multiplayer

[wheat magnet]

when server slice, client doesn't see @chrome quest

[blazing socket]

Hi all, what's a reasonable way of broadcasting kill messages? Should I have the gamemode iterate across all playerstates to tell their respective controllers to update their HUD? Or is there a way to listen to a multicast event within the HUD blueprint itself?

[pale hazel]

Hi, can anyone tell me a possible reason why Actors are not replicated and only execute NetMulticasts on the server? I have bReplicates and SetReplicatingMovement() both set to true, and every component has ComponentReplicates set to true.

When a PlayerCharacter walks over them they are supposed to attach themselves to it and detach themselves when the Character dies, this works fine on the server, but they don't do anything on the clients.

I've tried using NetMulticasts to get them to attach & detach, but the NetMulticasts only get executed on the Server. I've made sure that the Server is the one calling the NetMulticasts. Any ideas on this? I'm stumped.

[pale hazel]

I think I've made some progress on this. Something that I should have added is I'm streaming the Actors in with a Level using ULevelStreamingDynamic::LoadLevelInstance()
And according to this thread: https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/dynamic-level-streaming-with-multiplayer-support/79517/23 there seems to be a problem with replication using dynamic level streaming. the thread is old but since I'm having the same problems I assume it's not fixed. I'll try another way and see if that works I guess.

[pale hazel]

Yup. For anyone who stumbles upon this having the same problem: using UGameplayStatics::LoadStreamLevel() instead of ULevelStreamingDynamic::LoadLevelInstance() doesnt break replication. The drawback is that I have to add the levels I want to stream as sublevels instead of doing it dynamically but I can work with this.

[kindred widget]

@blazing socket Is this for like a kill reel?

[blazing socket]

I haven't heard of that term, but I think so

[kindred widget]

Like the little pop ups that show someone died, and how in the corner of the screen.

[blazing socket]

yup!

[kindred widget]

Depends on your game style. Either the dying pawn can do that locally via GetFirstLocalController->GetHUD->IAmDead

May have issues with relevancy there though.

So the other way is likely to use GameState. Do a Multicast, on the recieving side of it, call a delegate. Bind that Delegate in the local HUD's Beginplay or something from GetGameState. Or even in the Widget itself and cut the HUD out entirely.

Then server death code can eventually run that multicast.

[winged crypt]

Hi guys I just started with multiplayer and I am noticing BoxTraceMultiForObjects called on Server doesn't tick as fast as in the client resulting in inaccurate hits for my melee system, any idea how collisions should be treated?

[blazing socket]

Perfect! I will try this, thanks

Would it work using PlayerState instead of GameState?

[kindred widget]

Possibly. Just depends on how you want to set it up.

[thin stratus]

Depends on what you do. Server and Client can always be a bit off.

[winged crypt]

I am tracing a weapon, when I trace on client there are enough traces but on server is less than half, seemed weird

[thin stratus]

Hm what executes the trace

[winged crypt]

I have a component that starts the trace

Thx for helping out btw

[thin stratus]

What is doing the trace though

Timer?

Tick?

[winged crypt]

tick

[thin stratus]

You can check the delta time of both ticks and see if they are similar. Idk how you test it but if the other player has low fps it would cause this

Might happen cause one window is not foreground maybe?

Either way shouldn't matter much as client should only use it for visual effects and server should be the one dealing damage

[winged crypt]

It happens when simulating local network too, also the problem is exactly the damage, I actually found out about this because the damage was being applied only some times

I will check the delta time on both ticks, that sounds like a good idea thanks

[blazing socket]

Are there any good sample projects (that are not ShooterGame) that have examples of scoreboard and tracking stuff like kills/deaths through UI?

[meager spade]

you just track that stuff in GameState and PlayerState

very simple really, someone gets killed, server increments the score on the game state (which is replicated)

scoreboard just reads this value

or server increments it on the killers playerstate

your scoreboad just loops through all playerstates (which you can get from GameState->PlayerArray

and read the kill count, death count, etc

UT4 also has this stuff

[inland pond]

Hi, does anyone know how I can map a player state to a certain actor/pawn which is replicated? My intend is to create name plates above each player.
I have a player state which contains health and the player name. Inside the Nametag Widget (mounted on the character) I listen to an UpdateHealthEvent to update the current health in the widget. The problem ist that I cant call get player controller -> get player state on the replicated pawns. I know that there exists the Player State Array inside the Game State but how would I know which player state belongs to which replicated pawn?
Edit: In cedric's multiplayer compendium there is an example with a health variable on the pawn. Would be the solution to pass the pawn to each of the widgets ... hmm

[fossil spoke]

Pawns carry the PlayerState of they PlayerController that is possessing them.

You can always access the PlayerState from a Pawn.

It is simply a variable.

private:
    /** If Pawn is possessed by a player, points to its Player State.  Needed for network play as controllers are not replicated to   clients. */
    UPROPERTY(replicatedUsing=OnRep_PlayerState, BlueprintReadOnly, Category=Pawn, meta=(AllowPrivateAccess="true"))
    APlayerState* PlayerState;

[inland pond]

Yes from a pawn which is from my understanding and testing also the replicated pawn but my problem was that I need to access the player state inside the UMG widget to bind my custom event. And I think from what I have seen is that if I put the player state into a variable the player state does not get replicated anymore? (the replication bloons dissapeared) So the solution could be to just pass the pawn reference which contains the player state and I then can bind to the custom event. I should have clarified my question a bit more :S On how I can access the player state on the UMG widget.

And thank you for answering my question 🙂 This makes clear that I need to pass the pawn to the umg widget.
Edit: Yes damn it was just the Pawn reference I needed inside the UMG widget.

[tender badger]

Thanks so much!

[lost inlet]

That’s pretty open ended, what’s the WebSocket for? You could do that a whole lot of different ways

You’re using websockets for that?

I’m not sure if it’s worth reinventing the Unreal networking stack for that

If it’s going to run on a game server exclusively, then yes

Or locally without a connection to an actual game server

Game modes don’t exist on clients

Yes

[hollow eagle]

Well... if you're not using unreal's multiplayer systems at all the usual advice doesn't really apply. Gamemode only exists on clients in a standard unreal client/server setup, but if you only ever run standalone (no server) from the perspective of unreal's networking then you'll still have a gamemode locally.

Still, it might be best to find somewhere else to put it that makes more sense than the gamemode. Other options include the game instance (if it needs to last across level transitions) or subsystems of various types (world subsystem and game instance subsystem are common).

GameInstance exists everywhere

I wouldn't throw all your networking stuff into it though, at least put it in a separate gameinstance subsystem to keep it separated from unrelated code.

[fossil spoke]

Use a GameInstanceSubsystem as has been mentioned before.

Dont use the GameInstance itself.

Sounds good, now convert it into a GameInstanceSubsystem instead.

https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/ProgrammingAndScripting/Subsystems/

[velvet lintel]

Hi, can I play multiplayer within the editor without packaging and create executable file?
I've tested to pop-up multiple client windows by increasing the value of the Number of Players option in play button in UE editor, but it seems to be emulating from within a local PC.
Actually, I wonder if other members can access my game on their PCs and play it together in PIE.

[verbal gust]

Does assigning the root component to the "Component to Attach to" in the make VoiceSettings for Voip cause issues?

[tender badger]

UCLASS(Blueprintable, BlueprintType)
class UNREALBODY_API UIKCharacterAnimInstance : public UAnimInstance
{
GENERATED_BODY()

is it able to use Replicated in UAnimInstance' childClass as same as in ActorComponent's childClass?

[thin stratus]

Maybe but you usually don't replicate AnimInstances.

