multiplayer

[nova wasp]

you do not want to make delays like this to fix stuff if possible...

[nocturne vault]

how do you get remote and local role?

HasAuthority?

ah nevermind

[nova wasp]

why not just try typing stuff into the bp graph?

[nocturne vault]

yea I just found it

i'll set up the print string before and after delay

[nova wasp]

these are a pair of enums, they represent what the object individually is doing authority-wise

anything owned by the server (replicated) will have a local role of ROLE_Authority on the server

and a remote role of ROLE_Authority on everyone else

client owned objects like their controller can be ROLE_AutonomousProxy for them locally

[nocturne vault]

Like this? This is when the client picked up the item

[nova wasp]

hmm, try printing the result of is locally controlled instead

This is working as expected... beginplay for replicated objects is indeed delayed until this is swapped I guess

[nocturne vault]

the delay is before the cast to BP player

[nova wasp]

sorry, I mean that the object has the right roles here

[nocturne vault]

i was talking about printing is locally controlled

[dark parcel]

First time seeing this, how did something print without the server / client prefix?

[nova wasp]

what context is it called in?

is it a uobject without a world?

[nocturne vault]

So since a 1 frame delay fixes the problem...does that mean latency will make this a problem later on?

[dark parcel]

Called from UGameplayAbility::OnAvatarSet

it should have a world 0o?

[dark parcel]

100%

delay not to be relied on

[nova wasp]

yeah if you MUST wait for something, do it in a way that you can check every frame until it's ready

with netcode stuff sometimes it's just something you can't gaurantee is all there in one frame atomically

but delaying once and praying is bad, if you must delay a bit and then try again if it's still not what you expect

I wonder if the controller is present both times

[nocturne vault]

this worked correctly when I did multicast. I guess because it creates a unique instance for each player and doesn't require timing

I believe there is a setting to emulate latency. Let me try that and see if it causes a problem

[dark parcel]

NetPktLag

something like that

[twin juniper]

Network Emulation?

[nocturne vault]

not sure what I should put in. 100 for all?

[dark parcel]

normally I just use the console command

needed to see outcome on various pings

[nova wasp]

there are presets for average/bad in advanced play settings

[twin juniper]

he entered latency so he can't see those

[nocturne vault]

i found it

emulation target everyone?

Profile Bad

I tried it, it still works correctly

[twin juniper]

tho, things set to unrealiable will not trigger when there's a lot of lag

[nova wasp]

bad is insanely high loss and ping

[nocturne vault]

with the 1 frame delay

[nova wasp]

but it's worth trying

[nocturne vault]

I set the run on server as reliable

[twin juniper]

why 1 frame?

[nocturne vault]

I honestly have no idea

[dark parcel]

scroll up

[nocturne vault]

without the delay, the item doesn't get attached to the correct mesh based on isLocallyControlled

with 1 frame delay, it does

[dark parcel]

it will be more than 1 frame in real environment

You are addressing what is called race condition in Client side

[twin juniper]

hell nah, this is bad code

pretty sure there's a function to make sure the owner is always valid

[dark parcel]

it's not about the owner that is not valid

owner will always be valid

the remote role isn't set correctly on client yet

[twin juniper]

why?

Is he setting the role manually?

[dark parcel]

Because begin play is run before the server can set the role

In many many many casses, you don't really want to use begin play to run stuff in multiplayer context

you will be fighting a lot of race condition

an example would be possession

[twin juniper]

begin play is called on the server and client, it's a great place to do stuff

[dark parcel]

context needed, in many cases you don't really use begin play

I am not saying for everything but in most casses

Take a look at input binding

people do it on begin play and wonder why it doesn't work for clients

simply because the client doesn't have a valid pawn yet

[twin juniper]

All on BeginPlay:
Mapping Context Setup, HUD setup, Delegate Setup, GAS init setup...

[dark parcel]

Yeah not begin play

you are doing it wrong if you do

but you do you

Use OnAcknowledgePossession for Mapping context

[twin juniper]

How?

[dark parcel]

already explained above

race condition

You won't have valid actor yet in begin play or character as client

[twin juniper]

pretty sure unreal do not use mutex and these stuff (for race condition as you call them)

[nocturne vault]

either way, I guess I should just leave the delay for the time being and move on? I spent hours trying to figure out how to get it to work

[dark parcel]

No, this is a code that is not production ready

a band aid that simply will not work

lets say you put 1 second delay, but the player have 200 ms

you will end up with the same error

[twin juniper]

lol, it does

[nocturne vault]

1 frame delay still worked with network emulation set to bad

[dark parcel]

are you ACat?

k just another troll then

[nocturne vault]

which is 100-200 ms

I just tried 300-500 ms latency and it still works with the 1 frame delay

[verbal ice]

Your player suddenly gets ton of packet loss and 2000 ms spike to latency

Your bandaid breaks

Never, ever, use delays for networked code

[twin juniper]

I'm trying to understand, so for the HUD, delegates and GAS init, what's wrong for those?

[verbal ice]

Use events, rep notifies, paired with begin play, wait for all relevant actors to be ready before executing your code

[dark parcel]

nothing wrong for HUD

really depend on what data you want it to display

[twin juniper]

OnAcknowledgePossession doesn't seems to exist

[dark parcel]

or if it needs to be ready

context needed

I can't speak for GAS, not much experience and too noob to understand most of it

trying to debug my GAS as we speak atm

[twin juniper]

maybe there's a mistake in the name you stated? because I can't find any function with this name

[verbal ice]

AcknowledgePossession maybe

Just look for something similar

[twin juniper]

This is on the PlayerController?
then why the default unreal template comes with the mapping context within the Player Character BP class?

[dark parcel]

you can place it in places that make sense for your project

I think Lyra usses components to do the inputs, can't remember tho

[verbal ice]

Just keep in mind that multiplayer has a ton of race conditions

Actors aren't guaranteed to replicate in any order

Properties as well

[twin juniper]

there's AcknowledgePossession and ServerAcknowledgePossession

[dark parcel]

@twin juniper You can read the comments to find their usages

/** Called on the client to do local pawn setup after possession, before calling ServerAcknowledgePossession */
    virtual void AcknowledgePossession(class APawn* P);

[nocturne vault]

I don't know what else I could do. I add an item component on item pickup to spawn the item. It starts on beginplay, so without the 1 frame delay, the items don't attach correctly to first person and third person meshes depending on if they are locally controlled.

[twin juniper]

I'm using listen server, so that would work for all cases?

[dark parcel]

it's just an event that gets called when the pawn is possesed. This way on client, you can be sure that you already own / possess a pawn when that function is called.

[twin juniper]

1 more thing, do you call super before or after the mapping context setup?

[verbal ice]

I'd go with before

[unique summit]

Character.h

    FColor Color;

    UFUNCTION()
    void OnRep_Color();

GameMode.cpp in PostLogin

OnRep_Color is never called, is this expected ?

[lament flax]

why are you using static cast on a UObject ?

use Cast<>()

also, you either use Replicated or ReplicatedUsing not both

and ofc you need to add the var using DOREPLIFETIME

[unique summit]

uh

ah nah it is in GetLifetimeReplicatedProps already

gonna remove the duplicate and do a Cast

thanks

[lament flax]

also if you are using a listen server, the OnRep wont get called

you need to manually call it on server

(OnRep is only for clients)

[dark parcel]

OnRep on cpp called on clients

Blueprint OnRep calls for both

[unique summit]

It is called nowhere actually

Is the replication already working in the PostLogin handler ?

[lament flax]

if its a listen server you need t ocall it manually

[violet sentinel]

um, property in character class, but you assign value in controller class? they're different properties from what it looks like

[lament flax]

oh yes 😅

[keen adder]

The server has to change the color value, or on_rep won't get called at all

[unique summit]

sorry, it was in Controller.h my bad

color value is changed in the GameMode, so on server

[violet sentinel]

did you add the DOREPLIFETIME in getreplicatedproperties?

[unique summit]

yeah

[lament flax]

are you using dedicated server mode ?

[unique summit]

ListenServer

[lament flax]

is this your first player joining the level ?

[violet sentinel]

usually i have a setter that invokes onrep on authority if it is required

since onrep wont be invoked on listenserver if you just assign value on authority

[unique summit]

ah

Might be my issue

thanks

[rigid ether]

Savez ou cest la discussion du code personnalisé en batle royale

[thin stratus]

Hey, please stick to English when asking and answering questions.

[rigid ether]

Help me, can you help me find the password for the personal key to play a private battle royale match

Please

🥺

[thin stratus]

Probably not. This Server is for Unreal Engine Development help. It doesn't cover Fortnite Battle Royal questions.

[rigid ether]

Ah

[thin stratus]

If you need help with Fortnite you might want to join a Fortnite related Discord Server.

[rigid ether]

Ok thank you

[thin stratus]

No worries

[rigid ether]

Very much

[oak flicker]

hello again, when replicating shooting a linetrace. isnt it enough to do the linetrace on the server only? like do I need to replicate it to all the clients?

[thin stratus]

It is in theory enough to do it on the Server only.

You may also do it on the owning Client to predict the shot for some FX.

And you will still need to replicate the result to other clients for the same FX.

E.g. shooting against a wall, you get a decal and a hit sound.

[oak flicker]

yes thats what Im asking, the line with hit result on server only and cast the outcome to the clients.

[unique summit]

is there a way to have a TArray OnRep called when an item is changed in the array, but the array is not resized ?

[thin stratus]

FastArray stuff calls per property. Might be more what you need?
PushBased replication could also have you mark teh Array is dirty. Not sure if that skips the size stuff

[unique summit]

Thanks for the keywords 🙂

[boreal wadi]

Question about the simulated proxy. I'm aware that it is the server side version of me on another players screen. If I had a component on my pawn's controller that checks for the pawn's role being equal to Simulated Proxy will that fail? Or am I trippin? I guess the simple question is can the simulated proxy access the controller?

[unique summit]

duh worse than that, my TArray content is NEVER replicated. Probably because I .Init it with null ptr, and only access it with [] operator

I'm actually trying to use it as a queue, do I have a better option ?

[unique summit]

F me

all my issue were caused by the fact that my player pawns were 'setHiddenInGame'

which seems to affect replication

since the pawns are not visible in viewport, i did not notice it

[proven pagoda]

The controller is only replicated to the owning client, so there would be no values there on the simulated proxy to check against

[latent heart]

Also it's not the "server side" version on another player's screen. It's their own version of you which is necessarily desynced from both you and the server.

[thin stratus]

Performance-wise for Clients, yeah, turn off (or on) the Collision only on the Server.
If you don't want the code to run on Clients, also test in the OnBeginOverlap if you want.
If you don't want the code to even exist on Clients, wrap it with #if UE_SERVER or whatever it was.

@normal fulcrum

You didn't specify if it's Dedi or Listen

For ListenServer, turning off/on collision is enough

Cause anti-cheat isn't a topic anyway

Hm yeah, that's the sideeffect of the client being the host I guess

[crisp copper]

are there any good learning resources for setting up a dedicated server? so far 99% of the stuff im finding is just how to build the server executable, but basically nothing on how to actually host it so players can join it. i have around ~6months to learn before i need to actually start implementing it, but i want to start learning early and slowly, as from what ive read, its extremely difficult and underdocumented.

