that.. I see

[sinful tree]

Yeah, they're so you can "listen" for things happening rather than something having to explicitly tell it that something happened.

[gloomy axle]

So I made these changes

this is on the UI

this is on the player controller

[sinful tree]

Nope, don't need those dispatchers there.

Dispatchers are on the OnRep of the inventory

[gloomy axle]

Ah okay

[sinful tree]

You may also want to handle the false condition here to empty the contents of the widget.

Ie. Item was dropped, you don't want it showing in the slot still

[gloomy axle]

yeah i forgot lol, thank you

i should make this a function in the widget

[ember vine]

why did UE4 get rid of "simulated" for doing client/server stuff ?

seems kinda convenient ..

[meager spade]

What?

What you mean they got rid of simulated

[shadow aurora]

So we’re running into an issue recently where an object appears to be coming down in a previous packet, but the OnRep isn’t being triggered for like 0.3s or more in some cases…

Anyone know what’s up here?

[balmy turret]

I just got my dedicated server code working with my database. I'm wondering how I should go about spawning third person characters and assigning them to players based on things from the database.

Furthermore where should things like do damage functions etc live? In the game mode?

[dark edge]

Game mode gives players their pawns.

Damage does not need to go through the game mode

[oak pond]

yeah Im currently trying to do client authoritative but I just dont know how to actually move the player on the other players ends, aside from constantly updating the location manually, which seems kinda awful

[balmy turret]

Thanks for the reply.

Assigning pawns via game mode makes sense. Got it.

[reef bison]

it should be automatic through the CMC, I use client authoritative movement in my game and I only had to check 2 checkboxes

[balmy turret]

Where should things like vitals go? Or damage functions?

[oak pond]

huh? by default it tries to pull you back to where you were

[nova wasp]

"had to check two checkboxes"

[sinful tree]

Just so you're aware, client movement prediction is not easy and it's fairly complicated to get it looking smooth. If you want to know how Unreal does it, you need to look into the Character Movement Component. You can't just arbitrarily move the client somewhere and then RPC to the server to tell the server that they moved if you're using the CMC. The move you're executing has to be built into the CMC's move list to ensure that everything syncs up correctly.

[oak pond]

but I cant just go and edit cmc itself

[sinful tree]

Yea, you can. You can override it and make your changes as needed to the CMC in C++ and then apply that to your own custom character class that utilizes it.

[oak pond]

c++...

[ember vine]

@meager spade nvm, i thought "simulated" in udk did something on client then auto-sent it to server. but i was lied to by mr gpt ..

[sinful tree]

And if you're not doing that, then you're going to have to build your own movement system, and the CMC is probably the best example for as to how to approach it in Unreal. And if you don't want to follow what Unreal has, then you're probably not going to find much help on the subject as you're approaching something that is very complex and difficult to do well, let alone correctly and actually authoritatively without jamming up the network with too much data from trying to replicate movements.

[oak pond]

so am I right in thinking its basically like cmc is built the way it is so that it already works with replication but anything you make with blueprints is separate from that so cmc is all like noooo what are you doing youre supposed to be stood over here so the only way to tell it whats supposed to happen is actually coding it into cmc itself

[gloomy axle]

boxchecking is what prevents me from being a AAA developer

kek

[reef bison]

I mean that's literally what I had to do to get it working

[nova wasp]

more or less, yeah

I think someone made a plugin that can help make adding BP functionality a tad easier

[gloomy axle]

node graph assistent?

[nova wasp]

another small hack: turn off client corrections temporarilly during fast movements

stark changes in velocity that aren't accounted for in the cmc are just tough to get perfectly synced with the result the server got so that's an option

[reef bison]

unreal already has this built-in

[sinful tree]

The CMC is a "good enough" approximation for the basics of replicated movement for most shooter style games - it allows you to walk around, has gravity, acceleration, friction, handles step heights and whether or not you should fall off ledges, and it allows you to jump and crouch. Basically, it gets you started and in the right direction for handling movement, but it must be customized if you want more from it and its set up is done in C++. This isn't a problem in single player games as you can get away with basically anything you want in terms of movement since the computer running the game is the authority always, so it's easy to make something responsive and look good without rubberbanding because it's not having to verify that data over the network which has latency involved.

The reality is, if you're trying to make a multiplayer game, you're going to go into C++ to properly make it on account that there's so many things made for multiplayer that isn't exposed to blueprints. It's not about that "blueprints is separate" it's just that the original design of the CMC wasn't made with the intent of fully supporting all possible movement one could do right out of the box, nor was it designed to be customized in blueprints and fully replicate everything.

You can ignore the CMC entirely, but then you're going to have to figure out everything else that is required to get movement right for your game, including all those other fun features I just mentioned the CMC already has.

[oak pond]

is that in 4?

[sinful tree]

And this is not server authoritative. These will allow clients to move anywhere they want on the map at any time.

And yes, those options are in UE4 as well.

[oak pond]

oh wow, Im sure I searched something like that but thanks

[oak pond]

yeah that makes sense, honestly I dont like cmc but thought that was the only option if I wanted multiplayer, ironically. I tried my own movement thing once but ended up having to use physics because idk how else youd move something properly

[reef bison]

yeah its not server authoritative, but this is fine for certain type of games like coop where you don't care if players are teleporting everywhere

[nova wasp]

can also do

[/Script/Engine.GameNetworkManager]

ClientAuthorativePosition=true

in your game ini

woops, meant true

[gloomy axle]

💀

[nova wasp]

this is also where you tweak things like the client correction threshholds

[rustic sable]

having some issue doing SetRelativeRotation on a replicated component in a server call, should be reflected on the clients no?

[gloomy axle]

that is a long usename mr neuro

[rustic sable]

it's kind of like the current episode name, like 'Return of the Jedi'

[nova wasp]

OnRep_Transform() should catch it assuming the component is replicated

[dark edge]

Components

If you have to ask those questions you shouldn't be considering multiplayer right now.

or if you do insist on starting out with multiplayer, know that it'll be a long and painful road.

[balmy turret]

Basis of the game, I'd like it to be authoratative.

[dark edge]

possible though

[oak pond]

yeah mines coop, Im happy to do whatever it takes to just give players the best experience with gameplay

god I would never try pvp

[oak pond]

what the hell, this seems to have fixed it completely. inputs are still delayed as expected but I was planning on doing them clientside as well as server anyway. I cant quite tell if the player is getting hit by projectiles that I dodged, but is that expected since the players movement is delayed on the other end? thanks though, couldnt find this when I searched client because I was looking in class settings and stuff

[lusty aspen]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8_JyUdrOLs this guy has a fork where he's attempting to finish things. sounds like roughly the path you went down. i've heard that AGS has client prediction built in? i briefly evaulated AGS when it first came out and was pretty confused by what they were going for and figured it was only good for ability heavy games. but have you looked into it from the NP perspective? is there any good take aways there?