[tender badger]

i think it's not able to do that in UAnimInstance

[thin stratus]

By default most certainly not

[thin stratus]

PIE is only on your pc

You should not connect to each other through pie

If you want that you can start the game as standalone or package it

[tender badger]

so weird...i set all var Replicated in
UCLASS(ClassGroup = (Custom), meta = (BlueprintSpawnableComponent))
class UNREALBODY_API UIKBodyComponent : public UActorComponent

like this
UPROPERTY(EditAnywhere, BlueprintReadWrite, Replicated, Category = "IKBody")
USkeletalMeshComponent* Body = nullptr;

UPROPERTY(EditAnywhere, Replicated, Category = "IKBody")
FVector BodyCurrentLocation = FVector();

[thin stratus]

Can you please format your code snippets

Discord allows one line and block code formatting

```
Code
```

Same goes for one line if you only use one of the ` at the start and end

Also you can't just mark things replicated randomly.

SkeletalMeshComponents probably have nothing in them that replicates and aren't marked to replicate to begin with

You are only setting the variable as replicated. That doesn't mean the Component replicates

[strong vapor]

[Help] just a random question.. I'm about to add some text chat to my multiplayer game.. is there some special Unreal way of doing this? or do I just Server Function a String or text up to the server and then set a replicated variable on all the player controllers?

Cedric! what upp! you're the document guy!

sheeeeizz

[lost inlet]

Well you wouldn’t really use a variable for text chat, more a multicast RPC if all players are intended to see it

[strong vapor]

I feel like a variable would be a good optimization but maybe im wrong.. it just would be transient.. every time it replicates its going to load its value into the chat.. and then forget about itsself

a multicast is my first thought too

i just try to avoid them

[hollow eagle]

...why would you avoid multicasts?

[strong vapor]

because they're kind of heavy right? like.. replicated variables are a nice way of evening things out.. and since i dont care if the text is RIGHT THERE ON THEIR SCREEN RIGHT NOW

idk

[hollow eagle]

Replicating variables is much worse than sending a single multicast rpc. And by much worse I mean barely relevant because this is premature optimization.

[strong vapor]

i just go with that

oh alright, well if you say so

i dont know all the metrics of things i just know what i've seen from all the Ue4 optimization streams with wes bun and zach parish and stuff

im mis spelling their names probably

[hollow eagle]

Replicated variables means that the server needs to check every network tick for a change to the variable, which eats up CPU time. Multicast RPCs don't involve that and shouldn't have much (if any) overhead above what you have to send for a replicated variable anyway.

Which is all irrelevant, because unless you know your exact bandwidth and CPU targets this is entirely premature optimization

use the best tool for the job.

[strong vapor]

yep i guess there's that

so you wouldnt be able to tell me how to properly set my bandwidth values would you?

when I tried to do it i had no idea if it was working

i was going off of old material i think

i know there's stuff in the game.ini and engine.ini?

and then how do you know if its working?

stat.net is pretty overwhelming at first lol

im in 4.26

sorry I should have mentioned that

[velvet lintel]

Thanks!!

[thin stratus]

#online-subsystems has pins that talk a bit about it

[tender badger]

DedicatedServer,
UCLASS(ClassGroup = (Custom), meta = (BlueprintSpawnableComponent))
class UNREALBODY_API UIKBodyComponent : public UActorComponent
{
GENERATED_BODY()
protected:
// Called when the game starts
virtual void BeginPlay() override;

public:
// Called every frame
virtual void TickComponent(float DeltaTime, ELevelTick TickType, FActorComponentTickFunction* ThisTickFunction) override;

BeginPlay & TickComponent is called on both Server & Client ?

[steel fox]

Yes, BeginPlay() is called both on the server and the client, you can use 'PostInitializeComponents()' instead if you want to avoid this, about TickComponent I'm not sure

[tender badger]

ok. i update BodyCurrentLocation value in TickComponent, and i set these Replicated

UPROPERTY(EditAnywhere, Replicated, Category = "IKBody")
FVector BodyCurrentLocation = FVector();

like this

so i should only do the "BodyCurrentLocation =xx;" on Server, not on Client, right?

then because of Replicated, the value is updated automatically to the client

[kindred widget]

Tick is called on the client as well. If you want to avoid this, just do if (GetNetMode() < NM_Client)

[tender badger]

UActorComponent::TickComponent is called both on DedicatedServer and clients?

so for the Replicated VAR, i should only set the VAR value in the if (GetNetMode() < NM_Client), right?

it's not right to always set its value both on server and clients

[chrome bay]

Depends. Tick Functions have a bAllowTickOnDedicatedServer property.

By default, it's true IIRC.

You can check whether you can set a variable using GetOwner()->HasAuthority()

[tender badger]

if (GetOwner()->HasAuthority()) {set value for Replicated} ?

void UActorComponent::TickComponent(float DeltaTime, enum ELevelTick TickType, FActorComponentTickFunction *ThisTickFunction)

not Tick, but TickComponent

[chrome bay]

yep

[tender badger]

it doesnot have bAllowTickOnDedicatedServer

[chrome bay]

It's a property of FTickFunction

The component has a PrimaryComponentTick property

[lapis zinc]

Im trying to replicate my characters entering a vehicle and possessing it. My current setup only allows server to use a vehicle. any ideas?

[rich locust]

@lapis zinc are you running dedicated server ?

do not use get player controller

almost never in a networked game

u already have the player character

use that instead

also no need for multicast

possess should only be called on server client figures out the rest anyways

[lapis zinc]

no just listen server

also for the player controller what should I use for the target?

[rich locust]

Player Character > Get controller > cast to playercontroller

dont need to cast if it accepts it as target

also dont multicast

and only check for overlap on server

remove widget removing as well

do it somewhere else

[lapis zinc]

how would I only check the overlap on the server?

custom events and functions for run on server?

[rich locust]

Has authority

[lapis zinc]

could you by chance show an example of what blueprint would look like? unless you cant which is okie

[lapis zinc]

thank you!

binding the interaction tho is a bit tricky

other than that it works great!

[lapis zinc]

would it be possible to bind the event as well or use some sort of over method?

[lean socket]

I'm trying to get an actor that the client has spawned. Is it possible to do GetAllActors and then destroy the actor the client spawned? Getting all actors and destroying it currently will destroy all of the actors, not only on one client, but all clients. Id like it to only destroy the actor that was spawned by that particular client.

[thin stratus]

No

Only the Client can destroy that actor

The only way you can do that is to use a ClientRPC that is only used to destroy that one specific actor

[tender badger]

how to make this Gun Replicated when MultiPlayer, it's just derived from StaticMeshActor. and already tried to set the Repilicates in details, but not work.

and the BP_PickupCube in the normal example also not Replicated, then how to make it Replicated?

[upbeat estuary]

Hey everyone, I think I'm being dense again but there's something basic I seem to have misunderstood about RPCs/Events:
On my Character, if I call a test event to run on the server via e.g. Spacebar, it happily fires on the server. When I run the same event from a Livelink update on the character, it fires only on the client.
Minimal example:

am I missing something completely obvious?

[blazing socket]

I have a very basic question - how can I send information from the GameMode to the GameState? I'd like to send info such as the time left in a match and when a round begins

[old knot]

i just applied point damage to enemy and it was successful but enemy cant get point damage. anyone know where is the problem?

[blazing socket]

Hey just saw your replies. I guess for me the problem is updating the actual widget. I tried binding the widget BP to a delegate that listens to playerstate when a player dies. However, I realized the problem with this is that I'd need to iterate through the player list and bind to each player state, which I'm not even sure is possible, if it is even efficient.

The other thing I could which is a lot simpler is binding the widget text to a BP function that iterates through playerstates and gets the kill/death counts. But wouldn't this be pretty performance-heavy? Especially if, like in my case, I want to keep up the scores permanently on the HUD. So each player would be iterating through the playerstates on every tick.

I'm fine with using the latter, but I'm wondering if there's some efficient way of tracking scores and deaths amongst players that I haven't thought of..