[sinful tree]

Hosting is as simple as running the server executable on a computer that is running the operating system the server executable was built for and once its running, players would technically be able to join into that server. if you're looking for more complicated solutions for hosting, like having servers spin up and down automatically based on load, that's a completely separate aspect and doesn't have much to do with Unreal specifically though with whatever solution you decide to go with, you will likely tailor your game to communicate with that solution. You may want to look into AWS Gamelift, Microsoft Azure, Playfab or searching for Backends As A Service (BaaS)

[crisp copper]

okay, thanks. but from what i saw online, its nowhere near that simple. the create/join session functions dont seem to work out of the gate and needs extensive setup, i read a really long forum discussion where someone couldnt get their server to be found by other players, and the replies on what still needed to be done was a clear indication that it seems i havent been able to find any good information (tho maybe thats just me and my bad googling skills). im still very new to multiplayer, and basically know nothing about server aside from the basics like ports and IP. what im searching for is some learning materials that would provide every bit of information required to host that server. i would start off by hosting myself on my old pc, only renting servers if i end up getting enough players. ofcourse im not expecting there to be a step by step tutorial for this, but where can i find EVERY bit of information relating to this? also apologies for this long paragraph, im just getting scared that i wont be able to learn this in time. my upcoming project after my current practice project is going to be a big undertaking, tho luckily im out of my "lets make a massive open world MMORPG" phase that i had 8 months ago. scale should be realistic, but the server would seem to be my biggest issue. other issues i know im able to conquer as they are more just a matter of practise, but for over a week now i have been trying to learn about servers but just cant find anything solid.

[kindred widget]

In general it is that easy though.

• Build server executable
• Make the default dedicated server map host a session
• Make a main menu that can search sessions
• Set up INI files correctly for your platform(Steam, EOS, etc), mostly just enabling and picking correct drivers, and in Steam's case setting the App ID.
• Launch server
• Launch client.
• Search sessions on client.

[crisp copper]

oh, then i dont know what i was reading. someone had a ton of problems, tho maybe its been streamlined since then, as it was in UE4. i just assumed it would be similar to UE5 in that regard. would you know where i can find more information about that "set up INI files correctly..." step?

[sinful tree]

Hosting is that easy. You start a server, it can technically allow incoming connections. There may be additional requirements to allow connections into that server, like port forwarding/firewall exceptions if you're going with connecting VIA IP address and port which again, isn't something strictly tied to Unreal itself, it's more general networking.

Sessions via #online-subsystems can mitigate the requirement to use IP addresses and ports and they can support NAT punch-through (effectively removing the firewall/port forwarding part) making it trivial to get players connected. Sessions are typically a means of communicating that there are servers available and allows clients to connect without having to share IP address and port information, and can circumvent the need for you to build your own solution for sharing the information with players so they can find active game servers to join.

Some BaaS solutions can have their own "sessions" though not necessarily exactly the same as sessions that are used by Unreal, but it works effectively the same - your game server would communicate to the BaaS when it starts up to indicate it's available and register the server. Your game client would communicate to the BaaS asking for a server list, the BaaS would let the client know what to connect to, you'd then have your game client connect to the desired server. The server may also have some form of authentication of the client joining with the BaaS. But again, this would all depend on the solution you'd want to go with.

[kindred widget]

I'm sure there's a guide somewhere that has a more comprehensive list. But for example this is all we're using atm on our latest project. You can ignore the beacon related lines if you don't intend to use them. But this INI allows us to test in editor using Null subsystem. And in any Standalone or cooked game using Steam. We're using using CommonUser plugin for easier handling of the session code.

[/Script/Engine.GameEngine]
!NetDriverDefinitions=ClearArray
+NetDriverDefinitions=(DefName="BeaconNetDriver",DriverClassName="OnlineSubsystemSteam.SteamNetDriver",DriverClassNameFallback="OnlineSubsystemUtils.IpNetDriver")
+NetDriverDefinitions=(DefName="GameNetDriver",DriverClassName="OnlineSubsystemSteam.SteamNetDriver",DriverClassNameFallback="OnlineSubsystemUtils.IpNetDriver")

[/Script/UnrealEd.EditorEngine]
!NetDriverDefinitions=ClearArray
+NetDriverDefinitions=(DefName="BeaconNetDriver",DriverClassName="OnlineSubsystemUtils.IpNetDriver",DriverClassNameFallback="OnlineSubsystemUtils.IpNetDriver")
+NetDriverDefinitions=(DefName="GameNetDriver",DriverClassName="OnlineSubsystemUtils.IpNetDriver",DriverClassNameFallback="OnlineSubsystemUtils.IpNetDriver")

[OnlineSubsystem]
DefaultPlatformService=Steam
NativePlatformService= Steam

[OnlineSubsystemNull]
bEnabled=True

[OnlineSubsystemSteam]
bEnabled=True
SteamDevAppId=YourSteamAppIDOr480Here
bInitServerOnClient=true

[/Script/OnlineSubsystemUtils.OnlineBeaconHost]
ListenPort=7787
BeaconConnectionInitialTimeout=48.0
BeaconConnectionTimeout=49.0```

[crisp copper]

oh okay, thank you very much. i was getting scared over nothing it seems.

[crisp copper]

oh okay, thank you.

[kindred widget]

One major note. It might be best to set stuff up as a Listenserver first if possible. It's much easier to test on and get stuff working. You still have a few things to work out with dedicates, like them not ticking animations and such without the override. But in general you can get a lot of your dev stuff done in Listenserver. After that a dedicated server should literally be as simple as setting up the server to host instead of having a player host.

Also if you don't want to set up a UI, do remember that you can connect using command lines. In Null you can connect via IP. In Steam you can I "think" both connect with IP and a user's Steam ID. Both are just "Open 127.0.0.1" for example.

But dedicated server testing time has a long phase. And it should only be used for things that specifically relate to it. If you can do it on a listenserver, do it, because it's a lot faster cycle times.

[crisp copper]

okay, so does listen server replication work functionally the exact same(for most of the game logic)? also i will be making an UI, but that shouldnt be too hard, i have made a listen server create/join server menus, tho with this i wouldnt have the create option.

[kindred widget]

At it's simplest. A Dedicated Server is literally just an instance of the game running that has no visual renderer. The entire render thread is turned off for example. And there is no local user. So essentially there is no hosting player. In 99% of net code this doesn't matter though. The engine handles everything for you like not spawning particle systems or sounds and such if it's on a dedicated server. I think the most major cases of implementation issues stem from people trying to move to Dedicates when relying on animations playing(default has no anims on the dedicated but you can turn this on), and things like using the renderthread to do complex things like a fog of war in a niagara system.

[crisp copper]

when you say relying on animations playing, you dont mean replicating just basic animations? in my case i would be replicating IK based animations (vr)

[kindred widget]

You don't replicate animations though. You replicate state which a client uses to drive animations. The case I'm referring to is that people think that they need server side animations so that they can line trace say an arm on the server based on data a client gave. This of course is still highly inaccurate due to timing issues of latency. I'm unsure if root motion anims work or not by default. But they may be another reason to enable dedicated server anims, so that the server authoritively moves something. I don't deal with those though so out of my area of expertise.

[crisp copper]

oh okay, but wouldnt i technically be replicating animations if i ofcourse run the ik animations for the client, but then send their controller positions as 3 floats to the server to basically be replicated on the other clients? or is that simply not defined as replicating the animation?

[kindred widget]

Perhaps. Though you're still replicating some basic state to drive the animation on another machine. You're not exactly replicating the entire animation. It's kind of the same idea as the AimOffsets. You don't really replicate the animation. You replicate Pitch and infer Yaw. And you use those two states to decide how to do your aim offset animations.

Like, you say "replicate the animation" and I immediately think you're trying to replicate every bone position and such. 😄 Rather than some simple state to recreate it.

Game name? O.o Doesn't that get inferred from the AppID?

[sinful tree]

External solutions will require whatever setup they require. Hosting a dedicated server from Unreal's perspective is literally just turning on that computer, starting up the dedicated server executable and then clients can theoretically connect to it. It's everything else leading a client to be able to find and connect to that server that varies and, yes, your game will need to be configured to whatever your solution needs.

[jaunty hazel]

The game mode has all the player's stats in an array for each player. Its multiplayer. however when referencing the game mode, only the server has the correct stats. Can anyone tell me what im doing wrong. The UI says gamemode not in scope but i used the refrence from the actual player.

[hollow eagle]

The gamemode only exists on the server.

[jaunty hazel]

so how do I set the values so only the server has them and the client can read them

[hollow eagle]

what do you mean "only the server has them" - if a client needs to see the info then the client also needs to have them.
Anyway, the game mode only exists on the server. The game state is replicated to everyone.

[jaunty hazel]

For example. if the player's stamina in on the Player blueprint. Is it still safe from outside interferince like through cheat engine or such. Security isnt a big deal but it helps to know if players can set thier stamina to 1000

[hollow eagle]

that's not how this works

clients cannot set values on the server

replication is one direction: server to client. RPCs are the only way clients can send data to the server and those must be created by you intentionally.

Clients can modify values for themselves, but that does not affect the server's values or values for other clients.

[jaunty hazel]

I see. So if the default value for stamina on a player is 100. they cant change it because thats how the server sees it.

[hollow eagle]

They can change it for themselves. It will not update the value on the server.

[jaunty hazel]

got it. thanks for the help.

[devout sonnet]

can someone explain how, in a two player game, how the server manages the each players Game Instance? I have the logic to load a player's chosen username into the Game Instance. Then when the client connects to the host, both players can see each other's usernames. The text that displays each player's name is bound to a variable on the server.

[verbal ice]

The game instance is not replicated

Every machine gets their own

[devout sonnet]

Does the server have access to both?

[verbal ice]

No

The server only has access to its own game instance

[devout sonnet]

Well, I guess i'm doing an RPC to each player's controller and getting the game instance from that. and the sending the result to the server to store. But i'm still not getting the Client's name.

[sinful tree]

Game Mode only exists on the server.

You can store their chosen name in their game instance, and when connected to the server, send an RPC to the server with their chosen name - probably best to do this on Begin Play of the Player Controller and checking if the player controller is locally controlled. The server once it receives that RPC can then store the player's chosen name in the PlayerState. PlayerStates are replicated to everyone and are always relevant, so it's a good place to store general information about each player.

Then if those name variables are marked as replicated, they'll propagate to any other players. If you want the name of a player, you just need to get their player state which is accessible VIA their controlled pawn or player controller. The PlayerState's owner is the PlayerController, and the PlayerState also has a reference to the currently possessed pawn, but it may not be valid on clients as Pawns are usually not always relevant. An array of active PlayerStates are also stored in the GameState under the "Player Array" variable so there's no need to store joining player controllers since you have a list of PlayerStates which you can also use to retrieve their controllers from if need be.

[karmic rock]

How should you deal with something like a player getting a frag?

My idea - change the player state (keeps track of num frags). Have game mode listen to changes in the player states, and handle this appropriately based on game mode (e.g. if player has 50 frags, end match or whatever, depends on game mode logic).

Does this make sense? Or is it more sensible to use some different approach?