[thin stratus]

Oh I'm very well aware of him hehe

Also the person I literally mentioned in the message you answered to

Not sure what AGS is/was

[lusty aspen]

holy shit so it just hit me that i'm talking to the creator of the network compendium. back in the day that was my bible and i read every word many times. i still send it around to coworkers or anyone gettings tarted with MP. such an amazing doc

[thin stratus]

Hehe, glad it's helpful

[lusty aspen]

shit GAS not AGS i'm sleep derprived rn lol

[thin stratus]

Right, well I used GAS a lot in the past, on The Ascent and on some MOBA. I don't reaaaally like its PredictionSystem, but it's also not terrible.
Getting NPP to work with GAS is probably quite the hard task. Re-writing GAS as an NPP simulation might be more realistic, but even then NPP might need to change.

[lusty aspen]

ohh so GAS is built on top of NPP?

or how does the GAS client prediciton relate to NPP? trying to decide what i should be keeping my eye on. i don't really see myself building any MOBAs, my interest is i guess sandbox/arena games like counterstrike/rocketleague

[thin stratus]

No

GAS is not using NPP

NPP is way newer

[lusty aspen]

also you should 100% update your compendium with your NPP knowledge that would be incredible

[thin stratus]

Yeah, if I ever find the time I will

[quasi tide]

back in the day that was my bible
What do you mean "was" - it still is

😅

Trust Cedric over Epic 🙏

[thin stratus]

I haven't had to open that thing in ages. Seems to be useless

[lusty aspen]

haha these days i know basically everything in there by heart

[quasi tide]

That's just because you have ascended to not having to read your own stuff

[lusty aspen]

i need a compendium for the complicated stuff like client prediction and structuring large projects

[quasi tide]

I love it when I find some video I did or post and I'm just like, "sweet - thanks past me"

[thin stratus]

That is not true. I still find my own answers to questions I google on the Forums.

[thin stratus]

Yeah :D

[quasi tide]

Client prediction is simple in theory

[lusty aspen]

haha i would disagree

even the theory is hard

[rustic sable]

do projectiles typically need a multicast destroy? just doing it on the server isn't doing the job, yes replication works

[meager spade]

no?

if its replicated, then server destroy will destroy it on all clients (unless its been torn off or had its replication turned off)

[rustic sable]

hmm, yeah something is strange, I do an authority check OnOverlap then even wrapped it in another server reliable just to be sure, must be something else

[meager spade]

eh?

maybe you spawned a copy on client also or w/e

show code or bp

[rustic sable]

ooph where to start

the spawn code is definitely server, have authority checks and logs everywhere

it might be one thing actually...

[oak pond]

how do I make an event only on the server but invisible to the player activating it? like if I play a sound effect clientside, but then also in a server event, (so it feels more responsive to the player) I dont want the player to hear it twice

[sour dragon]

Hello general question. I plan to use DataAssets for my weapon Classes with class references inside. Is it a good practice to put the firstperson (local player model, shooting logic, viewmodel, general spawn on server) AND the multicast equip logic etc. into one blueprint instead of two seperate classes? I saw some examples and people made one ActorBP for the Firstperson Equip Logic and another one for Thirdperson which handled the spawn on server and multicast, anims etc. I just feel its unecessary to seperate it if it can be done in one class. What are your thoughts?

[meager spade]

not sure what your really asking

[static charm]

hey guys im trynna find info from steam on how to enable marketplace drops for ur games any help?

[rustic sable]

just do !locallycontrollled for the multicast, other one is just local

[meager spade]

ask steam support @static charm

[static charm]

ive tryed google and steam youtube real hard to find any info hahahhaa

[meager spade]

ask steam support?

[static charm]

surly people have made tutorials for this , yes i can ask them , they will prob ask me to pay 100 quid for SUPPORT like that lol

im looking for basic genral stuff

[oak pond]

oh, I was doing exactly that but on the server event Im stupid lol thanks

[sour dragon]

I saw example project of Weapon systems. People used two seperate Equip Classes per Weapon Item. So for example if you had a Shotgun, the Thirdperson BP included the spawn logic, the thirdperson weapon model, the general weapon logic. Then they had another Class called Firstperson, which was basically just the Viewmodel and had a reference to the Equip Class (Enum). Im not sure if this was done because of networking (since the firstperson Class just exists on the client which ends rpcs to the server for calculation)

[rustic sable]

no worries, happens to me several times a day

[rustic sapphire]

Tried to simplify this bit. But client only prints out SERVER--> and the server does not call MULTI_AddKoi at all. Did I miss a boolean somewhere?
the host client works fine.
trying to wrap my head around this.

[meager spade]

@rustic sapphire why you using multicast?

[sinful tree]

Does the client own the BP_SpaceBank actor? You can only call RPCs on actors that the client owns.

[rustic sapphire]

I was only using multi cast trying to grasp mentally what im supposed to do..
I guess the server owns the bank actor. the client probably doesnt

So I guess to answer. no idea.But the BP_SpaceBank actor is one of two bank actors in the scene. one for player 1 one for player 2. Their role is to help with showing captured pieces on a board game.
when player 1(host) captures, the piece moves to the bank and is shown on client 1 and 2. But when client 2 captures, it only shows on their own bank, but the host player doesnt see the capture. so I am trying to figure out how to get the server to perform the capture.

The logic is first called from the player controller and calls an interface "CapturePiece" function call implemented by the piece itself.
That piece then calls the Gamestate to run some extra logic before calling BP_SpaceBank.addKoi() to add the piece to the bank.

[dark parcel]

If you want to call rpc to an actor by the client , you need to set owner (from server,)

Either that or route your calls from what the player own. Eg player controller

And lastly don't use multicast for anything that needs to be in sync

[rustic sapphire]

luckily it was the first time i tried multicast.
if i ever do need something in sync, what is better to use? repnotify?

[dark parcel]

Replicated variable or rep notify

Depend on the need.

[rustic sapphire]

i think i understand. because the actor isnt "owned" by the client ( its owned by the level? server? no one?) the client cant actually communicate through it?

[dark parcel]

If you need something to happend when the variable update, use rep notify

[dark parcel]

You can read ownership in the pinned resource.

But that's basically it.

[rustic sapphire]

i only know a surface idea that its a thing, but the actual scope I need to dive into further, ill go check it out

[dark parcel]

By default the client only owns their controller, pawn and player state afaik

Doing rpc call on actor they don't own will result in the rpc getting dropped.

It's probably not a good idea to set owner on shared actor either. Not only you can only set one owner but it opens window for cheating

[rustic sapphire]

Yeah thats a whole other can of worms I am worried about.
from a player's perspective, what entities does a person have actual access to?
I tried to keep most logic in gamestate assuming it wasnt directly acessible

as well as if someone hosts a game for someone else to connect to, is that even secure?

[dark parcel]

As a beginner my self I won't worry about cheating at all. Rather put all my energy and focus to finish the game.

I'm already loading save files from client machine.

[rustic sapphire]

cheating is fine imo, its network security id feel bad about 😛

this is more of me not knowing how hackers work

[dark parcel]

I think that we need to be aware that every player have their own instance of the game.

That is something you can't control imo. As long it's in their machine, they can do w.e they want with it.