[fleet bear]

Question: Can I get players playing together without actually being in the same world?

Context: I want to do client side level streaming for an open world co-op game. If a player isn't near the other player I don't want to update any net traffic or render anything that's not in the vicinity. I'm thinking, for example, they both share a session but only share information of player transforms and event calls.

The other "player" that the see would be a dummy that moves based on the location of the other player's transform information.

[fleet bear]

---

this sounds like a case for standard client server model, but in reality the host pc is doing all the work. I'd more or less like to keep them in sync, but who ever loaded an area first is sort of the host of that area.

Scenario: Player one walks into a room, enemies spawn etc. Player 2 later walks into that room, room spawns, gets a list of instantiated actors from player one, enemies load for player 2 and are synced. Player one walks out of the room and it unloads for them. Player 2 is now "host" of that room. Player one walks back into the room, gets list of instantiated actors from player 2, enemies load in.

---

Doesn't sound like this works with current client server model so really I think it ends up being something like they share a session ( they have a tunnel to pass info back and forth ) and everything else happens locally, get's current owner of the area for server checks

that gets a bit messy for handling the world state. Someone is always going to need to be server for that wouldn't they hmm

[tardy glacier]

Hey all - I'm having an issue that has cropped up recently in my project. I have an AI controlled pawn that activates it's Behavior Tree on BeginPlay.

Lately I've noticed that in a 2+ player game when I call from the client to the server to spawn this AI pawn, the pawn spawns and I do see them on the client but they just idle in place on the client. On the server they start charging to me and attack me. Only after they start or succeed in their attack do I see them in the correct spot on the client.

I've been debugging this and the most I can see is that the client side version of the pawn just isn't receiving any data from the server but I cannot pinpoint why. Unreal Network Insights isn't showing anything egregious (not that I'm terribly good at knowing what to look for).

[spare mortar]

I am extremely new to UE4, eventually i would like to add multiplayer, how would i go about doing this in blueprints?

[rose raft]

Hi, I'm currently trying to understand how CharacterMovementComponent works.

From my understanding, UCharacterMovementComponent::ClientUpdatePositionAfterServerUpdate is used when client and server moves diverge and a correction issued from the server is necessary. Here's my question: why is it that the character reproduces any moves sent from the server instead of the server simply directly updating the characters position, velocity, acceleration, movement state, etc.? Wouldn't this be a simpler solution or am I misunderstanding something?

Specifically, I'm interested about this part:

    // Replay moves that have not yet been acked.
    UE_LOG(LogNetPlayerMovement, Verbose, TEXT("ClientUpdatePositionAfterServerUpdate Replaying %d Moves, starting at Timestamp %f"), ClientData->SavedMoves.Num(), ClientData->SavedMoves[0]->TimeStamp);
    for (int32 i=0; i<ClientData->SavedMoves.Num(); i++)
    {
        FSavedMove_Character* const CurrentMove = ClientData->SavedMoves[i].Get();
        checkSlow(CurrentMove != nullptr);
        CurrentMove->PrepMoveFor(CharacterOwner);
        MoveAutonomous(CurrentMove->TimeStamp, CurrentMove->DeltaTime, CurrentMove->GetCompressedFlags(), CurrentMove->Acceleration);
        CurrentMove->PostUpdate(CharacterOwner, FSavedMove_Character::PostUpdate_Replay);
    }```

[grizzled flicker]

YouTube... read... YouTube... read... YouTube

It’s going to take you at minimum a year to make a multiplayer game if you’re brand new

And that’s if you’re extremely dedicated and persistent . Good luck!

[spare mortar]

ok, thanks : ) good luck in whatever you are doing as well!

[lost dune]

On begin play , i make a switch has authority to create the UI widgets only i i am the a client:

but since i do that , there is no UI on the main menu

why?

[chrome quest]

You don't need a switch. The widgets won't be created on the server anyways

[lost dune]

Ok , but it displays red errors on the logs

[chrome quest]

Also, you need to add the widgets to viewport

Look for the node add to viewport and pass in each of the created widgets

[lost dune]

I'm doing that and it works well , but there is logs errors i want to remove

[chrome quest]

Show the log errors

[lost dune]

ok , i launch it

[chrome quest]

It seems that at the point when you are trying to set is focusable, the object references are not yet valid

But does it work properly?

[lost dune]

yes

[chrome quest]

Also, pass in owning player

[lost dune]

the main menu is showing well and works

ok

[chrome quest]

And you shouldn't really use the switch has authority

Also, you can add an is valid node before using the widget references OR use validated get node.

[lost dune]

it its not valid yet , the add to player screen will fail

and i'll have no menu UI ^^

[chrome quest]

That is normal behaviour. If not valid you'll get the error.

[chrome quest]

I think it depends on the order of creating and using the widgets

[lost dune]

It works with is valid

it was because i used two clients in one instance of the game

for testing network

[chrome quest]

Oh? Okay.

[lost dune]

the first client , try to use the UIwidgets as they are not already crated in the main instance

[chrome quest]

Ah I see. But is it working now? Also, if it's for a multiplayer setting, I think you have to create the widgets separately for each player. In order words, either in the player controller class or in your character class

[lost dune]

Yes its working , For the moment there is a Game manager in my project owning the widgets ( that was a bad idea of someone in the discord ) , i will remove it and use gamestate , playerstate ... only

[chrome quest]

Okay

[trim kindle]

What is expected use of non-seamless server travel? I expected that it will travel my server, send some RPC to clients, clients will disconnect, travel and join again to the new map.
But the actual behavior is that only server travels and clients do nothing and get timeout when server is in the new map for some time.

It works if I do 'open 127.0.0.1' manually on the client when server is ready but is not the whole purpose of non-seamless server travel that it should do it for me?

Even docs say When a client executes a non-seamless travel, the client will disconnect from the server and then re-connect to the same server, which will have the new map ready to load.

ah, it seems server needs to run as Standalone Game, not running under single process is not enough. I read that seamless requires it but I did not hear that also the non seamless server travel does not work in PIE.

[red sand]

How to host a new instance of server for match automatically
like you know how it's in multiplayer games

like server automatically hosts instance of game for new match, if none are available.

[hollow eagle]

by writing a system yourself, or by using a service like gamelift or playfab.

[lost inlet]

Though there are other companies like Zeuz and Multiplay that do game server orchestration too, which is usually a hybrid of bare metal and cloud

Upfront costs can be scary though

[gaunt umbra]

can i get some input please?
Component System isn't good to execute server tasks as there is no switch has authority node. is that correct?
any known workaround or should i call everything within gamestate/playercontroller?

[lament cloak]

Is there a built in way to monitor the server's current tick rate?

Our server is decaying in performance over time, even a 12 hour old server feels really bad. And yet none of the resources it's using seems off. Unsure about servers that have had people in them for that long, but these typically are empty, is the engine trying to be smart with empty servers but failing to wake up properly when someone connects? It really feels like as if it's tick rate drops.

Have tried on multiple hardware and operating systems (Windows and Linux)

[lost inlet]

Well at least in C++ components have an easily accessible Role variable. The owner of the component is also the actor and the Role can be fetched from there too

[gaunt umbra]

yea but without authority check inside the function couldn't it just be maliciously forced to execute with skipping server? (from client directly)

[lost inlet]

?

you check Role against ROLE_Authority

if the check passes, you're on the server

[gaunt umbra]

like that?

[lost inlet]

yes

[gaunt umbra]

ic, thx - big help

[lapis zinc]

so after possessing a vehicle my character gets trapped in the car essentially, how would I get the character reference for it?

[lapis zinc]

heres all the code if this helps

[thin stratus]

Save it before you posses?

[thin stratus]

Hm, yeah, that would be called a stale pointer. Basically pointing to something that is now reassigned

It's not null as far as I can see?