[sinful tree]

If your game mode relies on kill count of any single player, that would make sense. Each time a player gets a kill, you increment and store the kill count for that player on their playerstate making it accessible to everyone as well for use in a scoreboard. You can have that same event report to the Game Mode that the player received a kill, and your specific game mode that cares about how many kills a player has can then check if their kill count >= max kills for the round and if so, end the match etc.

@karmic rock ^

[karmic rock]

Awesome, thanks. I think I'm starting to get the whole UE multiplayer thing basics a little.

[fair halo]

Has anyone else observed that, on the default Third Person Template, the Listen Server observes clients animating their run cycles at a lower speed?
The clients all see the server and each other animating at the correct playrate, but the animated speed of the run cycle is slower on the listen server.

[devout sonnet]

I'll have to study up on RPC's again because i'm confused on how to implement it.

I thought I had an RPC that, onPostLogin, would call an event on each player controller that would return the saved username.

[sinful tree]

The prolem is that RPC on Post Login calls this RPC which would run on clients. Since the Game Mode doesn't exist on clients, the execution would stop at the first cast as Get Game Mode would return a null reference causing the cast to always fail.

[subtle kernel]

guys, is there any good solution to make a text chat for multiplayer game? and voice chat as well? that can work on dedicated server

[sinful tree]

A simple global chat message system can be as simple as a player sending a server RPC with a string input of the message they want to send, and then having the server multicast on the gamestate, sending along the message and the playerstate of the player that is sending the message (to know who the message is from). If you want to ensure all messages are delivered, then you may want to send individual reliable client RPCs with the message to some client owned object. This can all be coded into a component that you can place on the player state or player controller.

Voice chat, I'm not sure of.

[subtle kernel]

yea, it should be easy, but since I'm prototyping here, maybe I thought there's some industrial standard plugin 🙂

[hybrid zodiac]

Hi everyone, quick question: does anyone know if it's possible for a client's player state to be instantiated and initial bunch sent before the game state is instantiated? I'm tracking an issue and this seems to be the most obvious explanation but want to rule out that possibility before I implement a fix.

Essentially, the player state has an OnRep function which is supposed to look at the game state and retrieve a widget class and display it (a welcome screen), but sometimes it doesn't appear for clients joining mid-game and the most obvious reason would be the game state is null on the client side when that OnRep is first called.

[hardy mesa]

I can't say for sure if there's any guarantee or not that Game State is initialized before Player States (sounds like it isn't in a join-in-progress), however there's a few mitigations you could try so the guarantee isn't necessary.

1. Try defer the Welcome setup to the next frame (there's a high likely hood that Player State and Game State come down in the same network update)
2. Create a simple Welcome subsystem/logic that the player state calls, it then checks if game state exists and continues otherwise registeres a delegate to the World's GameState creation event
3. Let the Player State logic bail if no Game State exists and then have Game State instantiation on the client iterate through existing Player States and try to run welcome any local controlled (though this could invert the expectation and run into a similar issue where it sees a Player State reference but it hasn't been fully initialized yet)

These solutions are obviously just variations on the same theme (mark that we want to do something but defer it until we know our state is correct) and slightly hacky feeling, but also common enough patterns that I'd not be too worried about using them.

[shrewd ginkgo]

how can I replicate my aimoffset

[chrome quest]

Think you have to create a replicated variable and update it on tick or someting. iirc ControlRotation isn't replicated

[dark parcel]

try base aim rotation

[rustic sable]

does attenutation not work when playing sound ques from sound anim notifies? It plays just as loud for everyone in the game even with the 'follow' setting checked

[dark parcel]

works for me. Try checking your settings

[rustic sable]

ok, I found one problem, I had the wave instead of the que selected. do you use any of the other settings as in like the LOD filtering etc?

[dark parcel]

LOD for audio? I kept everything default and just dump the attuneation setting that I want.

[rustic sable]

yup there's notify filtering by LOD, not going to mess with it for now

[quiet yarrow]

So im trying to play sounds when force >= x

How do you guys calculate force on physical objects? Do you use normal impulse as the force? Or do you get the mass * acceleration? If so, how do you determine the acceleration of that object on hit?

[crisp shard]

which one of these would actually be the better system for removing items ? as far as i know they would do the same thing, but curiuos if anyone has thoughts as to which would be a smarter decsiion

[dark edge]

They aren't equivelent

top one will put a default Item struct in that element

[crisp shard]

ahh i see, if the default is blank , would they then be equivalent in result?

or would removing, like remove that entire index and shorten the array ?

[dark edge]

It's the difference between:
1,2,3 -> 1,2,0
and
1,2,3 -> 1,2

[crisp shard]

makes sense, nice yea the top one works great, was just not sure what that was doing vs the other , but that clears it up

[crisp copper]

how would i go about replicating ik animations? here is my player pawn BP where i can control the location of the effector and then my two bone ik in the anim BP.

it is replicating to a client from the playing hosting a listen server, but not from the client

[verbal ice]

You don't have to replicate the IK positions afaik

Ah wait I see

You'd need to send the new position to the server so it can replicate to clients

Your code right now would work on the server because it would replicate to the clients, but clients can't replicate properties to other clients

You'd have to send the transform to the server using an RPC (and you'd likely want that RPC to be unreliable if you execute it often)

Then on the server you apply it to the replicated property which clients will get

@crisp copper

[crisp copper]

i think i just had that moment where it finally somewhat clicked. i didnt realize that variables are also replicated using the RPC, as the variables have the replication and repnotify options. thank you very much, it took 3 nodes and now its working.

[queen escarp]

any common reason why clients have 70+ fps but listen server has 15 ish ?

[verbal ice]

Profile your server with Unreal Insights

Listen servers are both the server and a player so it does take more resources

[queen escarp]

hmm aye profile it is

[sinful tree]

A very probable reason is you have many replicated actors in your world spawned. The server will always have all replicated actors that are spawned active and using CPU & GPU resources, where clients would only have actors that are currently relevant which is usually drastically less, and this is beside the additional overhead the server has with having to manage the replication of those actors. But yea, profiling should direct you to the answer.

[queen escarp]

hm possebly but what would be a recomended action for this ? or yeah profiling will narrow it down i suppose

[verbal ice]

Unreal Insights will tell you all you need to know

[queen escarp]

1 thing that the sever dose it spawn 100 "playable areas small platforms with alot of doodas thats all replicated" but after they are spawned i though the server wouldent "spend preformance on it"

[dark edge]

How would you architect a space station city builder?

Like, if your view is far enough away, you'd see nothing but still know some state

but close up you'd see a lot of stuff

It feels like actor replication and relevence systems would maybe grind to a halt, might be simpler to have a simple synced sim and have all the actors etc be derived from it.

[dark edge]

It still needs to consider them for replication. 100 isn't very many though, you need to profile and see where the time is being spent

[mystic belfry]

Quick question guys, how do you replication geometry collection ?

[queen escarp]

Hi tips on how i can show the "HpBar" locally to the "target" only ?

this event is run on server from a npc

[dark edge]

What's the context here, you want to show a hp bar for what situation?

[queen escarp]

im showing hp bar when taking damage

for a durtation

[dark edge]

who owns the hp bar

[queen escarp]

server

[dark edge]

no i mean what actor

does every pawn have an hp bar?

just the players pawn

[queen escarp]

only npc

[dark edge]

Right now do clients know that damage happened?

[queen escarp]

well yeah

[dark edge]

how

OnRep_HP?

multicast event

how

[queen escarp]

no "apply damage event"

server

[dark edge]

that's serverside

how does a client know that damage happened?

[queen escarp]

oh right well, they spheretrace and on overlapp it sends damage, but this is on multiple actions so i cant really use that

[dark edge]

is HP replicated and RepNotify?

[queen escarp]

replicated

[dark edge]

just make it repnotify and show the bar there

OnRep_HP -> show bar Event
Show bar -> if bar not visible -> show it -> retriggerable delay -> hide it

quick and dirty and not perfect but that'll get you on your way

[queen escarp]

but i want it to only show for the "damaging player"

[dark edge]

Might be simpler to just RPC then

Damage Code -> multicast "I just got hit by PlayerPawnX"

Multicast -> if LocalPlayer = PlayerThatJustHit -> show bar

I mean you probably want some sort of local prediction so just do the hits clientside too and show bar then

you don't want to wait for ping lag for everything

[queen escarp]

hmm

[queen escarp]

https://blueprintue.com/blueprint/eo1yyz4a/ i mean this is what your saying kinda right ?

the event is rpc

from NPC

when taking damage

[exotic wasp]

you could still just do the repnotify but check who the damaging player is on the client

[shut hazel]

If I have a setup like this, what should I replicate to not have stuttery movement of the hinge?

I see that just replicating physics, desynces on client

[dark edge]

Why do you need to replicate dangling toilet paper?

[dark edge]

You'd probably miss a few

[shut hazel]

because skibidi toilet

[dark edge]

I hit -> you hit -> replicate

You hit last, you see bar, I don't

[glad robin]

I feel like I know the answer but I would still love opinion. In my mission system when I have timed objectives I want to display this time to the players. I have my UI setup and is updated with objectives name and info and all that when they start, but I was just unsure about displaying the timer to players.

On first thought, I just replicate the CountdownTime and ReplicatedUsing to update the UI. But then I was thinking I don't send the value and instead just fake it by starting a local timer on the client when the objective is started.

All functionality linked to the timer happens on the server so this is purely cosmetic, so I feel like I should just fake it. But is it even worth doing that vs just simply handling with the ReplicatedUsing haha?

[glad robin]

I have to know what the toilet paper is for lol

[shut hazel]

its just a cube that moves around this cylinder

like player can bump into it

and move it

Its just me testing how physics work and constraints on single and multiplayer

[vague spruce]

yoyo, im making changes to a TArray but for some reason it's not being replicated. i'm not getting any OnRep_ calls. anyone know why this would be? i thought changing elements inside of a TArray would cause a replication event to occur

[glad robin]

I feel you, just last night I gave my golfer a giant floppy dong to test out the physics hahaha

[kindred widget]

Can you share code?

[glad robin]

Are the properties in the TArray Uproperties?

[vague spruce]

void UTitansAbilitySystemComponent::ClearAbilityInAbilityBar(int InSlot)
{
    const auto [AbilityAsset, Handle] = AbilityBar[InSlot];
    ClearAbility(Handle);
    AbilityBar[InSlot] = FAbilityGrant{nullptr, FGameplayAbilitySpecHandle()};
    
}

// Replication
void UTitansAbilitySystemComponent::GetLifetimeReplicatedProps(TArray<FLifetimeProperty>& OutLifetimeProps) const
{
    Super::GetLifetimeReplicatedProps(OutLifetimeProps);

    DOREPLIFETIME(UTitansAbilitySystemComponent, AbilityBar);
}

UPROPERTY(Replicated, VisibleAnywhere, ReplicatedUsing = OnRep_AbilityBar)
    TArray<FAbilityGrant> AbilityBar;

it replicates fine when i assign to it, just not when i make that change

    AbilityBar[InSlot] = FAbilityGrant{nullptr, FGameplayAbilitySpecHandle()};

do i need to maybe tell the replication system that i need to broadcast a change? i figured just changing the array would cause a replication event

[glad robin]

Share struct sorry

[kindred widget]

Is it possible that the slot wasn't actually changed?