Eg giving them self money. Simplest hack is with cheat engine

Find the memory address for the Gold and just change the value to 999999

[twin juniper]

Hi, I am using unreal 5.4, is GetServerWorldTimeSeconds still 'bad' and should be replaced?

[dark parcel]

But it will only change the value in their machine. So if you have the logic to purchase an item in the server, then server can reject the purchase regardless of how much gold the hacker has

[rustic sapphire]

Awesome. Thanks for the help @dark parcel

[ember vine]

whats the overhead of replicating a TArray? negligable right ? but just curious

[twin juniper]

class LASTDROPGAME_API UInventoryManager : public UActorComponent
{
    UFUNCTION(Server, Reliable)
    void Server_TryMorphItemToTile(int InItemID, const FItemTransform& TargetItemTransform);
}

void UInventoryManager::Server_TryMorphItemToTile_Implementation(int InItemID, const FItemTransform& TargetItemTransform)
{
    AQyItem* InItem = GetItemByID(InItemID);
    InItem->DebugInt += 1;
}

UCLASS(BlueprintType)
class LASTDROPGAME_API AQyItem : public AActor
{
    UPROPERTY(ReplicatedUsing=OnRep_Data, BlueprintReadWrite)
    int DebugInt = 0;
}

AQyItem::AQyItem()
{
    bReplicates = true;
    bNetUseOwnerRelevancy = true;
}

void AQyItem::GetLifetimeReplicatedProps(TArray<FLifetimeProperty>& OutLifetimeProps) const
{
    Super::GetLifetimeReplicatedProps(OutLifetimeProps);
    DOREPLIFETIME(AQyItem, DebugInt);
}

void AQyItem::OnRep_Data()
{
    // My debug point is here
}

Guys, somehow my debug point at OnRep never fire like in the video. I did everything right, ReplicatedUsing=OnRep and DOREPLIFETIME

Now that i looked at the code, it could very be out of Relevancy..

is your OnRep_Data empty when debugging? if so could be compiler optimizations

wrap it with UE_DISABPLE_OPTIMIZATION and UE_ENABLE_OPTIMIZATION and try printing a string from it

Oh i found the bug, i called

Server_TryMorphItemToTile_Implementation();

instead of

Server_TryMorphItemToTile();

I wish Rider got some error warning for this..

[tired current]

How can I make a method that instantiates a player for each connected local gamepad at runtime

Currently I have this which spawns in the characters fine, but the controllers dont seem to be linked to the gamepads even though I pass in the Platform User ID.

It only works if i actually disconnect and reconnect the controller, but I dont want to have to do this everytime

[tired current]

Had to set a delay, I guess maybe there is some xinput initialization that happens if it is before beignplay

[woven basin]

Something just dawned on me - Random thought of the day - is client RPCs to server directly proportional to frame rate?

Lets imagine I have an RPC on tick for movement. So every movement of my pawn is RPC to the server.

So if someone is running at 20FPS because of their GPU, they are only sending RPCs 20 times per second? But if someone has a good GPU, they are running at 120FPS, they will be sending RPCs at 120 times per second?

And how does that work for the server, who might be runnign at 50FPS - some clients are sending sub-frame RPCs, and some are sending 2-3 RPCs inside the span of a single tick?

[lusty aspen]

doing an RPC every frame is generally a no-no. it's simply too much data sent too quickly, and at an unpredictable rate. what you want here is to replicate the players location. simplest way is just to use the built in SetReplicateMovement(true)

this handles replicating the location for you, and i think might even smoothly interpolating between the positions

for reference, your NetUpdateFrequency is how variables will be checked if they changed and sent off across the network. that number should be a lot smaller than your FPS

[woven basin]

it was more of a (bad) example

i.e. lets say we are replicating mouse movement for aiming or something

there are times that things are replicated on tick, unreliably, i was just curious for that

[lusty aspen]

you would put your player rotation on a variable and mark that for replication. variable replication isn't 100% reliable packets are allowed to drop

[tender solar]

Hello, I am moving my game to Multiplayer and I have a concern regarding events.. In my Subsystem I had a delegate like this for when a player comes near an actor: DECLARE_DYNAMIC_MULTICAST_DELEGATE_TwoParams(FActivationDelegate, AActor* , actor, bool, active);, it works very well but I noticed that when I run 3 players everyone is receiving he event...Then I had a d'oh moment and realized that it was multicast..However when removing multicast I cannot make it blueprintassignable or blueprint callable, so how I am supposed to handle events like this?

[quasi tide]

By keeping it dynamic multicast

[tender solar]

Then how do I prevent it to broadcast to everyone?

[quasi tide]

You can't. That's the entire point of a multicast delegate - to notify all of its subscribers that something happened.

[tender solar]

OKay, so hjow do I code bringing up a menu when a player comes close to an actor?

[quasi tide]

An overlap trigger

[tender solar]

I have this

this is what fires the event

[quasi tide]

Just call some method on the player. Use an interface if you want.

[tender solar]

Ah I see thanks

[quasi tide]

Depending on how you want the communication to go is how you would go about setting it up.

[tender solar]

Yeah I went for event driven everything, it's much cleaner but I didn't think about mp

[woven basin]

yeah - but back to this - if the client is running at 120FPS, or another client is running at 15FPS, the number of RPCs will be different to the server right?

And if the server is running at 50FPS, it might get multiple RPCs on a single tick?

[tender solar]

I guess it depends if they are reliable or not

[lusty aspen]

i'm not positive on this, but i imagine a server could handle multiple RPCs within a single tick

[thin stratus]

Yes

The CMC is basically running at Independent Tick (instead of Fixed Tick)

So it has to handle the difference in RPCs

[woven basin]

so if it gets 2x RPCs inside one tick - does it combine them and process them as one move, or does it do both moves in the one frame?

i.e. if RPC frame 1 was "forward", and RPC frame2 was "left" - and both arrive inside one tick on the server?

does it move forward, then left? Or does it move diagonally forward+left as one? which is a different state?

[thin stratus]

They would be processed as individual moves in the same frame I would say

[woven basin]

so it buffers the RPCs and pulls them in FIFO style?

i'll have to find where it does that for my curiosity...

[thin stratus]

That's probably deep in UEs net code

[woven basin]

yeah... maybe for another day - just one of those things I was pondering while in the shower this morning.... I need to get out more...

the more I learn and get deep into some of this stuff, the more I realise the less I actually know 🙂

[thin stratus]

Dito

[floral sail]

Ok further down the testing I have finally figured out that RepNotify's are totally fine to Initialize Pawns. They are called AFTER the Pawn and all of its components are created, so no condition race.
The only thing that isn't created by the time I need it is the Widget. Not the Widget Component, but the Widget of that Component.

Which makes me wonder if Widget Components are even considered as a good practice for creating the "Pawn UI" (such as Health Bar, or in my case Name Above Head)?

[tardy fossil]

well unless you want to do some custom programming, widget components are the only option for displaying UI in world space

[sinful tree]

Have your begin play signal into your widget component's widget that it's started and feed in a reference to the pawn that it is attached to or anything else it needs to know about and have the widget then read whatever data it needs to and bind to whatever it needs to listen to from there.