[versed bear]

On the server, my player spawns a sword in its BeginPlay() and attaches it to his hand like this:

if (HasAuthority())
{
    static FName weaponSocketName(TEXT("WeaponSocket"));

    FActorSpawnParameters spawnParams;
    spawnParams.Instigator = this;
    spawnParams.Owner = this;

    Weapon = Cast<AMyWeapon>(UGameplayStatics::BeginDeferredActorSpawnFromClass(this, WeaponClass, FTransform(), ESpawnActorCollisionHandlingMethod::AlwaysSpawn, this));

    if (Weapon)
    {
        Weapon->AttachToComponent(GetMesh(), FAttachmentTransformRules(EAttachmentRule::SnapToTarget, EAttachmentRule::SnapToTarget, EAttachmentRule::SnapToTarget, true), weaponSocketName);
        Weapon->SetOwnerCharacter(this);
        UGameplayStatics::FinishSpawningActor(Weapon, FTransform());
    }
}

Then in my sword's BeginPlay, I pass the sword's pointer to its parent so that the Client can access the sword and do stuff with it:

AActor* pParent = GetAttachParentActor();
if (pParent)
{
    SetOwnerPlayer(Cast<AMyPlayer>(pParent));

    if (GetOwnerPlayer())
    {
        GetOwnerPlayer()->SetWeapon(this);
    }
}

It seems like this doesn't always work, and sometimes the AttachParentActor is null.
Is there a better setup for what I'm trying to do here?

EDIT: nvm, there was also a sword being spawned to be shown in the UI and that's the one that isn't attached to anything.

[lapis zinc]

how would i go about doing that?

[empty bluff]

When you possess your veichle, you have a reference to it. Just save it, ie. on your PlayerController

[lapis zinc]

The controller is being saved by not the player character

would I just save it the same way?

[empty bluff]

i would say yes, since its the player char you want to re-possess

[thin stratus]

You literally cast to it in your overlap before you possess the car. You can save it in the car

[empty bluff]

right.. or in the car.. good point @thin stratus

[lapis zinc]

can you show an example cuz im not sure what you mean thru text

[twin juniper]

Guys, how difficult is it to convert a simple singleplayer game in UE4 to multiplayer?
The game only containing things like combat, experience (level system) and inventory
https://gyazo.com/d994c51049ec2e09b849c93a2b1c1b2d

I was hoping to make a standalone C# server and connect to it with UE4, but not sure if blueprints support that and my c++ skills are non-existent

[chrome bay]

If you didn't think about multiplayer from the beginning, then it will likely be difficult.

[twin juniper]

I mean, all I did was done in 2 days

[chrome bay]

It's really a "how long is a piece of string" kind of question tbh, the answer is "it depends"

You won't know until you try it

[twin juniper]

Any good tutorials on connecting to external servers through blueprints?

[chrome bay]

C# server isn't how UE4 multiplayer works anyway, if you want a dedicated server you'll have to use C++ - but a listen server is hosted locally and you can support that "relatively" fine in BP

BP isn't great for MP in general though, it has limited support.

[twin juniper]

Wait, you can't make UE4 connect to external standalone server?...

[chrome bay]

Sure you can but "server" has many definitions

[twin juniper]

I mean an actual server processing and passing out player data

I know very little about game development, I work as a .NET backend dev for military defense systems

So was hoping that the knowledge of developing servers there would come in use here

[chrome bay]

Not so much unfortunately, there's multiple parts to it. I'd start by reading cedrics Network Compendium (check pins)

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

Seems to have been buried

[twin juniper]

This is for a match based multiplayer though, no?

Would it work similarly for an open world game?

[chrome bay]

The same principles apply on the game-code side

For UE4 you still need an actual game instance running on a server which handles game-level info.

How you would manage something like persistent data etc. is another area

[twin juniper]

Damn, exciting

Joined the TitanReach open alpha and got the urge to get into game development to make something similar 😅 Big goal and likely quite unrealistic alone, but excited to see where I can get

[chrome bay]

MP is definitely "indie hard mode", MMORPG probably borderline insanity 😄

[twin juniper]

I mean, I made MMORPG servers before

its not really difficult

no idea how it would work with UE4 though

[kindred widget]

@twin juniper If you've made MMORPG servers before, then all you really need to consider is that a UE4 server is a subserver. Your backend server holds all persistent data like where a player is located, a cache of their stats, etc. UE4 server is their current world level. UE4 cannot easilly support more than maybe 40 players without some serious optimization like Fortnite has done. A dungeon in this case might be one UE4 Server. City area might be another server. Both of which run off of data imported from your backend, and report back to the backend to update persistent stats.

But it's worth noting that this is impossible without C++. At a high level, it's an easy concept. but there are a lot of things to tie together and make work and that's before you even start considering basic gameplay elements or the idea of launching/debugging/polishing it. Not to mention it's highly untreaded territory. Most people won't be able to help.

[twin juniper]

Think I'll just make everything work on singleplayer and then start from scratch on the multiplayer version 😅

[violet sentinel]

... along with redesigning 2/3 of systems as they require special handling in multiplayer

better off starting with simple multiplayer then, even listen server

there was a youtube series "lets make an mmo" i think showcasing world server and UE interaction

but it relies on that person's backend

worth as example but you will have to make own

[brazen sluice]

Hello I seem to be reaching a maximum length FString/Ftext can have as RPC arguemnt

Anyway to change that limit maybe?

[violet sentinel]

no, only by compressing or replacing with something else. what are you sending?

[twin juniper]

@violet sentinelPretty sure I'm way too bad with ue4 to get stuff like that done xD

[brazen sluice]

Really?? not even with MaxRepArrayMemory or something similar that would exist like MaxRepStringSizeMaybeIdontknow

that is an extreme bummer

[violet sentinel]

are you sending asset paths or something?

[brazen sluice]

No im sending a book that is generated based on data the client doesnt have

(Basically)

So it's like a text that's the book content

[violet sentinel]

you can break it into several rpcs

[brazen sluice]

I'd bascally be re-implementing TCP in RPC right that sounds cumbersome

[violet sentinel]

max array size is 2k, max rpc size is about 64kb

[brazen sluice]

yeah im at about 500kb

With a simple journal

hmm

[twin juniper]

Do you have a working multiplayer?

[violet sentinel]

i do, but not on that scale

since designing arch for mmo is quite difficult topic

[violet sentinel]

are you generating it on server based on some parameters?

[brazen sluice]

yeah for example one of them is the list of achievements that's in a journal with texts and images

the clients doesnt know what achievements it has accomplished and all

[violet sentinel]

can you send their identifiers instead?

achievement id to replace name and description
achievement image will be taken from data table or other thing based on id
achievement progress as two floats (current/needed)

[brazen sluice]

Yeah im going to have to rewrite my UI layer using data instead of content as a parameter, then some kind of template engine so that the client can generate the UI based on the data it received

That's going to be a pain in the ass but hey seems I have no choice 😄

[violet sentinel]

that would also save you on localization later

[brazen sluice]

I suppose you are right on that last point

[brazen sluice]

Yeah seems easy said like this but actually it's a bit more complex than that since I cant usse any data tables or nothing , because It's all going throught the modding SDK

So I have to first create new functionalities in the modding SDK that allow the content to register templates, so the clients can consume them

[violet sentinel]

you can have data assets or uobjects and object library instead of data table

or a manager to manage library

to make it extendable

[brazen sluice]

Yeah yeah i have a manager but it's in another context so it's always a bit tricky to access it

from the UI you cannot actually access it directly

Anyway it's doable just a lot of pain

I guess one of my biggest issue is going to enable the client to generate thumbnail in the passive JS modding Context so I dont have to send base64s

Then create the template engine so I dont have to send the static text around the data

I guess im putting this off for the release: P2 cant open books for now 😄

[young spoke]

I have this thrust feature that just adds impulse to the character movement.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/714928089104122027/873206165889245224/unknown.png

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/714928089104122027/873206220280967269/unknown.png

But for some reason it only works on the server
It does not replicate, clients cannot thrust.
Any ideas?