[vague spruce]

oh interesting

like it might have occurred on the client but not the server

good catch, lemme see if that's the case

okay when i manually call OnRep_AbilityBar i get the UI changes i'm looking for. this points to it being a server problem. let me try making a server RPC call instead and see what happens

and in the end i'll likely end up doing a mix of the two so it looks responsive

one moment

yep, that's exactly what it was. thanks @kindred widget

[smoky scroll]

Heya everyone, I hope you're good!

I officially hate multiplayer. Does Advanced Sessions actually implement everything that is needed to connect Steam P2P, or is it a load of extra C++ needed too?
I've tested with a couple friends and the create sessions can be seen, but joining them is "successful", but doesn't take the player anywhere.

I have also tried Event on Session Invite Accepted Execute Command "ClientTravel M_MapName" with no luck. Any help is more that appreciated. Or pointed to the right thread 😄

[upbeat estuary]

Very big necro, but did you ever find a solution to the Iris disallowed to write first packet message? I'm getting this too, along with a few actual errors.

[peak mirage]

I remember getting pass that error, just to get another bunch of errors down the way that reside somewhere in Iris core

If I recall correctly, that is some properties not get replicate at all

[upbeat estuary]

The error I'm getting is

LogIris: Error: OnErrorWithNetRefHandleReported: 1 from client ConnectionId:1 ViewTarget: GamePawn_C_1 Named: [UNetConnection] RemoteAddr: 127.0.0.1:49708, Name: ClusterNetConnection_2, Driver: Name:GameNetDriver Def:GameNetDriver ClusterNetDriver_2, IsServer: YES, PC: PlayerController_1, Owner: PlayerController_1, UniqueId: NULL:ITC23128-84DFDFB04A06131F4FF28796794A48FF. Problematic object was RootObject WorldSettings_1 (InternalIndex: 1) (NetRefHandle (Id=3):(RepSystemId=0))

Hmm interesting

[peak mirage]

So we just go back to the old replication system

[upbeat estuary]

I guess it's in beta for a reason

[peak mirage]

Iris needs some more documents. Until then just settle with push model

[upbeat estuary]

might try it with 5.5 🙏

[quiet yarrow]

is it worth generating hit events just for playing sounds on simulated objects?

seems like a pretty big preformance hit at scale

[dark edge]

how big?

[quiet yarrow]

with ~300 simulated* objects its about 12 fps difference

[lucid ocean]

Hey guys - anyone here got experience with GMCv2 ? Dont know if this is the right place to ask?

[quasi tide]

The right place to ask is their discord

[lucid ocean]

Which is something behind the paywall 😉 just have 1-2 things I want to know before purchasing

[quasi tide]

How could anyone possibly know you don't have it based on your previous message? 😉

Also - the creator is still the right place to ask

And just ask your question as well

Never ask to ask

Just ask

[verbal ice]

Hardcore user here, what's up

[lucid ocean]

First off, thanks for reaching out. My main questions currently prior to purchasing are regarding sustainability and compatability with other "native" UE systems. As I am coming from a different engine

as I understand the GAS topic has been adressed by a community built solution

[verbal ice]

GMAS yes, it's actively worked on and if you have issues they are generally fixed pretty fast - or you can fix them yourself and PR it I suppose

[lucid ocean]

ah great that is reassuring

[verbal ice]

It isn't 1:1 with GAS yet, a notable issue is the lack of GameplayCues but they are next on the list. On the flip side, GMAS has support for things that GAS doesn't.

[lucid ocean]

is there anything in your experience that "breaks" or becomes significantly more difficult ? (when commiting to GMC)

[verbal ice]

Such as server applied gameplay effects which don't break prediction of the client

Not really no, it's been battle tested in a game so far and they love it

Both GMC and GMAS

Not issue free but for the GMC the dev is active and replies pretty fast, and GMAS has its community (on the GMC discord as well, they have a few channels) that can answer questions

[lucid ocean]

awesome to hear! I am reletavely new to UE and just want to head down the "right" in regard to learning from the start

[verbal ice]

Why do you need the GMC over UE's native solution?

[lucid ocean]

because unlike you, I believe learning CSP / lag compensation is something I would rather "offload" to people that truely understand the subject matter

[verbal ice]

CSP?

[lucid ocean]

Client side prediction* sorry

[verbal ice]

UE's native solutions offer that too, both CMC and GAS

Depends on what you want to do in your game tbf

[lucid ocean]

Interesting, based off of my research the majority of people recommend GMC due to the robust replication / prediction etc

[verbal ice]

You can also do that in the CMC, but the GMC 100% supports Blueprints so BP devs can make custom movement with prediction etc

The GMC is also a lot easier to extend for your custom movement compared to the CMC so that's why I really love it

[lucid ocean]

yea, and TBH the cost is not the issue for me. Paying sombody to create the same would be substantially more expensive than a 600 dollar Plugin

[verbal ice]

Oh definitely, that's multiple years of work

[lucid ocean]

exactly - and since I am not able to truly "judge" the code behind in terms of netcode, I would rather trust something "battle tested"

So, in short - you recommend it and dont see any "dependency" topics I need to know about. (such as when using a custom build like with Angelscript etc)

[verbal ice]

Not as battle tested as the CMC but I have used it on a few work projects with little to no issues, and it's being used by an extraction shooter that's under playtests atm

Yeah it's a plugin, don't need anything else

[lucid ocean]

Yea saw that, the response to the playtests have been positive aswell which is great!

My requirements are more in the direction of higher tickrates / competitive environments

[verbal ice]

You can definitely handle that, of course as with any game with such tight constraints you'll need a lot of tinkering but I'd wager the GMC can handle it

I've been using it to route shooting hitreg through it and it works fine

[lucid ocean]

oh it can do that to?

[verbal ice]

It supports instanced structs in the movement data so you can pass anything you want into it

[lucid ocean]

I thought it was specifically focused on character movement / character controller creation

[verbal ice]

Oh yeah that's the main focus, but you can use it for other things like shooting

There's a demo shooting project with it, and while GRIM won't really heavily modify the GMC for anything non-movement related, he did give us instanced struct support (and custom type support so you can add your own) and he does expose some data when it's requested by the community

With the amount of settings you can change, you can basically do shooting like Counter-Strike where it's part of the movement data, so the server sees your shot basically the same way you did when it executes your move.

Makes it super easy to wrap your head around.

[grand kestrel]

With CMC I know exactly what its capable of, and its proven, and understood by most relevant devs
With GMC there are too many unknowns, including performance esp. given the BP capabilities (usually comes at a big cost)
I'd need to see serious games running GMC before I even look at it

[verbal ice]

You can disable BP events, they're all called with a macro

In the component you can untick a bool, or in C++ you can just overwrite the macro to expand to nothing

Up to you

Extraction shooter dev managed a stress test with 200 complex pawns, 19ms on the server (no rewinding of pawns because that's expensive)

Granted they had no players but the GMC itself stood well

[grand kestrel]

Oh that one, I read about that yesterday. It was clear it's client authority

But yeah not too bad

[verbal ice]

I don't think so

But they did heavily optimize the server side, went from 77 to 19ms

Although idk if the pawns were moving

[cyan marten]

guys, what do you think it's the best way to make loading screen works using server travel?

[dire cradle]

Join request: /Game/Maps/Development/Entry/Entry?Name=DESKTOP-4C1FM7J-DF9A101F499272C3B50812A0D90299B8?SplitscreenCount=1
[2024.10.22-20.41.52:288][858]LogNet: Join succeeded: DESKTOP-4C1FM7J-DF9A
[2024.10.22-20.41.52:355][860]LogNet: UChannel::ReceivedSequencedBunch: Bunch.bClose == true. ChIndex == 0. Calling ConditionalCleanUp.
[2024.10.22-20.41.52:355][860]LogNet: UChannel::CleanUp: ChIndex == 0. Closing connection. [UChannel] ChIndex: 0, Closing: 0 [UNetConnection] RemoteAddr: 127.0.0.1:52309, Name: IpConnection_2147482361, Driver: Name:GameNetDriver Def:GameNetDriver IpNetDriver_2147482520, IsServer: YES, PC: Menu_PC_C_2147482355, Owner: Menu_PC_C_2147482355, UniqueId: NULL:DESKTOP-4C1FM7J-DF9A101F499272C3B50812A0D90299B8
[2024.10.22-20.41.52:356][860]LogNet: UNetConnection::Close: [UNetConnection] RemoteAddr: 127.0.0.1:52309, Name: IpConnection_2147482361, Driver: Name:GameNetDriver Def:GameNetDriver IpNetDriver_2147482520, IsServer: YES, PC: Menu_PC_C_2147482355, Owner: Menu_PC_C_2147482355, UniqueId: NULL:DESKTOP-4C1FM7J-DF9A101F499272C3B50812A0D90299B8, Channels: 10, Time: 2024.10.22-20.41.52
[2024.10.22-20.41.52:356][860]LogNet: UNetConnection::SendCloseReason:
[2024.10.22-20.41.52:357][860]LogNet:  - Result=ControlChannelClose, ErrorContext="ControlChannelClose"
[2024.10.22-20.41.52:357][860]LogNet: UChannel::Close: Sending CloseBunch. ChIndex == 0. Name: [UChannel] ChIndex: 0, Closing: 0 [UNetConnection] RemoteAddr: 127.0.0.1:52309, Name: IpConnection_2147482361, Driver: Name:GameNetDriver Def:GameNetDriver IpNetDriver_2147482520, IsServer: YES, PC: Menu_PC_C_2147482355, Owner: Menu_PC_C_2147482355, UniqueId: NULL:DESKTOP-4C1FM7J-DF9A101F499272C3B50812A0D90299B8

Hello I've a problem with my dedicated server, the client connects for a second but then immediately gets kicked out.
Then it tries to reconnect over and over again, getting kicked every time.

I've tried with a new empty gamemode, pawn, player controller on an empty map. It's not anything blueprint related, the project does not have any C++ code.

I've no idea why the connection doesn't hold, please help.

[kindred widget]

CommonLoadingScreen plugin in Lyra.

[agile meadow]

does anyone know why im getting this error

[hollow eagle]

that should be const FText& in both cases

[agile meadow]

i tried that

[hollow eagle]

and...?

[agile meadow]

uh. well i had thought id tried it. but in classic fashion when i try it again it works fine

thanks

sometimes the world just likes to fuck with me

[agile meadow]

ive done a bit of looking around and i feel like im on the right track with storing chat messages in gamestate and playerstate/playercontroller, and using replication to get a chat message to be sent to everyone, but everyone uses blueprints and i wanna do it in C++ and it just seems impossible. i cant get a proper reference to my blueprintable UI widgets and everything i try just leads to crashes.

why is this so goddang hard!?!?! all i wanna do is make my UI code be in C++ because i find that easier, and more customizable, but i still want it to be able to move and fiddle with my widgets in the designer.

[sinful tree]

Your game code shouldn't be trying to get a reference to your widgets. Work the other way around - have your widgets listen for event dipatchers on actors or components the widget needs to care about.