[floral sail]

Yes there are 2 possible solutions - Loop Timer in OnRep function (which realistically will only loop once) or do Init function in Widget Construct with the data from the Pawn (which is replicated by the time Widget is constructed).

Its just that it adds some work. I wonder why it is made that way. Why would Widgets initialize after its Widget Component, Pawn, OnRep and all that.

But at least I now know that OnRep functions are totally fine and work exactly as intended. Its just some race condition with Widgets of the Widgets Components that you have to know about.

[tender solar]

Hey again, I have players who open a widget to get the status of a board...when the status change i fire an event from server...from there I update the opened widgets...I'm still a bit confused but I managed to get something that works except that (and it bugs me XD) I need to add a delay before updating the widgets (5 seconds is exaggerated for debugging purpose)...I've read about repnotify but i have several variables that can change... so I have thought about a boolean called IsDirty, however would all the variables be updated on client after using repnotify on IsDirty? How would you handle this?

it bugs me because I did all that stuff to avoid adding a delay before updating the widget...

[sinful tree]

A "board update" sounds more like a state change meaning you probably shouldn't be multicasting.

And that's the source of your problem - sending an RPC after changing a variable doesn't guarantee that the variable was replicated before the RPC is received on the client.

[tender solar]

So, how can I tell the clients to update their widgets?

One rep notify for each of the variables?

[dark parcel]

depends on your design

On Rep Notify -> if Widget Exist -> Update Widget Text

or for something like health, the widget can just read straight from the player's health

[tender solar]

I see thanks

[dark parcel]

since health is a replicated variable, it gets updated every NetUpdate

if you don't fancy binding/ticks you can also use delegates

but if you are doing multiplayer, you should already know how to use delegate

[tender solar]

Actually it is very simple (2 player names and their player id) but on the long run it will be very complicated with different cases

Yeah I'm starting MP can't say I'm mastering it

[sinful tree]

Is this "board" like the scoreboard or something?

[tender solar]

nah it's a chess board, it will handle timings, variants, starting position, stuff like that..I'm trying to keep it simple but by nature it will be complex

the widget will also be updated as the game goes

that's why i'd rather have 1 update event than following 10-20 variables

[sinful tree]

Your board should probably be an array of some kind.

Then you'd only have a single variable that gets changed and OnReps.

[tender solar]

you mean onrep the board itself?

[violet sentinel]

or just a single BoardData struct that replicated from server

[tender solar]

I see, so I move all the replicated stuff to one struct and replicate it? that could work

Thanks for help

[real folio]

hiii, does anybody know why find session can't find anything? It doesn't say fail or success. With console command open ip:port i can join

[dark parcel]

@real folio I don't know since I used steam but why not just use Steam Advanvce Session?

I don't think kids these days can tolerate port forwarding their router

[twin juniper]

Hey guys, any good starting point for making a lobby and matchmaking system?

I am just watching some youtube tutorial rn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQD_sPFXcBg

[sinful tree]

back in my day I had a HUB and some software running on the computer hooked up to the internet to share its internet access to other computers connected to the hub!

[sinful tree]

Matchmaking and Lobbies are kind of outside of Unreal. You'd use Unreal to pass data to and receive from those systems (no different than a function call or binding to a delegate) to represent the data that they're managing, and each would have their own implementations.

[twin juniper]

Where do i learn those things?

[sinful tree]

That's not something I'd be able to help you with...
If you're trying to build your own matchmaking and lobby system, you're effectively asking "How do I build a system that can manage queries to keep track of and find games" which is no small feat and way outside what Unreal handles.
If you want to use an existing matchmaking and lobby system, then you'd have to find one to use like Steam has an implementation of it, and I'm sure EOS does, and then find out what is needed to actually make calls to their specific systems and they'll usually have some documentation available that can let you know how to do it.

[real folio]

I was thinking about that but steam product fee is high and I have no idea how to get it working on Linux

[balmy turret]

In a dedicated server enviroment, where should functions like "do damage" live? Documentation is scant and I've been told the game mode isn't appropriate?

[sinful tree]

The process of "Doing Damage" would likely be part of a health component attached to an actor that has health rather than a Game Mode unless you have various Game Modes that change the process (not necessarily values) of how damage needs to be done.

[rustic sable]

if you have Niagara systems on a replicated projectile and you want to DestroySystem / ActivateSystem on them do you need to multicast? Setting them as replicated and in lifetimeRepProps and doing this in a server call doesn't seem to be enough

[balmy turret]

Right on, that approach sounds simple. The server will be authoritative in this case?

[tender solar]

While I'm not using a lobby myself I've watched the blueprint multiplayer tutorial from Epic on youtube, it was excellent

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abmzWUWxy1U&list=PLZlv_N0_O1gYqSlbGQVKsRg6fpxWndZqZ

[rustic sable]

It's a bit odd because I have a non replicated Niagara system which when a projectile is spawned on the server this niagara replicates anyway. Yet when activating / deactivating other system OnOverlap these only work when done via multicast 🤔

[dark edge]

yes

Cat got your tongue keyboard?

[sinful tree]

Yep... lol

[sinful tree]

Authority of the server comes from not allowing clients to tell the server what is happening. If the server detects that the damage should be occuring then it can go ahead and apply it, and then replicate the values to the clients - that is where the authority comes from. If you did something like, the client tells the server they did 9999 damage to target A and you go ahead and trust the client and believe that to be true and apply the damage, then you're no longer having the server act as the authority as you let the client dictate what happened.

You at time have to trust clients to send the server some data, but it also boils down to what amount you want to trust them and with what particular data. Like, nothing wrong with a client wanting to request to pickup Actor A on the ground as that's something you can verify on the server they can do and then grant them the item if the actor is within range and they have inventory space, etc., but it's not good if you allow the client to request "Pick up Specific Godly item with +99999 Damage" as you don't really have anything to validate on other than maybe the properties of the item and thereby you're going to be letting them choose whatever it is they're picking up rather than telling them what they picked up.

[clever hound]

When I drop the sword it switches ON replicated movement on the sword. When I pick it up again I turn OFF replicated movement. But for some reason it is glued on the air for few seconds before the error correction happens for the CLIENT because of the location or rotation difference when the replicated movement is turned off.

Is there a way to refresh it somehow to make the movement client sided immediately after turning off replicated movement

I tried updating the location and rotation on multicast but that has no effect

[proven pagoda]

Is your OnOverlap bound to the delegate only on the server? I only allow overlaps on my server

If it is, calling the activate deactivate would be multicast, but simply destroying the whole actor would replicate without a multicast. Destroy is called on all clients by default

Not destroy niagara component, destroy actor

The client isn't bound to the overlap, so it will never tell the niagara component to activate/deactivate

[proven pagoda]

What kind of movement component do you use on a weapon? You can't just set the actor to replicate? The world transform should replicate. I'm confused by this one.

[clever hound]

There is no movement component. The game has physics turned on so if you have replicated movement turned on it tries to replicate the physics which causes lag and unsyncing

[proven pagoda]

Ohhhhhhh you're doing that stuff ok

Isn't there a setting in the physics somewhere for prediction? What engine version are you?