[violet sentinel]

MC_Thrust FX has to be called on server, you calling it on owning client

[flint star]

Hey, Acceleration on CharacterMovementComponent does not replicate properly to Non-Owning Clients.
It's normalized (instead of with magnitude as on Owning Client and Server)
And when the player is doing a RM animation, it doesn't replicate Acceleration until the player stops doing the RM for some reason.

Is there something I can do about it, or should I just replicate the real Acceleration value myself?

[winged badger]

you might get away with exponential interpolation on CMC

[lean socket]

When a client connect, I spawn a pawn for them to control and store a reference to that pawn "OldPawn"...I store the reference because the user can switch between two pawns...I'm having an issue, that every now and then, the reference to the "OldPawn" seems to get lost, or in other words changes.

In the above image, you can see the reference is there...however, after some time, when switching between pawns, this reference seems to get incremented. The ending would be something like _Pawn_C_3.

Almost like the original pawn gets destroyed, and a new one is created. However, i'm not destroying this pawn at all.

[lean socket]

I do notice this. Why would my pawn be "pending kill" ? I'm not destroying it anywhere in my code. I do destroy another pawn. Is this somehow trying to destroy this one? Is it a player controller issue since both are using the same player controller?

[scenic turtle]

Hi all, hope you are doing well I am trying to load a new stream level based on a overlap event. Since the new level is completely different than the current one, I am trying to teleport my player there, but when the stream level loads I teleport I have this strange shaky camera and if I try to move I fall through the floor or teleported back where the overlap event started. This is only when I am playing as a client, if I play as a listen server it is all working. Thanks for your help

[red lark]

hi guys, hope ur doing well. I've run into a problem with local multiplayer. How do I setup controls for a game where there are two keyboards and two players?

[gaunt umbra]

Any Opinion about the Verification Process? is it even needed? any tips for changes? appreciate any answer - thx in advance

[fluid summit]

Hi! any guide or info on how to implement a player login on a dedicated server? (want to do something like clash royale) where you can manage your city and explore the world and see other people cities.
Is there a standard way to implement something like this?

[fluid summit]

yeah, i'm looking tutorials for making a dedicated server and save player information on a database, but there's so litle

[gaunt umbra]

varest + firebase // not currently using it but that's my plan to test base functionality of including database directly
but for in engine only (testing functionality) you can just make struct+datatable with basic infos - load it in gamestate when starting - and manipulate those arrays - ofc it will reset to default values after restarting the game - cause it loads everything from datatable

[fluid summit]

what about sql and something else for the apis?

[gaunt umbra]

yea lorash i just mean for basic testing

[fluid summit]

that's kind of what i'm trying to search. What are the available technologie sto implement something like that and than package it into some host (like aws, steam) and what are the betters.

[gaunt umbra]

ofc you wanna host database yourself with multiple copies/backups in best case

[fluid summit]

i'm gonna give it a try with firebase for the database and varest for the apis as you suggested, only for testing.

this, wich ones would you suggest? D:

aws is so freaking expensive and if posible, i want to have some host on the cloud to test things out from the start

what about steam dedicated servers? i'm looking into a tutorial to setup one of those, any review on that one?

i'm gonna take note and check that thing about hyper-v, thanks

i have no idea, i'm just following a video to get an idea of what it's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QnJo6b3mtQ

oh, i tought it was a hosting service provided by steam

i'm gonna look on the options you guys listed

it doesn't look like it's what i'm looking for

[gaunt umbra]

@twin juniper while you're around.. any opinion towards that?

[fluid summit]

@gaunt umbra by any chance do you know how to integrate firebase with ue4? i'm ok with varest to make the calls, but not sure wich app should i be adding in order to use with ue4

[gaunt umbra]

just api call firebase db

[fluid summit]

oh i was trying to use firebase auth feature integrated with UE4 to handle user logins.
You meant to just use the firebase DB to store info?

[slow wing]

Is there a particular reason player state has to always be relevant, or is it alright/possible to actually modify its relevancy through a replication graph? (Is it mainly a historical thing where something like a players score was maintained on the player state and opening a scoreboard had to show you the score of everybody, so player state was always relevant, or will some actual gameplay oriented thing break/be incorrect if relevancy is tampered with)

[oblique prism]

What could be the cause of this RPC not firing off on and triggering the second breakpoint here?

[twin juniper]

Hi, is APawn::OnRep_Controller happening on both server and client ? 🤔

[elder sable]

Hi, i would like to create X replicated actors when the game begin, so i spawn them in gamemode::beginplay, but sometimes, there is no actors on any clients when i start the game.

[thin stratus]

Cpp onreps are client only by default

[thin stratus]

So the first one triggers? Is the actor owned by the client who calls the rpc?

[thin stratus]

Never or just delayed?

[elder sable]

Never i guess

[thin stratus]

That's indeed strange

Yoy don't happen to call some reliable rpc on tick somewhere or?

[elder sable]

In the spawned actors ?

[thin stratus]

In general

Cause that could cause other replication to just break

[elder sable]

Mhh i have a timer with reliable NetMulticast and i start this timer when the game start

    MakeMap(); // spawn actors
    GetWorldTimerManager().SetTimer(EventTimer, this, &APGameMode::OnEventTimer, 5.f, true, 5.f);

Something like that

I removed the timer to test and there is still one time the actors didn t spawn

[thin stratus]

Every x seconds is fine

Just not every frame

[oblique prism]

The first one triggers yes. It's an NPC with an AI controller ,which I'm not used to dealing with so I'm not sure how to answer whether the client owns it or not

[thin stratus]

Then i would suggest you enable some logs and also read through your logs

[thin stratus]

AIs are usually Server owned. You can't perform an RPC from client side or to client side on those

You need to perform the rpc elsewhere, like your own playercontroller, character or playerstate

Or generally a client owneder actor or component on a client owned actor

[oblique prism]

The only reason I was trying to do that was because I am trying to execute from an anim notify, which only seems to be kicking off on the client. Am I making a mistake there as well?

[thin stratus]

I would say yes

Is this a dedicated server?

[oblique prism]

yes

dedicated

[elder sable]

I don't see anything special, the functions are called, i have no error (i'm on UE5 btw)

Can i call spawnactor from gamemode::beginplay ?

[thin stratus]

I would say yes

But you should check if the same happens with a new project and in ue4

UE5 is not ready for production so I would expect everything to be broken

[elder sable]

I added bAlwaysRelevant and it seems they are spawned every time (but sometimes they are not visible)

Oh ok, someone told be it was fine to use it :/

[thin stratus]

I think your server isn't ticking the animations. I know there is something about tick pose and bones on the SkeletalMeshComponent. Try checking if that resolves. Otherwise check google for Dedicated server and ticking anims

[thin stratus]

That someone is lying

UE5 should not be used until it is released

You are using an early access program that clearly tells you to not use it

[elder sable]

Well i will change to UE4 and see then thanks 🙂

[oblique prism]

Thanks, will look into it

[oblique prism]

That worked, would have never thought to look at that, thanks.

[thin stratus]

Cheers

[spark owl]

if a physics object is teleporting/rubber banding/jittering around, how would I stop that? I'm making a sports game and the ball will sometimes jitter around

it's mostly accurate but still the slight teleporting can be annoying

[young spoke]

I have this code on the character which is supposed to create a hitmarker.
But it only works for the server but not clients.
Any ideas why?

[spark owl]

try taking the code you have sticking out from EventAnyDamage, put it into a custom event and run it on server reliable

then run it on EventAnyDamage

[lean socket]

When spawning a character, is there a limitation on height? The node on the bottom with Z value at 120 works. It replicates to all clients that the spawn took place. The node above with Z value at 20240 doesn't work. Well it does, it spawns the actor on client, however it does not get registered with server, and none of the clients can see it. Must be something with height?