[agile meadow]

i feel like i tried that first, but i was having trouble with delegates and shit. i can try again

i might have to just refactor all my code at this point. its getting so confusing and half of it i dont use, all just trying various things.

i think one of the problems was that delegates dont return things, unless its not a multicast, but im not sure i can use a singlecast for this. is it counted as only one "Add" if im adding something that is copied among many players?

i tried doing a delegate with params, into an RPC that can then send back information, but something about that went wrong too and i dont remember what

[sinful tree]

You wouldn't use a delegate through an RPC. RPCs are one way.
A simple chat system would be something like...
Player input & send RPC to server with desired message, probably through PlayerState or component on such.
Server can iterate over the Player Array in GameState, send reliable RPCs to each PlayerState the message that was received along with the sending PlayerState.
When clients receive the message, fire delegate.
Widgets bind to that delegate and then update UI with the message.

[glossy gate]

hi! I want to spawn to players and I'm starting a new window (PIE) with 2 players and as a listen server in the net mode. I have this two PlayerStart but when I play the game only in the server work (now it doesn't work well too :() and I see the player with the playerstart view correctly. anyone knows why I might be missing or doing wrong?

[agile meadow]

the thing i tried was, sending information from my Widget, to the GameState through a delegate, which then stores the information, and uses an RPC to send it to the server. and then i need some way to get information back

im not sure thats what i did, i dont remember honestly

[sinful tree]

You can only RPC to the server through a client owned replicated actor. GameState while replicated, wouldn't be client owned. In order to send information back out, you'd have to RPC it back.

Or use replicated variables, but that doesn't really apply in this situation.

[agile meadow]

i cant RPC it back though, because i dont have access to the widget

[sinful tree]

You don't need access to the widget.

The widget just listens.

[agile meadow]

ok explain what you mean by that. how do i make it listen

[sinful tree]

You can have that delegate created in the GameState, and it can have the sender and the message as parameters.
So following my example I laid out...
The sender of the message sends a Server RPC through PlayerState with their message.
The server can then get the Player Array (list of PlayerStates) from the GameState and iterate through them sending Client RPCs to each client with the message & the sending PlayerState.
The client RPC can then trigger the delegate in the GameState indicating the sender of the message and the message itself.

You'd set up your UI to listen for that delegate in its construct event (as it's easy to get the gamestate), and since the widget is listening for that delegate, it can do whatever logic you want it to do with the received message & playerstate that sent the message.

The delegate itself will only ever be triggered locally. It doesn't do anything over the network itself.

[agile meadow]

that sounds feasible. in line with some of the stuff ive been bandying around with, but this looks like it might actually work.
ill give it a shot after lunch!!!! thanks for this

i think i can revert some of the stuff ive been doing. i actually had the messages working perfectly when it was clientside, and then ive fucked everything up by trying to move stuff around to make it work with the server. i think i can pretty easily implement that change to extend the working parts i had

[glossy gate]

all the videos I see people only duplicate the player start and it works for them, idk why mine’s not

[dire cradle]

Solved it.
It was because of my dumbass calling the join function on the same level blueprint the server was hosted on.

The client recursively joined and loaded that map, leading to another join request and so on.

And now I have an ActorChannelFailure...
neat.

[agile meadow]

theres no way this worked first try right...

i need to find a way to test a second player

nothing EVER works first try

[twin juniper]

you can withint the editor

[twin juniper]

well it usually do for me 😆

[agile meadow]

get outa here. lies

ok how do i spawn a new guy

[twin juniper]

if you never did that, how could you know it works with multiple players?

[agile meadow]

well thats why im doubting if it worked or not

can i just drag a new default pawn class into the game?

[agile meadow]

i only have this. is that the same thing?

idk where you find that other option

[twin juniper]

its in the main frame, in the middle

[agile meadow]

im feeling pretty dumb right now. i cant find what that is

[agile meadow]

ah!

ok great. it did not work!!

only one client sees it

honestly kind of a relief. the world makes sense again.

although, they dont seem to be sharing the same world

so that might be the issue

it spawns different gamestates probably, one for each PIE

i need multiple players in one world

oh i had to play as a client

so....it looks like it works?

the world doesnt make sense

ok thats weird, the second client cant send messages

[twin juniper]

the first client never sent one ig

[agile meadow]

what do you mean

[twin juniper]

can you send a video of the client sending the message?because its impossible that one client can but not the other

maybe its the server

[agile meadow]

sure

weird that the hint text is there even if there is other text inside the editable box

and yes, i do have 2 player states

only one hud interestingly

and that spawns the widgets right?

so maybe they are sharing the HUD, and the second client is lying to me

[twin juniper]

you are porbably disabeling the button or something

[agile meadow]

well when i press the button, it does the "Button pressed" log, it seems my cast to the player state is not working for the second client

its not doing the chat submitted

im casting it here in native construct

so potentially, because i only have 1 hud generated, its only calling native construct for the first client

probably because im using the same machine, which has the same UniqueID

so i need to spoof a new machine somehow?

[twin juniper]

normally, there's 1 for each clients

[agile meadow]

normal never works for me

i also only have one player controller. maybe thats the issue.

[agile meadow]

maybe i need this to be on

so that didnt work. im noticing that im getting 3 sets of logs printed, from my Widget's NativeConstruct(), which means i should have 3 sets of the UI. im not sure whats happening

[twin juniper]

that's for testing with ping enabled

[agile meadow]

im also getting a standalone proc of it, idk why

and this is a good sign. the loop is working properly, it finds both clients and sends the message to both through the delegate. so im not seeing only one player's widget i think

i just cant post from both

[twin juniper]

if your game is using listen server, try with a server

[agile meadow]

im not sure what a listen server is, or if im using it

[twin juniper]

go learn more about multiplayer then, this is pretty basic https://cedric-neukirchen.net/docs/category/multiplayer-network-compendium/

[agile meadow]

alright

[agile meadow]

so i understand what it is, how do i know if im using it

[twin juniper]

.

[agile meadow]

maybe my issue is this. im doing my code through the PlayerState, but it seems like those dont have individual clients. i need to use the player controller i guess

or...both cleints have access to both player states? nvm idk. i read this chart wrong

i forgot how venn diagrams worked for a second

[twin juniper]

playerstate are replicated but values should alweays be changed on the server still

[agile meadow]

well. i still dont get what the problem is. i tried the listening server option and there was no difference
no matter what im only spawning one hud and player controller

the second client never has access to its playerstate

[twin juniper]

show hud initialization

[agile meadow]

how do i do that?

[twin juniper]

well how do you initialize it?

[agile meadow]

oh i just tried 3 clients. still one hud, one player controller, but the first and second clients can both send a message

idk its just set as default

does it automatically

third client can not send a message

[twin juniper]

bro what

how do you see your widget then?

[agile meadow]

my widget is added to the viewport through the character graph

im casting it up here. is the problem the index?

[twin juniper]

where is that running?

[agile meadow]

this is inside my default pawn

[twin juniper]

show the function

also, did you really read the compendium?

[agile meadow]

i read some of it

its a bit messy, sorry

was fiddling with inputs

i dont think this is the issue though. im just not getting access to the player state for some reason in one of the clients

and im only generating one controller

[twin juniper]

what's the function for the server call for sending the message to everyone?

[agile meadow]

you mean the RPC to send the message to the server, or the one that actually sends the message?

[twin juniper]

both?

[agile meadow]

the first is in my playerstate, the second is in my gamestate

[twin juniper]

you are looping through the player array? this isn't the way to do it

[agile meadow]

how would you do it?

this seems to work

[dark parcel]

Why not.

[twin juniper]

I would use a RepNotify

[dark parcel]

I wouldn't for a chat msg that can be dropped

[twin juniper]

Show what the AddNewMessage do

[agile meadow]

^ i wanted to create a persistent log

[twin juniper]

then you use Rep_Always

[agile meadow]

it does a local broadcast

and the widget that is bound to it fires, and posts the message

[twin juniper]

local? you are on the server

[agile meadow]

this is inside a client rpc

[dark parcel]

What's the actual issue?

[twin juniper]

client rpc = only 1 client, there's your issue

thus why you should be using a RepNotify to call it on all clients

[agile meadow]

no but each playerstate is doing it

[dark parcel]

Client rpc just mean execute the function on the client copy

[agile meadow]

its looping over the playerstates, and calling an RPC on each one

[twin juniper]

compendium -> client rpc is called on owning actors

[dark parcel]

Yeah, what's that got to do with 1 client

[agile meadow]

again, this isnt even the problem. my messages are showing up properly

all of this code works already

[dark parcel]

What's the actual issue

Describe not showing up properly

[twin juniper]

I just told you, it's done for only 1 client, then others can't

[agile meadow]

here

2 clients can see it

[twin juniper]

so you are telling me that it's better to loop through all the playerstate, call a function, call a client rpc, and that's better than a RepNotify? I think otherwise

[agile meadow]

i only have 1 hud and player controller

[twin juniper]

that's fine

[agile meadow]

shouldnt i have 3 huds and controllers?

[dark parcel]

Each instance would have their own hud

Every machine run their own world and script

[agile meadow]

oooh. ok so i just cant see them in that client, and the other clients dont show their object lists

[dark parcel]

That window will only show what exist on the server

[agile meadow]

ok then what about the third client not being able to send messages?

[dark parcel]

Yea you can log them tho, if you want

Well what happend when the button is pressed? What logic is being run and where

[dark parcel]

I would imagine you do be running server rpc at button press

[agile meadow]

there is a problem with the OwningPlayerState, it cannot find it

which is up here

[dark parcel]

Btw does server rpc even work in player state

It's probably owned by the server by default

But I haven't really check

[agile meadow]

its a replicated actor, so yes

idk whats going on here

[dark parcel]

Replicated actor doesn't mean you can call rpc on it

[agile meadow]

my log is being called too many times

[dark parcel]

To call server rpc as client, the client need to own the actor

[agile meadow]

well, it seems to work in my code

[dark parcel]

I would suggest to move your send chat msg logic to player controller

Actually player state seems to be owned by the player nvm

[agile meadow]

yeah

player state is also unique to each joining player supposedly, while player controllers are assigned randomly, so i wanted to use playerstate

so each player always has the same log

[dark parcel]

Btw instead of logging, print string comes with the server client prefix. Maybe that can paint a better picture so you know who's calling what.

[twin juniper]

correct

[agile meadow]

is that the KismetLibrary one?

[dark parcel]

Yeah , you can just grab the code and see how it obtain server client prefix if you still want to use the normal logger

[agile meadow]

what the heck. just crashed after doing a livecode. idk what i changed lol

[twin juniper]

corrupted?

[agile meadow]

oh i accidentally commented out a line in my header

printstring was a good idea

so im getting a lot of client calls for this, and 2 server calls

im not sure whats going on

and now only 1 of the 3 clients works when i hit the button

the second time i hit play in the same editor session, 2 of the clients works

and now im stuck at 2

idk guys, im at a loss

at least i know that the message sending/recieving is working

thats the important bit

until i can actually test multiplayer somehow and figure out if this is a real issue

i will have to ignore it

[agile meadow]

Btw I gotta thank you mate. I had all of parts, I just had to get the flow correct, and you really helped me get my brain in order.