[clever hound]

5.3

[proven pagoda]

All my 5.3 got wiped off my harddrive I'll see if there's a project left I can boot up

My github was not as strong as I thought it was

[clever hound]

Well I have gone through every setting and as far as I can tell there is nothing that would help. Im guessing that it should be some kind of "correction treshold"

It works fine after picking up but there has always been that annoying bug in the beginning when you pick something up, it has to move a little before it goes into client sided mode or smth

[proven pagoda]

this one?

Well no nevermind because your sword is a simulated proxy at all times

it has no controller

idk if there's a setting for that on simulated proxies

I'm still trying to wrap my head around this tho a bit. When you drop it, it switches ON replicated movement because the server is now moving the sword, but when you grab it, you want to turn OFF replicated movement because it should be now locally predicted from standard replicated movement options in Unreal

I've just never used physics movement this is so fascinating

I just replicate the actor and it moves

[clever hound]

It is attached to the hand with physics constraints so i guess when the players character has replication turned on the sword moves with it

[proven pagoda]

Why not just replicate the sword instead of trying to replicate movement

[clever hound]

The sword actor is set to be replicated if that is what you mean

idk

There is not a lot of info on VR + multiplayer + physics combo

Its a lot of just trying things out

[proven pagoda]

Ohhh yeah this is VR as well I forgot about that part

Bro you're just like me I've been doing this for 8 months and I'm currently working on a coop shooter using GAS and RPG elements and stuff

Just go for the big games let's go

What happens if you only put the option bReplicates on and nothing else

[clever hound]

Like on what state? Grabbing? Dropping?

[proven pagoda]

This my weapon it doesn't have anything but this enum in lifetime props only thing I have is in the constructor I set bReplicates to true

Any components added to the actor I have to check replicated on those subobjects and components

I also don't drop or pick anything up using physics constraints at the same time

I just attach weapon to socket on the skeleton and set bReplicates and then like where my bullet flash is I set that in the wrong spot so I'll have to fix that now but the rest just goes with it. Have you thought maybe attaching via attachment to the skeleton?

[clever hound]

Like AttachActorToActor() or Component? You cant do that with physics simulated objects, it just falls down

[proven pagoda]

How about when you pick it up, the settings kinda go like this so it doesn't fall anywhere but can still slap pawns and do damage, and when you drop it, you mark all the settings back to physics enabled and all that jazz

Not exactly that but you get the idea

[clever hound]

Can't do that. Have you ever played VR? You need physics enabled to interact with other stuff like push down the sword on your hand with another sword on the other hand. Not looking for alternative ways to do it I just need that annoying small bug fixed and then its all good

[proven pagoda]

Guy I was a VR streamer but never a VR programmer

I lived on my Quest

[proven pagoda]

I don't know anything about VR, but my buddy who does VR told me the programming is no different in terms of logic on most things. I don't know the fine details

I wonder if that's why VR games have so much performance issues is because all the physics everywhere

[clever hound]

It has performance issues because it renders 2 different displays on high resolution

[sinful tree]

And at typically higher refresh rates.

[clever hound]

But on the quest maybe the physics can be a cause too, I have never used a standalone hmd tho

[proven pagoda]

That makes sense one for each eye and it's on a cell phone chip

[proven pagoda]

Once I found SteamVR and made a dedicated router setup I never went back off PCVR

PCVR is just 100x these standalones

[proven pagoda]

What's the game tho guy? Your visuals look stunning compared to what I played before. Swords so an RPG as well?

[clever hound]

Its going to take a little more time before making a steam page or anything

[proven pagoda]

Oh bro I'm only worried about steam page when I have a game I don't get why people make a half vertical slice then make a steam page

Still for whatever it is at this point, it looks good

[tender solar]

I went for early access I naively thought that I would get feedback and beta testers XD

[real folio]

Okay, so for each loop is somehow broken, it doesn't send output to the create widget and idk what to do with it

[tender solar]

Your create widget does not have a player connected?

[real folio]

Doesn't change anything, but odd is when i plug it to completed, it works for one session, but connecting is broken

i used this tutorial and it should work on UE5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZJdpJ9KSyI

[tender solar]

Do you set the player controller in create widget?

[real folio]

yes i tried, no luck with that

it's like sesion isn't saved properly

[tender solar]

you can still dump it with printstring+append

[thin stratus]

@real folio I assume you are trying this in the same LAN or even on the same PC, right?

[real folio]

same pc

[rustic sable]

Ah ok, so the replicated instances do need the activate / deactivate locally then. Yes, the destroy itself is working as expected just on the server. Currently I just do an authority check OnOverlap but I suppose you checking for authority before doing the bind itself? That way actually seems a bit cleaner.

[twin juniper]

Hey, can i test Steam subsystem thing without paying 200$ to publish my game?

I am reading the document but it's so long

[clever hound]

There is a test AppID for that purpose if that is what you mean

[twin juniper]

Can it run 2 players lobby?

From different place

[clever hound]

Idk what the limit is, but yes you should not run out player slots

[tender solar]

yes appId 480

and it's 100$ fwiw

[proven pagoda]

This is my standard pickup item that my players walk on and it picks them up. In all scenarios I end up just calling destroy so it starts and ends on the server

[azure hull]

Hi, have anyone tried to use FFastArraySerializerItem structs for DataTables? It seems that structs do not show up unless FTableRowBase is added, but it cannot be added together with FFastArraySerializerItem.
What would be best approach for this? Idea is to use FFastArraySerializerItem for inventory system, however I want to have a loot table defined as DataTable with those structs. But structs are not showing up.

[thin stratus]

Yeah you can't combine that. That's two different things. You can reference the Row, that is based on a different Struct, in the FastArray Item fwiw.

[azure hull]

That could work, thanks!

[twin juniper]

so i still have to pay 😅

[thin stratus]

480 does not cost you anything

But you can't release with it

Ultimately you need your own, which does then again cost $100

[twin juniper]

100$ is for publishing on steam

with their tools

ok nice

[thin stratus]

You also don't get your own AppId without that

So again, if you want to release your game later down the line, with Steam, you gotta pay

For development, you can use 480, which mimics Steam's Spacewar game.

There is no way around paying the $100 dollars if you want to officially ship the game over Steam.

[twin juniper]

I'm fine with that. Just don't want to pay just for testing purpose

[thin stratus]

Yeah then you are fine for now

[twin juniper]

but if you test on steam, what are you going to use it for lol?

[thin stratus]

Well you might later down the line decide that you can't make the game, or that you ship on EGS or so

No need to buy an AppId early

[twin juniper]

Im making a 1v1 matchmaking fighting game

it that possible?

with servers?

yeah if that's what connect players together

i mean, yes, no local host

steam doesn't give you free server (you have to pay servers yourself..)

[thin stratus]

You would still need to additionally pay for a Server Host and a Service to handle the Matchmaking (spin up and down Servers on demand).

Which is pretty juicy in pricing

[twin juniper]

Do we have free server hosting for small usage?