[young spoke]

That worked a treat thanks!

Could you please explain why that works and why mine doesn't?

[spark owl]

I'm not exactly sure how EventAnyDamage works, but the code wasn't running on the server which tells me EventAnyDamage doesn't fire on Server it fires on clients, so because of that you needed to make it a custom event that runs on server. it triggers on the client and then it tells the server to run the code, wheras without the custom event, it would just run on the client

@young spoke

[elder sable]

Where should i store server only data, can i store them in gamemode ?

[lean socket]

I did another basic test, with ThirdPerson template. I basically spawn the pawn at height of 20000. It does not get shows/displayed in WorldOutliner until the actor reaches height of around 13-14K. Is this some sort of world bounds issue? What if one wants to spawn an actor on top of a building, which is at height 20k?

[young spoke]

Awesome thanks!

[elder sable]

I launch my game in listen mode from the editor, and i see that InitNewPlayer is called before gamemode::beginplay, how could i separate the server code from the hosting client ?

[urban cargo]

hey guys so i wanted to make a like feedback for the player so when he kills the other player the cross-hair flickers red and its working as long as i call it from the inputs but when i call it from a custom event it just doesn't show the animation or run anything from there any idea why?

[rose raft]

Any help here would be really appreciated; it's related to how CMC works:
https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/1043658/view.html

[shrewd mortar]

Is there any way to merge sessions/have all players (including host) from one session join another? I’m using the DestroySession node for each player, but for some reason the host still fails to join the new session. Any help with this would be much appreciated.

[versed socket]

Crazy design idea about multiplayer performance:

I wonder if it'd be more performant to put all of an Actor's gameplay logic into ActorComponents and then only create those Components at runtime according to what's relevant to the ROLE. So if I'm a remote client, I won't even be aware of another Client's Input-related or UI-related components because they were only ever spawned locally on their machine as the Actor was being created.

Maybe the only dependency in the Actor would be a TArray<UActorComponent *> where that list is populated with different things depending on who's asking.

To know which Components to spawn, you'd have a Data Table with a column that is a List of ActorComponents, and the Actor is given the appropriate row's FName as one of their required input arguments for spawning.

It sounds like a weird form of Dependency Injection. I just wanted to throw out the idea and get shot down

I remember the AI guy saying that it's always preferable to use Tags whenever possible, yeah

[undone vapor]

Anyone have any good code for sever validation of weapon fire hits sent from the client?

[undone vapor]

🙏

[summer tide]

So I've two components and 1 parent character class with two children characters

Char 1 has Comp 1 and char 2 has comp 2.

From Comp 1 I set a value to the parent char class. Then I access it in the comp 2. How can I fix its replication?

[versed socket]

The parent's value that lives in the Character class should be replicated. If you need to make sure it uses the replicated value, maybe you should use an Event Delegate that gets called in the OnRep method, so that the Component 2 can decide whether to react accordingly.

[summer tide]

Ok how do you repnotify in c++

UPROPERTY( ReplicatedUsing = LightTrigger) ???

[grand lance]

@summer tide UPROPERTY( ReplicatedUsing = OnRep_LightTrigger)

and create UFUNCTION() OnRep_LightTrigger()

What does this mean? Only happens when I have really fast rate of fire

[summer tide]

Ok thanks. I think that means that your are trying use a ref of an actor which is probably got destroyed or pending to be destroyed .

[strong vapor]

might not be the right channel but is there an implementation of some kind of profanity filter for online text chat?

i just implemented a text chat in my game and i dont wanna release it until i have that kinda

[hollow silo]

Does anyone have any resource that may help me do the Aim offset for multiplayer animations?

[grand kestrel]

I don't think I've ever before had a good reason to use a child actor component but... now I do. I've heard some horror stories with them in packaged builds and esp. related to multiplayer. Any experiences to share or light to shed?

[strong vapor]

@hollow silo Shooter game I believe does it

It's in the Learn tab

[rich locust]

just skip child actors overall, manually create them and use it that way

[hollow silo]

Yes maybe but not with blueprints

[hollow silo]

This is my Animation blueprint https://blueprintue.com/blueprint/ojarhfho/
And character blueprint: https://blueprintue.com/blueprint/k1yoyfd-/

[grand kestrel]

That's what I've always done in the past, I'll just keep doing that then

[steep garden]

guys, im trying to make an fps, and wanted to know what I should do to make sure player is on the right viewmodel and that the gun change request reaches them

what's the best logical way

do I just repeatedly tell the player what to equip?

[grand kestrel]

That's been my understanding. Pretty easy to make one actor handle another anyway, I'll just keep doing what I've always done in this scenario

[strong vapor]

@hollow siloyou're just trying to do a simple replicated aim pitch offset right? Try youtube.. i think i learned how to do that on there

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtFhwNkx1l0&t=1071s

[Help] anyone know a quick way to get a profanity filter goin for text chat?

I just added text chat to my game and I don't really wanna push the changes to steam until there's a filter

[elder sable]

If i want to store server only data, should i use only gamemode or i can use gamestate without replicating those data ?

[knotty relic]

Probably game state, my understanding is its where you keep all your data for the game mode

[elder sable]

Ok thanks

[vital karma]

i placed a Sphere into my world, turned on simulate physics, set replicate physics, then i pres play with 2 players and my net mode as client
when i push the ball with one player it moves differently to how the other player sees it

what do i do?

is it possible to have replicated simulated physics?

[thin stratus]

Yeah, but it's most likely gonna be shit :P

You will need to add some sort of smoothing to it and should probably only really simulate the physics on the server

And player controlled physics (so a physics character you move for example) will be a lost case

Only thing you could do there is ignore authority and do things client authoritive or so

[red salmon]

What is a good long term player identification?

[thin stratus]

An ID of a Database Entry

[red salmon]

any tutorials or information on helping me with that?

[twin juniper]

Might not be considered best practice but I’ve had good results using “replicates movement” for that type of thing

[lost inlet]

Tutorial: Use unique net ID of the player available via the player state. GetUniqueID is the function.

On Steam, this will give you the 64 bit Steam ID of the player. If you’re dealing with multiple OSSes then you can distinguish further with .GetType() on the unique ID

And in case you’re wondering, this isn’t something readily exposed to BP

[twin juniper]

Dumb question but is that unique ID fully static? As in, if someone changes their steam account name or whatever, that ID remains the same 100%?

[lost inlet]

Steam IDs are tied to the account, not the display name

It’s also generally true on other platforms

[granite nest]

I build a dedicated server and a normal client build. When i type the command open 127.0.0.1 in the client while the server is running, this is what i get in the server log: . After that i get a popup on the client "fatal error". Any idea what it could be or where i could find more information about it?

oh nvm i see "client connecting with invalid version", weird

the server is build with engine from source and client is not

might that be a problem?

its 4.25 and 4.25 from source

[rich locust]

check logs

there usually is extra info about fatal error

[silent valley]

They must be built with the exact same version. I think even if you are using Epic built version of 4.25 and Github source 4.25 the network version number is different. I can't remember where this is set. You might be able to hack it, or if possible use the same version to build server and client.

[granite nest]

i'll try to hack it 😄 because building the client with the source version uses 16gb+ ram while i only have 16 and crashes. The non engine version uses only 5

[trim kindle]

Is it expected that widgets persist the seamless travel and need to be manually removed in the new level?

I think so https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/235555/cleaning-up-widgets-on-travel.html

[lost inlet]

yes even though this is more of a #umg question, it's also why we ended up having widget management as part of a AHUD subclass

[trim kindle]

That's what I usually do too. Do you do your own bookkeeping in HUD class or is there a way how let these widgets disappear automatically?