[thin stratus]

You can change what it shows in its settings btw

[dark parcel]

Never know that, I will look it up ty

[thin stratus]

Yeah there is a cogwheel at the top right of it

At the bottom of the menu you can select the world it is viewing

[subtle kernel]

you can choose them here and see appropriate objects

[agile meadow]

good to know, thank you both

[sinful tree]

One issue I see going on here is that the Character Begin Play will fire on all clients when a new character comes into existence.... Get Player Controller 0 will usually return the local controller which will be valid and isn't necessarily what you want at all as if you have 3 players, that means its executing the logic 9 times in total, excluding the server's own execution (which would also be doing this for each character as well), but each time it's executing using the local controller, resulting in the enhanced input bindings and everything else you're doing there executing when it probably shouldn't be.

Generally speaking, you want to avoid using Begin Play for a lot of multiplayer type stuff as it may not be the correct point since it does execute on all clients whenever a Character comes into existence, including from when it Begins Play because it became network relevant on a client. You also want to avoid using the standard "Get Player X" type of getters in multiplayer as they won't always return exactly what you think they are supposed to return, especially when executing on the server.

So what is likely happening here, is that your UI is being created multiple times on each client, and there may be some kind of conflict in their visuals that prevents them from displaying right. From what I can tell, your RPCs and delegate are set up correctly otherwise.

[agile meadow]

what should i use instead of begin play to do my initializations and setup?

[sinful tree]

It depends on what it is you're trying to set up.
UI isn't really something that should be happening on Begin Play of a character for example. UI can just use the HUD class and that begin play will only fire on the local computer and only once since it only gets created locally and only by the player controller.
If you need to know when the controller possesses a pawn, you'd need to use the appropriate events to know when that possession happens -- there's several events within the PlayerController and the Pawn itself that are triggered when possession occurs , and usually at that point you'd want to set up your input bindings. Which one to use is based on whether you need the server to react or you also need the client to react to it..... If I remember right, there's Acknowledge Pawn or something like that on the controller which triggers on the owning client's Player Controller.

[agile meadow]

oh so this is a problem with my blueprint code i guess.

[sinful tree]

Seems like. Disconnect the begin play stuff on your character --- leave it there, but just disconnect it. Move the widget creation and addition to the screen to your HUD class. See if your messaging still works by "Playing as Client" and for 2 players, and see if both screens can post a message.

[agile meadow]

right ok.

im doing some other calculations on the begin play, i can probably just move the create widget part right?

[sinful tree]

You can for now, but again, part of the problem there is that you're using "Get Player Controller 0" and casting, which will always be valid as Player Controller 0 will always be the local player controller on clients, and then you're executing that additional logic on characters that doesn't really need to be done there.

[agile meadow]

same amount of calls doing that. nothing rly changed except i feel like the widget is darker than it was before

ok ill try disconnecting all of that

this...didnt rly work? its being called once on the server and once on the client now, but i dont have 3 instances working. only the first works

i just have this in my hud

[sinful tree]

How is OwningPlayerState populated in your widget?

[agile meadow]

thats done over here

GetOwningPlayerState, casted to the right class

[sinful tree]

Ok, rather than populating that in a variable, can you just get the value each time? One of the issues may be that you're populating with a null value as the playerstate may not have replicated to the player controller by the time the nativeconstruct event happens.

Like, basically make a function that returns your playerstate or something

[agile meadow]

right makes sense, i can try that

no wayyyyy that works!!!

dude. youre a genius

ach. im so happy

youve helped me out big-time twice today!

today was a damn good day

[sinful tree]

Glad it's working 🙂

[pale hazel]

Hey everyone, I'm having an issue when initializing multiple players with a controller each. In my gamemode, I use GetAllConnectedInputDevices to grab all controllers and then loop through them to create LocalPlayers for the ones that don't have one yet, and then add the mappingcontext for input.
My problem is that, when I have a keyboard and three controllers plugged in, the GetAllConnectedInputDevices node only returns three input devices. The last controller seems to not be recognized as its own device, but it's input DOES affect a player, namely the player that the second-to-last controller is mapped to. So the result is this:

Keyboard -> Controls Player 0
Gamepad 1 -> Controls Player 1
Gamepad 2 -> Controls Player 2
Gamepad 3 -> Controls Player 2

the above is with "Skip Assigning Gamepad ToPlayer 1" enabled
if I disable that setting, the result is the following:

Keyboard -> Controls Player 0
Gamepad 1 -> Controls Player 0
Gamepad 2 -> Controls Player 1
Gamepad 3 -> Controls Player 2

Can anyone explain why not all my controllers are recognized as their own input devices?

[pale hazel]

If I plug in the controllers, I see the "An Input Device has been connected" message in the bottom right, and the last two controllers both get the Platform User ID: 2, and Device ID: 2

[cobalt bear]

so ive made this blueprint that allows a second controller to be used with player 2 and it works perfectly fine. However, when i reload the level(if the player wants to go back to main menu) and i start again my second player is not being set to my second player controller. Anybody have a clue why this is?

This is the error i get

[clear zephyr]

I started a project with the third person template and made a function but I’m getting the no owner so won’t be processed error. I’m really new to replication and don’t know where I set the owner the function is on the third person character and the function effects the characters self. Do I set that on character spawn somewhere all examples I see online where for effect other objects so I’m lost

[agile meadow]

Gonna need some more details here. What's the function do?
Have you connected a reference to self to the proper nodes?

[glossy gate]

I haven't touched the gamemodebase functions of finding a player start and the choosing player start, but idk why sometimes it works correctly and some pawns get each one one player start but other times they get the same and it makes my other pawn to not start correctly

anyone knows why it might be happening?

[clear zephyr]

the function moves the character left and right on the ledge. the server works but the client gets the error.

[agile meadow]

Are you sending an RPC to the client telling it to move?

[ocean phoenix]

Hey! Have anyone tried to do seamless travel on Lyra's Example? I'm experiencing the issue which sometimes doesn't spawn client's pawn due to 0 amount of PlayerStarts in the world. As I see, Epics fixed the problem when clients load before host, but all the evidence are pointing to this issue still exists. Btw I have PlayerStarts in the Persistent level. Maybe it's some sort of connection partially lost somewhere while the travel?

[agile meadow]

Actually it looks like the client model isn't moving at all on the server side.
All player information is saved on the server, and updates the client every tick with the "true" state.

[agile meadow]

It seems like you're not telling the server that your character is moving, so the server resets your client back to where it was. Make sure you have your properties set to be replicated to the server

[proven pagoda]

What's a good way to handle inventory as a FFastArraySerializer when the item count goes to 0? I'm broadcasting a delegate on the PostAdd and PostChanged, but in the PreRemove if I try and broadcast a delegate with the item to be removed or if I try and broadcast just before I delete the item and mark the whole array dirty, then it doesn't broadcast out to BP the 0 value item hmmm

[proven pagoda]

nvm I got it

[late stratus]

How can I make the movement of a replicated actor with a projectile component smooth on clients? The movement by default seems to be choppy

[queen escarp]

@dark edge hey man

regardin the floating hp bar that only shows for the client thats attackign the npc

https://blueprintue.com/blueprint/a1bi4ek3/

it works for the client but when the listen server dose it it shows for all'

since its rpc´d

what do u suggest :/ ?

[queen escarp]

anyone else got time to look at it :/ ?

[dark edge]

What are you actually rpcing

what does the rpc mean

You are telling everyone "Hey everyone, X just happened"

Assuming ShowHealthBar is your RPC< don't call it that

[queen escarp]

yeah well

the Npc (serverside) take damage

then that runms an event that rpcs checking if the damaging player is equal to local player

[dark edge]

Name it better, name it Multicast Took Damage From or whatever

You can do the sound in there too

that's your "Hey everyone, Jim just hit me" message

Then they run it, play the sound, ask "Is the local player Jim?", show hp bar if so.

[queen escarp]

true,

[dark edge]

You'll want a separate event for Show HP Bar which locally shows the bar and starts a retriggerable timer to hide it

[queen escarp]

yeah but it works for clients it only shows for the client when attacking

but when the server is attacking its showing for everyone

oh

and taht event should be on the player right

[dark edge]

no

nothing is on the player's pawn

don't say "on the player", that can mean their pawn, playerstate, playercontroller, connection, many things

[queen escarp]

gotcha more specific,

[dark edge]

The ThingBeingHit wants to check if the ThingHittingThem is the local pawn

[queen escarp]

yeah

[dark edge]

The code looks fine to me, put print strings and breakpoints and figure out where it's busting

oooooooooooooohhhh

your replication

that should be multicast

not to owning client

all this code is on the npc or whatever is being hit right?

[queen escarp]

yeah

[dark edge]

Goblin42 says "Hey everyone, Jim hit me"

if you wanted to use run on client rpc it'd be within the hitting pawn and it'd be "I just hit Goblin42, make it show its hp bar"

either approach is valid really

telling everyone the ID of hitter vs telling hitter the ID of the hit thing

[queen escarp]

whats the best option for preformance ?

[dark edge]

probably neither, just do the hits clientside too but it it all depends on your setup

you need to know about the hit to play sound anyway so it's 12 of one and a dozen of the other, just stick with what you got for now

Everyone needs to know about the hit anyway so that's the simplest

[queen escarp]

ok well if i change it to multicast (thats what i had before so idnno why run on owning client was set)

yeah, but when the listen server actor hits it shows for everyone thats the same issue

[dark edge]

print strings

make sure things are what you expect them to be

print the ID of hitter

[queen escarp]

ok well when the client is hitting then its prinint as "client" when listen server is hitting its prining on "server" so the clients arent even doing the multicast

ok well so i solved it...

was stupid

the HpBar (Componnet) was replicated... so when the server set it to visible it became visible for everyone...

thanks for the help tho!

[bronze glade]

If I spawn an actor from the game mode for generating something on the server and clients, what is the safest way to notify the game mode when every client has finished executing the blueprint code from the actor? Sorry if this is a basic question!

Like is the best way to update a value on the client, send that to game state and then send that to game mode? Or is there something more straightforward?

[fossil spoke]

You wouldnt send anything to the GameState.

The PlayerController would need to be the one to send an RPC to the Server.

You may as well just make a function call on the GameMode after that.

No need to involve the GameState.

But yes, thats pretty much your only choice.

[bronze glade]

Awesome info. I set all of my current multiplayer stuff up like a year ago and forgot some of the basics for communication lol
Thanks for the help!

I have one more question, sorry if this is also basic.
Not sure if I should ask this in PCG or Multiplayer channel but here feels better. If I want to spawn PCG from the server for all clients, is it best to spawn the PCG on all clients and pass the seed from the server or to spawn it from the server as replicated? Doing it all from server sounds more secure but would be more on the network right? And doing it all from clients would be faster but easier for someone to modify the generation?
I am going to be setting up dedicated servers soon so would like to make everything as cost efficient as I can, but I don't want to do anything that makes the game more vulnerable either

[sinful tree]

If you do it via a seed, then there is typically less replication required saving on bandwidth vs. replicating a ton of actors all with replicated properties. While it may be spawned locally, the server is still considered the authority, so if you're using something like the character movement component that allows for client predicted movement, and you had the server spawn a tree at a certain location through your PCG, the server would know that players cannot move into that position with the tree being there, so even if the client themselves modify their copy so that the tree isn't there, they can't modify the server's copy, therefore, the server would still send the client a correction and move the character to an appropriate location.