What if he uses virtual server? (idk what virtual server means but I'm curious)

[thin stratus]

The point is that the Matchmaking System itself is not UE related, and also nothing Steam provides you with. A Matchmaking System where you can queue up for Games, even if just 1 vs 1, need a backend to handle that. Most people fall back to stuff like Playfab, but the truth is that this is all very expensive and not really something for a single developer or small studio.

[twin juniper]

not for free but it could be cheap ig

[thin stratus]

Small Studios or Single Developers, that don't shit money, should stick with:

• Singleplayer
• Multiplayer ListenServer
• Multiplayer Player-hosted DedicatedServer

[twin juniper]

Matchmaking is expensive..? I thought i'll just do an array and some if statement

[twin juniper]

it could be okay, but surely not for your first game (you need some money lol)

[thin stratus]

If you think that, then this is probably above your head.

[twin juniper]

wdym lmaooo

an array of what?

[twin juniper]

How long it would take me to do these stuff? Like 2 weeks. Im not that bad

[twin juniper]

Like just get player id and compare their elo

[thin stratus]

I can't answer that.

[solar stirrup]

Yeaaaaah nah that's not gonna be that easy

[thin stratus]

Even if you code the Matchmaking System yourself (outside of UE of course), which would take you probably multiple weeks/months, you still need to host that crap, and the DedicatedServers somewhere, which is still expensive.

[twin juniper]

Matchmaking isn't just that I think

[solar stirrup]

Focus on making a 1v1 fighting game

You can tack on matchmaking on top in the future if it becomes worth it (i.e. you get funding, a player base, whatever)

In the meantime you can potentially fake matchmaking using Epic Online Services, you're not gonna have ELO but you'll be able to "matchmake"/find other players to play against.

[twin juniper]

how expensive exactly, say i have x amount of players per day. You sound like you know the numbers

[twin juniper]

Yeah i am still doing that but i want to get this done bad, so it got a got feel of a multiplayer game

10$/day for 1 server, idk... around that maybe

[solar stirrup]

Throwing random numbers won't help

[thin stratus]

Highly depends on where you host, and if you use a Linux Build

And on the game

[twin juniper]

Is a linux build cheaper?

[thin stratus]

Usually, yes

[solar stirrup]

See #multiplayer message

Focus on being able to find other players to play with

[twin juniper]

mhm I see, another system that I gotta learn

[solar stirrup]

You can probably also use Steamworks for that anyway

I just know EOS makes that easy

[twin juniper]

So matchmaking is like x2 time harder than lobby ?

Or lobby is also hard?

[solar stirrup]

Depends on your knowledge

Lobbies aren't inherently hard depending on what you need in them

[twin juniper]

I think that the difference is the first should use server and the second can use hosting (the client is a server)

[solar stirrup]

That's not how lobbies work

[thin stratus]

These are really random numbers. Can be double the pricing.

And it's JUST the Server Hosting of PlayFab

Nothing else. The Storage, Requests, and what not all cost extra.

And that is if you can even host 10 Game Servers on one of them

[twin juniper]

how does it work

[solar stirrup]

Online services like Steamworks and EOS have sessions

Lobbies are sessions

[thin stratus]

If you can only do 2-5, it already gets a lot more expensive.
On top this is probably the lowest tier, so you might need to generally take stronger machines. And it's only one area of the world, US East, you usually have multiple.

[solar stirrup]

They're hosted by Steam/Epic so you don't have to pay for those (well, outside of the Steam Direct fee)

[twin juniper]

there would be a host that invite people in his session

200$ a month lmao

[thin stratus]

Double the vCPUs and half the GameServers already puts you at 860

And no one here knows your game specifics and how that all works out

You usually have to figure that out by running stress tests when the game is further

And of course, "only" for 50 players

If you expect more, it will be more expensive. Depending on your monetization idea this will not work out anyway

[twin juniper]

this is some real business problem that i didn't thought of haha

[solar stirrup]

That's why most indie games stick to P2P or community hosted servers

[thin stratus]

You are not the only one that comes here, thinks this is all easy and free, and gets slapped by reality

[twin juniper]

no i can't do it, it's a competitive game

i gotta figure those numbers out somehow

[solar stirrup]

Take a step back and reconsider your idea for your game

[thin stratus]

Also, I didn't even set the network egress a player might produce

[solar stirrup]

You can still do P2P for a competitive game, Dead by Daylight did it for a few years. It's not ideal but it worked okay. Once they got the money they switched to dedis.

[thin stratus]

Don't even have numbers on that

[twin juniper]

Can someone explain me why the hell does he use a UObject here? I don't get why...
https://jambax.co.uk/replicating-uobjects/

[thin stratus]

@chrome bay Explain yourself ^

[lament flax]

Because its the base class

[twin juniper]

base clase for doing what

[solar stirrup]

UObjects can have functions, structs cannot

[twin juniper]

structs in C++ can

[solar stirrup]

I use UObjects for inventories, structs for item instances

[thin stratus]

UObjects are a lot more powerful than e.g. structs

[solar stirrup]

sure but you're completely cut off from Unreal at that point

USTRUCTs can't have UFUNCTIONs

And if your items are fully C++, my condolences

[thin stratus]

Structs suffer from e.g. object slicing if you ever want to bring this to BPs.
And James said already multiple times that using FInstancedStruct to counter that brings probably poor performance

[twin juniper]

USTRUCT(BlueprintType)
struct FItem
{
    GENERATED_BODY()

    UPROPERTY(EditAnywhere)
    TObjectPtr<UItemsDataAsset> ItemDataAsset = nullptr;

    UPROPERTY(EditAnywhere)
    int ValueChanging = 0;
    
    bool IsEmpty();