I think I will just remove all widgets in game instance subsystem which listens for FWorldDelegates::OnSeamlessTravelStart

[lost inlet]

HUD class does the bookkeeping

Since the viewport will keep a reference

[trim kindle]

okay, sounds good, thanks!

[white smelt]

yo can someone help me with animations

i cant get animations working when pressing a botton like right click to aim in

[strong vapor]

@white smelt might wanna ask in a different channel.. and that's also a very vague question.. I'm guessing you're talkin about like an Aim down sights mechanic.. I'd just look on youtube for a tutorial on that kind of thing.. it's definitely a popular one

[raw quarry]

I'm very confused.. all of a sudden I can't test with "play as client" net mode in the editor in 4.26:

it instantly kicks me back to my entry map

I can't think of what I could've changed that would cause this all of a sudden

where does this "server full" error come from?

[summer tide]

Any idea why I get diff values? https://gyazo.com/27fcb47f4801036cbaacccd222c9f5bd

[raw quarry]

@summer tide what are you printing

[summer tide]

https://gyazo.com/d1e1ddc16fb47e05a8a46fadc808b26f

RiderAnimType

[raw quarry]

is RiderAnimType replicated?

[summer tide]

That variable is in AnimBP so notneeded but it getting the value from a replicated variable

[raw quarry]

either way, it's probably being set on the client when maybe you just meant for it to be set on the server and replicated down

well I mean "Riders Mounted Anim Type" :p

[summer tide]

I'm have this in the 3rdperson char' component if (Rider) Rider->SetRidersMountedAnimType(3);

[raw quarry]

there's still not nearly enough context here to see what's going on

[summer tide]

what do you want to know

So I'm trying to make that function a server rpc

[raw quarry]

which function?

[summer tide]

to see if that would work

SetRidersMountedAnimType

In that fn i've this: RidersMountedAnimType = Type;

[raw quarry]

do you want the variable to be set on the server and replicated to clients?

because clearly at the moment it's not

[summer tide]

RidersMountedAnimType is replicated in 3rdpersonchar class

[raw quarry]

then it must also be being set on the client

so when you set the variable, make sure you're on the server

you can add a "switch has authority" blueprint for example or in C++: "if (HasAuthority())"

even though a variable is marked as being replicated, it will still let you change it on the client and get it out of sync

[summer tide]

So this doesn't have to be a server rpc. in this funciton i can have HasAuth() to then use server if remote else use server

SetRidersMountedAnimType

void ARidableBaseCharacter::SetRidersMountedAnimType(int32 Type)
{
    if (HasAuthority())
    {
        MulticastSetRidersMountedAnimType(Type);
    }
    else
    {
        ServerSetRidersMountedAnimType(Type);
    }
}
void ARidableBaseCharacter::ServerSetRidersMountedAnimType_Implementation(int32 Type)
{
    MulticastSetRidersMountedAnimType(Type);
}
bool ARidableBaseCharacter::ServerSetRidersMountedAnimType_Validate(int32 Type)
{
    return true;
}
void ARidableBaseCharacter::MulticastSetRidersMountedAnimType_Implementation(int32 Type)
{
    RidersMountedAnimType = Type;
}

[summer tide]

What do you think?

[raw quarry]

is this how the code is after changing it? or is this how it was before

[summer tide]

I modified it based on what you said. Do you think this will work?

[raw quarry]

ah, yeah that seems right

assuming those RPCs are set up properly

I'm still not sure why you want the clients to set it, but I guess it depends what this variable is actually doing

[summer tide]

IDK whatever works

That variable in animbp selects a animsequence that's all

[raw quarry]

if you have RidersMountedAnimType as being replicated to begin with, though, you don't need MulticastSetRidersMountedAnimType

you just need to set it

[summer tide]

void ARidableBaseCharacter::SetRidersMountedAnimType(int32 Type)
{
    RidersMountedAnimType = Type;
}```
I had this before which doesn't work.

[raw quarry]

right but you can only set it on the server

[summer tide]

wdym -

[raw quarry]

otherwise they'll get out of sync

[summer tide]

That function is in the component of the 3rdpersonchar

[raw quarry]

what calls it?

server or client or both

[summer tide]

From the component of the 3rpersonchar if (Rider) Rider->SetRidersMountedAnimType(3);

just like that

[raw quarry]

"from the component" doesn't mean too much

it can still be either client or server or both

on tick?

[summer tide]

yea

so should I create a server rpc in the comp then call the function in the char's class

[raw quarry]

if you want both clients and server to be able to set it at any time, then something like:

void ARidableBaseCharacter::SetRidersMountedAnimType(int32 Type)
{
    if (HasAuthority())
    {
        RidersMountedAnimType = Type;
    }
    else
    {
        ServerSetRidersMountedAnimType(Type);
    }
}
void ARidableBaseCharacter::ServerSetRidersMountedAnimType_Implementation(int32 Type)
{
    RidersMountedAnimType = Type;
}

[summer tide]

doesn't work

[slate basin]

hey, is it possible to run a eqs query synchronously?

[empty bluff]

@kindred widget regarding that container stuff i talked about, a while ago, i ended up with this solution:

Base: Container

Child: Chest

I've got another question now though. I plan on making a setup where a player can start a game to host it. He and only he should be able to Save the gamestate. Similarly to how games like 7d2d and Valheim does. So my question is. How do i start up a game like that as a server, without having to render and know about each and every actor in the game? I mean, the clients only render whatever is in their relevancy, but the person hosting the game will act as the server, and as far as i can see, when starting the game as a listen server, ALL actors render for him, no matter their relevancy settings. So i guess my question is really how do i start up a game with a "hidden" server, that knows about ALL actors and at the same time show a Client game window where it only knows and renders whatever is relevant for it? Hope i manage to explain my question clearly.

[hollow eagle]

The answer to your question is... it doesn't make sense to do what you're asking. But you didn't really explain why you care about this:

• Are you worried about performance? If so, it isn't rendering all actors, that's what occlusion culling is for. If you're worried about simulating the whole world, you need to look into ways of either "chunking" the world (at regular intervals for procgen like minecraft, or for a premade map by manually defining areas to load/unload) or simply turning off actors that are too far away.
• Are you worried about the person acting as the server cheating? If people are hosting a server on their machine you can forget about any sort of security. I wouldn't even bother thinking about it - people will do what they want on their own machines, and you're not going to be able to stop them. The only reasonable fix is to host servers for players.

[empty bluff]

@hollow eagle good questions and suggestions... i'll ellaborate later... on the way to work now.

[velvet lintel]

Hi! I'm a designer and I'm learning blueprints. I'm quickly exploring all areas and now I'm learning multiplayer.

I currently have a hint that I can test multiplayer with the Listen server option in PIE and that other team members can access if I open the level using the command open ?listen. But all the resources I found through googling for a week seemed to be about emulating a network environment on a local PC. The server and client windows pop up, but they were actually controlling the two characters by themselves alone.

I wish I could actually learn from a tutorial on setting up the Listen server in PIE and dealing with the contents of the team members' connections. If someone has good resources, can you recommend it to me?

[thin stratus]

One of the reasons why you may not find anything about this is that PIE should only be tested on one PC.

You can start the game as Standalone (e.g. Rightclick uproject file and hit launch game) or package it.

And then other people can connect to it based on your used #online-subsystems

By default it's NULL which only allows server lists through broadcast ip in your lan.
As well as the direct connection via IP.