[bronze glade]

That makes sense. So sending the seed is probably the best option overall then. Thank you both this is very helpful 😄

[sinful tree]

if you want interaction with PCG spawned actors then there is still a means to link them across the network as well without having the server replicate the entire actor and its details by making them "net addressable", so a client can reference a specific actor and it can associate to an actor that exists on the server's end even if it wasn't originally marked for replication..

[bronze glade]

Good to know! We'll be needing stuff like that a bit later on. Thank you

[dark parcel]

Read the pinned material on this channel dozens of time. Practice, fail , read again then repeat.

Exi compendium and wizard mp tips and trick are both good starting point

[cyan marten]

Free? I found a plugin by Dry Eel and it’s 5$

[tardy fossil]

most likely free, since Lyra is epics example game

[cyan marten]

Any good tutorials on how to implement it? And does it work with seamless travel?

[shrewd ginkgo]

I want to kill the person standing in front of me by drawing a linetrace, but the linetrace does not move with my aimoffset. line traces do not go where I look.

[narrow lily]

they keep going straight in front of you even if you move your camera up and down ?

[kindred widget]

Yes. Lyra is entirely free. You just copy the plugin from a lyra sample project's plugins to your own project and set up some stuff in your project settings.

[quasi tide]

It is also very easy to implement yourself to be honest.

[cyan marten]

I’ll try and let you guys know

[shrewd ginkgo]

when I shoot, the line trace is always drawn down at the same rate. only the server sees the linetrace correctly. there is no problem with aim offset, everyone looks where they are looking.

[clear zephyr]

Thank you I’ll check them out and continue to read up on it I kinda moved forward because I was so stuck it felt like I was wasting time and when I learn more multiplayer stuff I’m thinking along that way I’ll figure out what’s going on with this problem.

[slow holly]

Been banging my head against the wall on something that I'm sure is a very stupid fix.

Trying to spawn in 2 players on load (for a 1v1 fighter)

Depending on RPC, player controller is possessing either on the listen server or the remote client, but not both. Have tried several iterations of the below, with multicasting and authority checks // is local player bools. Nothing seems to want to play nice.

Please help? 😮

Github Branch: https://github.com/a-banoub/Mortality/tree/Rep_4

[thin stratus]

Yeah that's al ot of pretty random code

What exactly do you want to happen?

Also that branch you linked is a 404 on my end at least

[slow holly]

Oh shit probably not public-

Yeah, I've started from scratch multiple times in a debug attempt.

Very simply right now, spawn a pawn and assign it to a controller

[thin stratus]

When should it do that

[slow holly]

Right now on "G" key press. Just trying to get it working in some capacity before having it on play

[thin stratus]

Right, anything stopping you from using the GameModes DefaultPawn class and similar to do this?

In theory, all you'd need to is call a ServerRPC inside your PlayerController and calls "RestartPlayer" on it.

If you have a proper DefaultPawnClass (or even something dynamic via the Function overrides of the GameMode) set up, it should simply spawn it.

Well and possess even

If you don't want to use UE's built in stuff, then the ServerRPC would need to Spawn the Character and then possess it, but that's kinda all there is to it.

There is no need for a Multicast or anything like that.

[slow holly]

Yeah that's how it should work in theory, not sure why the game mode isn't spawning correctly for defaults. Let me back up to "Main branch" github should be public now

[thin stratus]

G -> ServerRPC -> SpawnCharacter -> PossessCharacter

[lime basalt]

Im facing a problem with a multiplayer lobby. Testing in PIE, I have 2 standalone versions (net mode) running and both instances are Listen server, so either one can join the other.
When OnPostLogin on the game mode fires after the client has connected to the host's lobby, im executing a Run on Client event on the "client's" player controller from the game mode.
At that node im setting the player controller to view from a camera located inside the Level, by calling SetViewTargetWithBlend (im also doing the exact same thing when each player is in their lobbies).
The problem is that this fires "too fast" apparently and the Client has a Default pawn camera (like the spectator). I came to this result because adding 1 second delay to before that "fixes" the issue.
Im wondering if there is a proper way to know when is the correct time to start doing those things on the client without eye balling it with delay.
Thanks

[thin stratus]

So for one, you are better off just making your own APlayerCameraManager, assigning that in your APlayerController class and then in there define via overriding UpdateCamera (or whatever it is called) what the actual Camera view should be.

And then, what you witness is probably the Controller automatically changing viewtarget, which is a boolean on the PlayerController.

AutoDetermineActiveCameraTarget or something like that

[lime basalt]

I imagine it's Auto manage active camera target?

[thin stratus]

Yeah

That could at least be the reason

[lime basalt]

Damn ok ill give that a shot

[thin stratus]

But yeah, better would be the CameraManager

That is local and doesn't need the extra RPC

[lime basalt]

Also I haven't messed with camera managers I'll look into it as well

Alright sounds good

[slow holly]

So backing up and having a start with no added code, pawns and controllers set to default and do spawn but do not possess correctly. Here, only the clients pawns are correctly registering. It looks like the listen server's controlled pawn gets overwritten. As opposed to the previous code I sent which does the opposite.

[lime basalt]

That fixed it 🥲 Spent so many hours and it was just a boolean

[thin stratus]

Yeah I've been there :P Quite some years ago by now though

[thin stratus]

You are using a GameModeBase? Not that this could break anything, but you should use GameMode and GameState, not the Base versions and also not mixing them.

The base versions are more for simpler singleplayer games fwiw

[slow holly]

It actually is a base

just labeled GM

[thin stratus]

Yeah as said, use the normal ones, not base

[slow holly]

Ahhhhhh

Shit on a stick

[thin stratus]

Despite that, even if only one of the players spawns, shouldn't the other one see them at least?

[slow holly]

They do see them

Just not control

[thin stratus]

Ah that's not visible in your screenshots

Looks more like only one see a character

Do you have enough spawn point in your level? Anything in the logs talking about failing to spawn the pawn?

You can try going into the settings of your pawn and changing the SpawnActor behavior to AlwaysSpawn

By default it can fail if it intersects collision

[slow holly]

Understood. Right now they are spawnning but on top of each other, this wasn't always the case, I have the multiple spawn points setup in the logic but was running into the controller issue and wanted to attack that first (I've branched off of Main like 4 times with different approaches).

So they're all spawning and being recognized in editor and on respective clients, but just not controlled. Once the controllers are properly assigning will fix location

[thin stratus]

There is 0 reason for the controllers not possessing them

The GameMode will spawn the Pawns per COntroller and possess them.

If you can't control them even after they are spawned, then you are doing the Input stuff wrong maybe.

[slow holly]

Here's a better look

[thin stratus]

Why is it 3 windows viewports? Wasn't it just 2 players?

[slow holly]

Yeah, more debug attempt trying to figure out if it was indeed a listen server issue

Same thing w just 2 windows

[shrewd ginkgo]

I want to kill the person standing in front of me by drawing a linetrace, but the linetrace does not move with my aimoffset. line traces do not go where I look.

when I shoot, the line trace is always drawn down at the same rate. only the server sees the linetrace correctly. there is no problem with aim offset, everyone looks where they are looking.

[thin stratus]

Again, anything in the logs?

There should be no reason for it to not just spawn and possess, unless something is failing that I can't see

[thin stratus]

That Screenshot is too small

And you have way too many RPCs in your viewport.

If you already Multicast, why again an RPC to the Server?

And you probably can't use the Camera's Rotation for this, as that is usually ControlRotation, and that doesn't exist on SimProxies.

Use GetBaseAimRotation

That uses a replicated Pitch value.

I'm gonna head to the couch now though :<

[shrewd ginkgo]

In the video I watched, it said that I should replicate events in this way.

[slow holly]

Yeah this is why I'm banging my head against the wall lol. Nothing I can see in logs but let me clean them up a little bit because there's a tick setting them off. One sec

[slow holly]

Something to do with actor replication maybe??

[static owl]

Any idea why a for loop going through all actors of class: third person character only returns one forward vector?

Trying to make a weeping angels character but in multiplayer.

[sinful tree]

If you're calling a return in a loop, the return will immediately end the function preventing further iterations of the loop from executing. If not, show some code as to how you're attempting to retrieve the vectors of the characters.

[thin stratus]

That's redundant. GetBaseAimRotation should already take care of this in theory.

@slow holly Where do all your capslock prints and accessed none errors actually come from?

[static owl]

I’ll get some screenshots! One moment.

[slow holly]

Character blueprint on tick trying to find opponent (Finding parent class of char and != self)

Think I'm onto something here, though, this seems to be assigning properly

[thin stratus]

You aren't doing a RELIABLE Server RPC on Tick... are you?

Just wondering, cause that could indeed cause things to stop replicating properly

Also the GameMode doesn't need a ServerRPC

Chaining them doesn't add anything to this

GameMode only exists on the Server to begin with

But yeah, that looks okay, despite the duplicated RPC

[slow holly]

I am not nah but still running into issues.

I'm gonna play around for a bit and report back

There's something to do with the RPC and specifically controller possession here. It's consuming the listen server controller

[static owl]

@sinful tree

The 1st image shows that the loop runs on Event Tick and calls Move to Player which runs on Server.
THAT loop grabs the closest ThirdpersonCharacter to the Clown, and moves towards them. This part works.

(I originally had just the one loop but after the dot product stuff wasnt working i seperated them to make sure the data was fresh.

The 2nd Image shows the 2nd loop which is supposed to get the Forward vectors of all of the characters, and the location of the clown, then create the dot product. If the dot product is greater than .5 then multicast event is called to stop the clown. If it is less than .5 then the multicast event is called for the clown to walk. These are pictured in the 3rd image.

The main issue im having is that the code works well for ONE character, even when i run as TWO client players.

The secondary issue is that the dot product seems to think that the clowns location stays in one spot, because when I face the clown from the East side for example, he will stop when being looked at. But if i move my character to the clowns West side and face him the code is opposite. (I checked with a print string node, having inserted the clowns location and it does update every tick).

Should i have this code run in my character blueprint instead of the clowns? And then have it cast to the clown for the events? Is the location of the code causing an issue?

Sorry i know its alot! Just wnted to get some background information

[thin stratus]

I would highly suggest you try this in a project where you didn't already add stuff to. I'm relatively sure it's related to something you haven't actually shown yet.
The log printing and the delayed spawning is strange,.

[thin stratus]

Why is that an RPC on Tick with a GetAllActorsOfClass o.o

Why are there so many RPCs...

Tick is already called on every instance, if you want that to be called only on the Server, plug an IsServer or a SwitchHasAuthority there.

ServerRPCs aren't meant to filter

And GetAllActorsOfClass, while not that bad once in a while, should def not be called on tick

[static owl]

How would I update every frame then, or atleast so that when the person looks at the clown they will stop moving with no reasonable delay?

[thin stratus]

And the nyou go from a MULTICAST to an OnRep boolean, why the Multicast if you have an OnRep boolean to begin with?
Followed by another OnRep boolean in the AnimInstance? that thing doesn't even replicate

I feel like there are some tutorials out there that jus tell people to plug everything full of RPCs

[static owl]

The onrep was for something else I actaully need to move it back to a regular bool

[thin stratus]

The OnRep is actually better than the Multicast fwiw

Looking at the Clown is in theory a State

That should be communicated with an OnRep

[static owl]

There definitely are! Unfortunately theres no help for multiplayer weeping Angel, so ChatGPT is my only friend

[thin stratus]

Yeah okay, ChatGPT is the biggest horseshit you can use to learn

Did you read the Network Compendium yet?