};
```that's my item struct

[thin stratus]

I'm sure her knows what he's talkinga bout

[solar stirrup]

I use FInstancedStruct for my item instances

[twin juniper]

uobject have self replication too, i have to recode my whole inventory item to uobject for that

[solar stirrup]

it goes something like this:

struct FItemInstance
{
  UItemAsset* ItemDataAsset;
  FGuid ItemGuid;
  TArray<FInstancedStruct> Data;
};

[twin juniper]

So I would have a UObject and where should I put it?

[solar stirrup]

I do have some optimizations in the net serialization, can't get too much into detail because that part was specific to an NDA project

but the gist of it is that I can determine the UScriptStruct of the instanced struct data and not have to keep writing it

shaves off a few bytes for each instanced struct, and I keep instanced structs lightweight

I still believe FInstancedStruct is awesome for items, but I do see the potential issues with bandwidth

With enough tinkering it's probably fine

[thin stratus]

Yeah but this might go beyond what a lot of peeps can do

Falling back to UObjects as a first step is probably okay

[solar stirrup]

I still use UObjects for inventories cause it makes stuff like backpacks super easy

Can just transfer the backpack from an item actor in the world to a player by switching the outer of the UObject

[twin juniper]

UObject->CustomUObject->UInventorySlot ?
ActorComponent->Player

What does the UInventorySlot do?

If you are lazy like me and don't wanna write any extra code, you can go for AActor. I coded all my item as AActor and the whole thing still work

I think I just don't understand why to use a UObject or AActor since I'm using an ActorComponent and some struct only..

Sure, you can go for it like me. Basically i re-code my inventory like 8 times already

Just keep coding with the current setup you have

If you never need to switch, then it's fine. If you need to switch, you would know the reasoning

I want it to be perfect tho, to sell it

what do you mean by perfect?

in what aspect?

in every aspect

idk about you but my code, if it run, it's perfect to me

lmao true, but I want to optimize it and understand what's going on with UObject

if you want to optimize it then you could profile

switch everything to uobject and check if it run any faster

[solar stirrup]

Actors for each items isn't a good idea if you're gonna have more than a handful

[twin juniper]

I dont get what UObject for slots do

[twin juniper]

what, you gonna have 1 millions item in your inventory 😂

[solar stirrup]

why slots

doesn't have to be 1 million to become an issue

[twin juniper]

yeah but how much though

[thin stratus]

Your Actor solution creates an ActorChannel per Item. This has its limits.

There is a reason people don't do that

[twin juniper]

i tested it and not until 100k it have some perf problem

yeah i didnt test the channel thing

[solar stirrup]

Yeah if you test it in singleplayer, sure

(still don't believe that you had 100k item actors but okay)

[twin juniper]

for slots, not items, i use struct. It depends on what you define as slot

[twin juniper]

there's no slots in my inventory

I have an array of items in my InventoryComponent

You don't move your item around?

[thin stratus]

Have you considered the fact that James' inventory is not matching your requirements :P

[twin juniper]

like in minecraft?

[hushed sierra]

I'm trying to create a multiplayer compatible system where players have to use sensors to discover enemy targets & until they get enough information about an actor what they see may be different than what the actor is in truth. For example, if the real target has a cube mesh and 100 health, player A might see a sphere mesh and 50 health while player B sees 100 health and a cone mesh.

I'm struggling to get 2 clients to see different meshes and health values at the same time. If I replicate the mesh variable, all the clients see the same thing, but if I don't, only the server mesh changes. Any idea how I might accomplish that, or where I keywords I should be looking for?

[twin juniper]

wdym

[twin juniper]

sure if you dont need slot then you dont need slot

why are you having questions

[twin juniper]

I don't know, that was so different from mine

[strong vapor]

When using the custom flags in the CharacterMovementComponent.. is it possible to have them be assigned to something other than 0 or 1?

[twin juniper]

if the item is nullptr, the slot is empty...

[thin stratus]

They are bitflags, so no

[strong vapor]

thanks!

[twin juniper]

I want to do what pro do... idk

[thin stratus]

You can't replicate the final state that players see if it depends on their local state.

You would need to grab locally frame the invidual player and then decide what they should see

[normal raven]

Can anyone shoot from the hip and guess why my player has no input when using "open [my IP]" and connecting to the dedicated server? It calls from the main menu and the server is on the game level

[twin juniper]

You don't need to micro-optimizing when you are not a pro. I have a bunch of bug fixing to do and all i wish is everything worked

You can focus on adding feature instead of optimizing them

[thin stratus]

Connection fails and they are returned to the main menu again?

[normal raven]

No the client joins and apparently gets a pawn and everything, there's no input whatsoever.

But it works if I do PIE and just launch the client and server in the game level

[thin stratus]

Then you are failing to set your InputMode properly

It's probably still InputOnly from the MainMenu

[normal raven]

Yeah maybe

[thin stratus]

CommonUI should in theory help with that

[normal raven]

KK thanks

Lemme look

Yeahhhhhhh that was it! I was enabling the input in the player controller "On Possess" function, moving to begin play helped. Thanks!!!

[gloomy axle]

Are there plugins that help you debug multiplayer replication for somewhat complex systems like inventory interaction?

I have three bugs I'm trying to debug:

• Item hides for client, not host, on scroll selection
• Host picks up item, client doesn't see attachment
• Client picks up item, host sees attachment, client doesnt

The main flow for this test is:

• Host picks up item, client can see

• Client picks up item, host can see

• When client is scrolling, the item hides for the client, but not for the host

• Client drops item, host can see

• Host drops item, client can see

• Host picks up item, client doesn't see attachment, but host does

• Client picks up item, host sees attachment, but client doesnt

• The "item" is set when the player presses "E" on the item they are looking at, by a line trace

• When the client is scrolling, when up and down scroll input, it deselects and selects the next slot depending on the input

• The Host and Client some how see each other pickup an item the first time, but not the second time after one of them drops an item

the TLDR of this is basically, I am trying to let the players interact with the items they dropped for each other

[gloomy axle]

holy shit i got it working

the culprit? my dumb brain

the mesh on the item and the mesh on the player weren't replicated

but the actually actors were

which is hella confusing

if anyone has a similar issue in the future, check yo mesh components if they are also replicated

[twin juniper]

I found that few days ago lmao

[gloomy axle]

dude its confusing

the actor itself can be checked as replicated

but that doesnt make the component mesh, which the actor contains, replicated

like what

[sinful tree]

Yeah you don't necessarily want everything to be replicated, you replicate what you need to.

That mesh for example.... You may not need it replicated. You could potentially use an OnRep to trigger the logic that makes it appear in their hands.

[gloomy axle]

I tried that though, I had an OnRep to move the actor to their hand using AttachActorToComponent

[lusty aspen]

trying to settle a debate with a coworker. i know everything always depends on the use case, but in general, networking things within gameinstance is generally a bad practice right?

[fossil spoke]

Can you elaborate on what you mean by "networking things within gameinstance"

I ask because the GameInstance is not replicated.

[lusty aspen]

having an repliated variable or RPCs

[fossil spoke]

Ok

So the GameInstance is not replicated, meaning it does not support those things.

Its not "bad practice"

Its just simply not possible.

[lusty aspen]

ahhh ok that settles it haha thank you

[twin juniper]

LMAO

who won?

[lusty aspen]

hahah me. i had never attempted to even try to do networking in game instance bc it felt bad to me

felt kinda silly asking here now that i know it was simply impossible

[twin juniper]

Hey, let's see if i got this right, so basically this 8 nodes is all unreal function related to session managing?
If i want some thing like matchmaking i got to use Playfab or Steam (does Steam even have it?)

[lusty aspen]

i'd check out the #online-subsystems channel for that

[twin juniper]

Oh, i didnt know we have another multiplayer channel

[lusty aspen]

or #epic-online-services

[twin juniper]

Steam has some but you have to pay 100$... Worth it? depends on what you want

[worthy oak]

pretty worth it to not have to reinvent the wheel of exposing it to BP

guess its a question do you value your time or money more XD

[twin juniper]

true lmao, it also give you the opportunity to publish your game on steam..

[worthy oak]

yeah i mean thats pretty easy

me personally I dont even need most of the steam sdk cause my backend is all in AWS

[twin juniper]

for sessions?

[worthy oak]

only thing steam might do for me is linking login and maybe MAYBE steam invites

[worthy oak]

login and dedicated servers

and matchmaking

dynamically spinning up and down servers based on demand

[twin juniper]

you are a solo dev and have multiple dedicated server?

[worthy oak]

mhm

my day job is infrastructure

gives me a ton of access and knowledge to equipment

[twin juniper]

good to know, I'll be able to ask you if I need help with sessions infrastructure :3

[worthy oak]

yeah happy to help where I can

already have a few videos going over login in AWS

for unreal

[twin juniper]

you have a yt channel?

[worthy oak]

yeah

[twin juniper]

send

[worthy oak]

check my profile got it linked

attempting to combat the BS I keep seeing on youtube regarding AWS lol

[twin juniper]

what are those kits LPSP and FPS?

[worthy oak]

that was a much older video from a project im not doing anymore XD

LPSP is low poly shooter

its a framework and its honestly realyl sweet

but I dont feel like making a shooter anymore lol

[fossil spoke]

Lets move back ontopic please, if you want to continue move into #lounge. Thanks.

[twin juniper]

it looked really good

[twin juniper]

Hey, if i only use these node, can other player from different PC join my session? Sound like magic if they can

Sadly i only have 1 pc lol

[worthy oak]

Kinda unless they fixed it there was an issue with the default nodes

Most just use the advanced sessions plugin

[gloomy axle]

usually you do that logic on the game mode I believe

[tired current]

Is there a way to place nav link proxy in a Blueprint?

or can you change the navlinkproxy position at runtime?

[twin juniper]

and how are these plugin made? in C++?

Is it just because it's broken in BP

[worthy oak]

that is yeah

and no if I recall its just an example and epic didnt bother updating it

since its not really on them to update thirdparty

[twin juniper]

is that the EOS?

[worthy oak]

no steam

[twin juniper]

ohh it's steam sessions? built in?

[worthy oak]

yes but most just use a plugin to either fully expose it

or get more features out of the sdk

[twin juniper]

I have a question, what did you do to get these functions?

(not sure if he installed the SDK for him to work)

[worthy oak]

its built in

its just very basic as you can see

[twin juniper]

the steam SDK comes with the Engine?

[worthy oak]

not the full or updated one no

well maybe it is the full one

but its not the most up to date one

[twin juniper]

How is it possible to take a part of the SDK but not all of it

[worthy oak]

because steam sdk has a lot of dlls and epic doesnt include all of them

[twin juniper]

normally you would install it

[worthy oak]

nah copy and paste

either engine level or project level

[twin juniper]

ohhh I see, there's multiple DLL, do they all do differnt stuff? if yes, like what

[worthy oak]

most of the other sdk stuff isnt for games its for other API stuff

I also dont recall how much I can actually share on this subject or if anyone actually cares

cause ya know NDA

[twin juniper]

NDA?

[worthy oak]

so I will error on the side of steam has an sdk it lets you do "things"

[worthy oak]

non disclosure agreement

aka you cant talk about it

[twin juniper]

steam sdk is free of use

[worthy oak]

you need a steamworks account to make full use of it

there are examples of it yes like app id 480 that lets you test

before getting such an account

[twin juniper]

mhm I see, so C++ is required or an extern Plugin to make things work fully with Steam sessions and SDK?

[worthy oak]

yeah because its a third party sdk

but plenty of plugins exists that expose it to BP

like advanced sessions

[twin juniper]

what does that do, I think I remember that it was for testing your game in a multiplayer context, with more than 1 client?

[worthy oak]

Steam requires you to bind to an app id to make the api and sdk work like joining sessiosn

app id 480 is a free one anyone can use

and test until you buy a steamworks license adn get your own app id

[twin juniper]

got it

[gloomy axle]

imo if you have $100 to spend on getting your own app on steamworks, id do so as soon as possible

you want the game to be visible as soon as possible

[worthy oak]

Yeah and it’s easier to test with in my experience

Exspecially with sessions

[gloomy axle]

yep

[twin juniper]

joining session would work with a host (which is the server and client on his pc) and then multiple clients that connect to him? (no dedicated server needed)

[gloomy axle]

no

[twin juniper]

Could it work like that

[gloomy axle]

you need the host and client to be on separate machines

separate steam accounts

[worthy oak]

Well steam does support dedicated servers

[gloomy axle]

(assuming its steam)

true

[worthy oak]

But the sessions are just yeah joining players together

[gloomy axle]

i guess im just talking from a P2P perspective

[worthy oak]

Where one player hosts

[twin juniper]

I know but that's how unreal works

[worthy oak]

It’s listen servers basically

[twin juniper]

Listen server type..

[gloomy axle]

sorry idk if you're wanting to use advanced steam sessions or not

[worthy oak]

And then they do have support for finding and joining dedicated servers as well

[twin juniper]

would it work with listen server type

[worthy oak]

Yes that’s what the sessions do

[twin juniper]

I dont know what is that

[gloomy axle]

if you want to use advanced steam sessions, the host and client need to be separate machines

oh okay

it's like a library from advanced sessions

but for steam apis

[worthy oak]

Kinda in a listen server you have a host and client on the same machine

Other clients would join you

Which would be other steam accounts

[gloomy axle]

that's if its dedicated tho

[twin juniper]

no?

[worthy oak]

no that’s listen servers

[gloomy axle]

?

[worthy oak]

dedicated is server only no client

your all clients joining a server

[twin juniper]

there's P2P, Dedicated Server, Listen Server which is a fake P2P

[worthy oak]

listen server is one player hosts and has a client as well

And other clients join your computer

[gloomy axle]

im talking from a pure p2p i guess, where the player is the host

[twin juniper]

okk good

[twin juniper]

there's no P2P in unreal lol

[gloomy axle]

you can do that with advanced steam sessions

just neesd to be seperate machines

for connecting two players

[worthy oak]

mhm each player needs their own steam account

and machine

[gloomy axle]

i have p2p set up atm on ue5

for my current game lol

[twin juniper]

the plugin doesn't matter, all UE replication stuff is based on that (Not P2P based)

[worthy oak]

you using something custom for that?

[gloomy axle]

I mean, going off of what I know about p2p, I have the player become the host of the session. Then players join that player's session. The player is basically the server, with auth perms and stuff

imagine lethal company

[worthy oak]

I ask because unreal doesnt do p2p

you have listen servers, standalone, and dedicated servers

[gloomy axle]

isn't peer 2 peer just a player hosting and allowing other players to join

[twin juniper]

he's mixing P2P with listen server, which does work the same

[gloomy axle]

or is that listen

[worthy oak]

no thats listen server

[gloomy axle]

bruh

[worthy oak]

its similiar

but in unreal world

[gloomy axle]

these youtube titles need to change then smh

[worthy oak]

its authority based listen server

no p2p

[gloomy axle]

i have seen many advanced steam session tutorials dedscribing this as p2p

smh smh

[twin juniper]

what youtube video did you watch lmao

[gloomy axle]

lemme get my history

[worthy oak]

yeah xD i mean it works kinda the same but its not that XD

[gloomy axle]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0N7FbKTAhA&t=11s

this

[worthy oak]

oof XD

[gloomy axle]

kibibyte is really good tho fyi

[worthy oak]

the thumbnail

proves its not p2p lol

[gloomy axle]

IT SAYS PEER TO PEER IN THE TITLE