[swift sorrel]

yea, I would no depend on ChatGPT for any sort of specialized advice

[sinful tree]

You're also dragging wires across execution paths. The blue wire here coming in from off screen shouldn't be used like this.

[twin juniper]

GPT is good for copy pasting code that is too long but basic to write

[thin stratus]

GPT is good if you already know how this all works and you can fully filter all the shit it tells you

Tick already calls on everyone, if you want to check if someone is looking at it and then change something in the animBP, you can just use Tick without any RPCs and OnRep

The whole replication setup is redundant in that case

And for the GetAllActorsOfClass you should learn how to create simple Managers with an Array of what it should manage, and then use BeginPlay and EndPlay to register instances of that to the array.

[static owl]

Why? Just so i know the reasoning.

Should it be set as a variable and then that variable can later be plugged into the target for AI Move to?

[thin stratus]

E.g. an ActorComponent on the GameState can be the Manager with an Array of Characters.
And your CharacterBP can the get the GameState, get the Manager, and add itself to the Array.

[sinful tree]

Because you don't know what value you're pulling from. It could be cached, there may not be a value there at all.

[thin stratus]

The nyou can easily get the GameState and the Manager and its array to loop over

[sinful tree]

It's especially bad to do in multiplayer since data isn't conveyed across RPCs like this.

So while you may have a value set on the client for example, dragging it across into a server RPC wouldn't mean that value was transferred to the server.

[static owl]

I understand were critiquing the code here, and that there is a lot to fix, but the main issue im having is that the forward vector of only one character is being taken into account.

The actual move to code works fine, even if not performant

That makes sense^^

[thin stratus]

Sure, but you can't expect us to fully ignore the mess and add to it ):

[sinful tree]

It's more than that.... If it's not set up correctly to begin with, then trying to troubleshoot it is basically pointless as you'll continue to run into bugs.

So while it may appear to be "working correctly" it's not set up to actually work correctly.

[thin stratus]

I'm trying to understand the code

You loop over all Players, and try to find the closest.

[static owl]

I would be 100% happy to restart, and try again, but I can only find single player tutorials on the weeping angel.

So then i would run into the issue of needing to make it dependant on if any of the players are looking!

[thin stratus]

If you found the Closest (for that single frame), you save it and then loop over all.. players or so again?

And then you do some wrong Vector Math I think

ForwardVector minus Actor Location is nothing that makes much sense

[static owl]

Yes thats what it does right now. And i agree I didnt love the idea of the loop running every single frame, I just wasnt sure on how to check for the closest player frequently

[thin stratus]

If think what you want to do is checking if it looks towards it with a Dot Product

[static owl]

Yes i do!

I just want to see if the Thirdperson character is looking in the direction of the Clown

[thin stratus]

You need to use ACTOR LOCATION minus ACTOR LOCATION; normalize that and then dot product with the result and a DIRECTION (e.g. forward vector)

Something like this

DIRECTION minus LOCATION doesn't make sense here

[twin juniper]

what's the best way in a multiplication manner to spawn skeletalmesh components?

[thin stratus]

multiplication manner?

[twin juniper]

well in a multiplayer context*

currently, I'm spawning the component on the server.. (no replication at all are done by default)

[thin stratus]

In theory the same as any other Component. You'd need to ensure it's spawned on everyone and that it's stably named

Otherwise you won't be able to send it via RPCs. It doesn't need to be marked as replicated for that as long as it's stably named

[twin juniper]

tho, I'm already on the server, no RPC are needed I think..

maybe NetMulticast would be the way to go..

[quasi tide]

Destroy All Humans 2 released using GetAllActorsOfClass on tick - was fine! I STAND BY IT

[dark edge]

Do you need to refer to it across the network?

[thin stratus]

I don't think Components naturally replicate when getting created

[twin juniper]

nop, it's like a particle effect but it's 3d and simulating physics that do not need to be really synced since it's just for visuals

[dark edge]

Isn't that a bit better now with some sort of map lookup or does it iterate over everything?

[thin stratus]

It has always been a hashed bucket

[quasi tide]

If by "now", you mean like version 4.14

[thin stratus]

But I think it's better to learn a design pattern of sorts that makes it redundant

[twin juniper]

(for few years)

[dark edge]

When is it created?

[twin juniper]

random moments during gameplay

[quasi tide]

I agree. But I don't think we should be hammering it as often as people like to.

[thin stratus]

Then it's probably enough to send a Multicast, yeah

[quasi tide]

If you need all of a certain actor - it is the obvious choice.

[dark edge]

What I'm getting at is what is the minimum amount of state needed to know whether or not the thing should be there?

[thin stratus]

No, but when I see it in a noodle pile like those images, I will comment on it

[dark edge]

Is this just cosmetics for some debuff?

Get stunned -> have stars spinning around your head

[thin stratus]

If you show me a "FindPlayerStart" code that uses it once to get all PlayerStarts, I won't say a thing.

[twin juniper]

it's just some satisfying fancy 3d effects (bone detachment)

[quasi tide]

Oh - I'm not even getting involved in that debacle 😅. A lot to untangle. I'm just "anti-anti-GetAllActorsOfClass" 🤣

[twin juniper]

what about GetActorOfClass? (for 1 instance)

[dark edge]

So just replicate that fact. Replicate "this bone got destroyed" or "This skelmesh took a hard hit to this bone" or something to that extent

[quasi tide]

It literally does the same thing but returns the first instance if I recall.

[twin juniper]

by replicating it, do you mean that NetMulticast would work?

[dark edge]

Depends on if it's meant to be stateful and super reliable or is just some short lived thing

[twin juniper]

I feel like all of those functions are called replicating something

[twin juniper]

think of it as a bone that ragdolls to the ground

[dark edge]

Does it matter if dudes arm is missing 30 seconds later?

[static owl]

im honestly just going to remove it all and retry. Thanks for the help! @sinful tree @thin stratus

[thin stratus]

I think I'm just very anti-GAAOC when it comes to beginners that might learn a lot by avoiding it instead of relying on it.

I know how the node works, so I'm not anti using it.

[twin juniper]

well, he probably got hit.. this is what the player should think

[thin stratus]

If the dudes arm missing is a State Change, then it should not be a Multicast fwiw

People that connect late or come into relevancy range won't get the multicast again

So they won't see the change

That's what OnRep variables are for.

[twin juniper]

the state itself is handled correctly, but for the ragdoll effect of the visual bone.. that's different

[dark edge]

base that on the state

what state are you syncing right now?

ListOfBonesDestroyed?

Let's say it's a simpler system, dudes head can either be missing or not. You could represent that with a single bool bHeadIsMissing(replicated, repnotify)

In the onrep for bHeadIsMissing, you'd look at the bool, and make sure the head is hidden/disconnected or shown/connected based on that bool.
A late joiner or someone coming into relevency range would see the state correctly.

[twin juniper]

wdym by what state are you syncing?

[dark edge]

this

[twin juniper]

the character itself (3d skeletal full structure) is handled correctlty, the bone that is ragdoll (3d effect that is just a SkeletalMeshComponent) is a visual thing that happens when the full skeleton structure of the character has updated and should have a visual effect going on which is spawning that skeletal mesh component

[dark edge]

So you have no replicated variables right now that deal with this?

[twin juniper]

for the character itself, yes

[dark edge]

show them

[twin juniper]

UPROPERTY(ReplicatedUsing = ClientMergeMesh, EditAnywhere, BlueprintReadWrite, Category = "Bone")
FSkeletalMeshMergeParams SkeletalMeshMerging;
UFUNCTION()
void ClientMergeMesh();

[dark edge]

Right now, how does everyone know that an arm should be chopped off?

is it a change in the FSkeletalMeshMergeParams?

[twin juniper]

as you told me earlier this month:
Server Hit -> Update SkeletalMeshMerging -> Client Update

[dark edge]

wasn't me

[twin juniper]

no, you told me about how to handle Hits and a stat component for those

[dark edge]

Anyway, assuming that's an onrep and it correctly replicates and has enough info to know what bones to disconnect, just do it through the onrep

[twin juniper]

I'm dumb, trying that rn

[dark edge]

What is the criteria for a bone to be disconnected?

how does ones arm get chopped off

[twin juniper]

you shoot it?

[twin juniper]

the bone health is < 0

[dark edge]

and is that a replicated variable?

[twin juniper]

GAS replicated, yes

[dark edge]

Dunno much about GAS but assuming there's an OnRep or the equivelent, you'd do it there

Bone health got updated yall -> is it under 0? -> yes -> chop chop spray blood

Later you'll want to know how long ago that was so you don't walk into range of some beat up dude and watch his limbs explode off of him

[twin juniper]

my system is more complex so I'm basically doing
GAS (handles < 0) -> Component on Character (Update the character skeleton) -> GlobalActorManager (Spawn Component in the world -> visuals)

[dark edge]

ok so what's the problem?

that can all be local

[twin juniper]

that's server only

[dark edge]

You can't do things everywhere in response to attribute changes?

[twin juniper]

you can but why would you do so?

[dark edge]

so everyone sees the arm chopped off

the base state that matters is that the bone hp is 0

that's all everyone needs to know

everything derived from that can be local

[twin juniper]

so then SkeletalMeshMerging would need to be replicate to access values on the client?

[thin stratus]

Keep mind that you need some kind of difference between the EndState and how you get there.

The EndState (arm invisible/gone) is the OnRep.
If you want the arm to fly off, you probably need an RPC alongside

Cause you don't want late joiners to see the arm fly away.

[dark edge]

but that would be funny

[thin stratus]

Same as a barrel exploding vs it bring destroyed

Late joiners see the broken barrel but not hte explosion

[twin juniper]

'The EndState (arm invisible/gone) is the OnRep.', that's what I'm currently doing tho

[thin stratus]

Barrel Visuals -> OnRep
Barrel Explosion -> Multicast

At least as a very simple example that is

[dark edge]

I think in GAS terms the transient effect can be a cue

are you dropping the arm off or disappearing it and spawning an arm that drops?

[thin stratus]

For the State part if it's attribute bound they can just listen to the Attribute on everyone

That runs through an OnRep already

The RPC part can be the Cue, yes.

[dark edge]

Yeah it could be something like this
Listen to bone HP -> its zero -> disappear bones below it
Cue -> spray gibs everywhere -> drop a copy of the limb

[thin stratus]

You can of course also additionally hide the bone in the Cue to have it line up fwiw

[twin juniper]

but how is it different if you handle it using the OnRep GAS function or the OnRep function for SkeletalMeshMerging? at the end of the day, these 2 are OnReps so they would happen at the same moment or so and it's just better encapsulation

[dark edge]

Whatever you do, I would avoid redundancy

[thin stratus]

In terms of multiplayer, it's all the same

[dark edge]

if it's a 1:1 mapping of state to state, just derive the 2nd from the 1st

[thin stratus]

Where you do it is more about how your code is structured fwiw

[dark edge]

don't replicate 2 parallel states that say the same thing

[twin juniper]

how do you make the bone disappearing is the hard part because skeletal mesh components are complex and do not handle multiple meshes by default