Which requires the host to have port 7777 open

@velvet lintel

[velvet lintel]

Oh! Thank you. I got a lot more insights. So, depending on the size of the game, it can take a long time to package, so is it the best way to run the game as standalone mode for iteration for testing and modification?
(I think I misunderstood that the standalone option of the play button is a kind of PIE.)
@thin stratus

[thin stratus]

The standalone button should do the same. But i usually don't use it

Packaging takes long but should be what you should every bow and then test in

The ue4 project might behave very differently when packaged if you are unlucky

If you set up iterative cooking etc then only the first time should take long

[velvet lintel]

Oh, I see. I think I know. I had previously experienced building a light map, where I was supposed to rebuild all the lights on the map even with very small modifications. I was worried that the packaging would work similarly, but I'm glad it only takes time at first. (Cookies look important.)

[summer tide]

Do you need to put all the replicated variables in GetLifetimeReplicatedProps?

[twin juniper]

Non-replicated actors can't have RPC ?

[thin stratus]

Correct

[thin stratus]

Correct

[wary wyvern]

Guys, are variables replicating with an actor all the time, or just when they changed?

[violet sentinel]

I have bunch of replicated variables that affect a cached "computed" variable. When any of them change the computed variable has to be recalculated on demand later.
Currently each replicated variable has an OnRep that calls Invalidate(), is there any more generic way? Would PostRepNotifies or PostNetReceive work as a single point of calling Invalidate()

[dire cradle]

They replicate with the actor depending on its Net Update Frequency afaik

[chrome bay]

@wary wyvern They only get sent out when they are changed

But they are checked at the "Net Update Frequency" and sent out at that rate at maximum

The server keeps a record of what clients have what values. That's why you shouldn't change replicated data client-side, since server will not know about it.

[wary wyvern]

So client confirms he received a value, and server stop sending values since it recieves a confirm?

[chrome bay]

The client 'acks' received packets with the server yeah, so the server knows what values the client has.

And it will only send a property if it's changed from the last-acked/sent property

[dire cradle]

It would stop sending the value until it's changed again

[wary wyvern]

@chrome bay Thanks!

[chrome bay]

you can see this for yourself using the network profiler btw

It logs everything that is sent and how often etc.

[dire cradle]

I have a problem with relevancy. My actor only runs net notify functions to client when the player gets near it even though the actor is set to always relevant

Server can see the changes in variables immediately but on the client the actor waits until the player gets near

[chrome bay]

Sounds like it's not actually being made always relevant

Not using rep graph or anything?

[dire cradle]

I tried to use multicast instead of repnotify and but that time it never replicated unless the client is near the actor

With repnotify it updates when player gets near

[chrome bay]

Yeah it's a relevancy issue then

Sounds like it's just not being made always relevant

[dire cradle]

Is there any way to force it to be relevant?

[chrome bay]

Hmm why is Dormancy explicitly set to "Never"?

[dire cradle]

I tested if that would solve the issue

it didnt

[chrome bay]

Are you using replication graph?

[dire cradle]

im not sure what you mean by replication graph

[chrome bay]

Ah in which case almost definitely not 😄

[dire cradle]

What is it

[chrome bay]

It's a different way of doing replication but you have to opt into it and actually build one for the project

Try unchecking Net Load on Client

Is it an actor that's pre-placed in the map?

[dire cradle]

Nope it gets spawned on the server and gets replicated to the clients

[chrome bay]

Ah kk

In which case I'm not sure, I would just double-check to be certain that is the actor you're spawning

Otherwise no reason it shouldn't work

[dire cradle]

it is

Always relevant is working on the server side but somehow clients are not considering it relevant until they get close

[chrome bay]

Well relevancy is only determined server-side so it shouldn't matter

The only other thing I can think of, is the actor is being throttled by other actors that are closer and potentially hogging all the available bandwidth

But since they're closer, they're higher priority

Unlikely though

[dire cradle]

There isn't much of anything that can cause a throttle in the game though

I'll try making it higher priority to test

Didn't work, same thing happens

[chrome bay]

Yeah not sure then, if it's always relevant it should just replicate without any issue

Does the actor exist on the client? You say it's being spawned - so if you can see the actor on the client then it must be relevant

If it wasn't relevant the client wouldn't even be able to see it

[dire cradle]

When the client is near the actor it replicates without any problems and is synced with the server

Problem occurs when client is away

[chrome bay]

But is the actor still visible to the client?

If they are then it's not a relevancy issue, because runtime-spawned actors get destroyed on that client when they are no longer relevant.

[dire cradle]

the actor doesn't have a primitive component, only a world widget

would that be considered as invisible?

[chrome bay]

Ah well world widgets are primitive comps so that's fine, so long as the actor has a root component

[rose egret]

@dire cradle didnt u override IsNetReleventFor ?

[chrome bay]

Oh yeah, if you overrode that then it'll use whatever custom logic you set.

[dire cradle]

how do I override it

oh found it

--
Found the issue

it wasn't about relevancy at all

The value was updating

The world widget that showed the value wasn't

False alarm and a pointless headache lmao

[dire cradle]

And the reason for that was that although the actor was set to always relevant...

the client ITSELF wasn't

so the client was going irrelevant not the actor

[dire cradle]

it was about relevancy after all

That was a rollercoaster

[potent cradle]

Possessing a new pawn while having the debugger attached seems to cause this ensure to hit for me in repgraph:

Should I maybe clean up something when the pawn switches?

UReplicationGraphNode_AlwaysRelevant_ForConnection::GatherActorListsForConnection ends up triggering the ensure when it runs UpdateActor:

For posterity:
In this instance I was also destroying the old pawn when I possessed the new one, which causes this issue. SetLifespan does not have this problem 🙂

[austere sinew]

Hi, when I try to compile the server in the visual studio, I get this error, what is it and how to defeat it?

No, I said, I start the server through the shortcut with -log and it gives this error, it was compiled in the visual studio and transferred to the notification folder

[grim rain]

Did you include the module code in your game uproject code?

[spring geode]

So…im kinda new to Unreal, and i’ve been doing only singleplayer games, can i do multiplayer games the same way as singleplayer or is it diffrent?

[rough kestrel]

hey guys I have a problem I want to get data from game mode but it shows null on client side. I even tried getting it from game state

[rich locust]

Gamemode only exists on server

thats why its null

if you cant get the data from game state

you might be doing something wrong

are you trying to access gamestate on beginplay ?

[rough kestrel]

begin play as well as on specific times

freaking out as boss is breathing on my neck ☹

[rough kestrel]

I tried get game state get authority game mode. Class returns a value but object is null

[rich locust]

I run into this issue as well

try putting a little bit of delay on begin play

sometimes it doesnt get spawned when you try to access it

gamemode is non-existent on clients

try moving your stuff to otherparts if you want to access it directly from client

[rough kestrel]

how do I get data like player id? I am storing an array of pawns and getting them by index from game mode

Game state doe return the class but the object is always null

[rich locust]

simple

you dont

or you make a bridge

on gamestate

to request the data from server

[glad escarp]

Hey guys. I haven't asked a question in here before and I've tried to browse previous posts to see if my answer is anywhere so forgive me if this is a repeat question but here goes:

I'm making a ship in my multiplayer (listen server) game that lets players walk around on the deck and interact with different stations. The interacting client takes ownership of the actor and then input from the client's player character fires server replicated events to make the ship move forward or rotate. I'm using a Rotating Movement component to simply achieve rotation but the problem I'm facing is that the rotation is very choppy in the client player windows but is smooth in the server window. I'm relatively new to network replication so I really have no idea why I'm getting stuttering on rotation. Any insight would be much appreciated!

[chrome bay]

PlayerID's are stored on the PlayerState's, you can access all player states from a convenient container via AGameStateBase::PlayerArray

[rough kestrel]

so if i want an array element from game mode how do I do that?

[chrome bay]

Should never really use the GetPawn / GetController by index functions, they're virtually useless for Multiplayer

You can't

GameMode doesn't exist on clients for one thing, but also whatever data you get would have to be replicated somehow anyway.

[rough kestrel]

I have a custom pawn array in game mode I populate overriding on login

[chrome bay]

You can't get that, but it's a bad way to deal with it anyway

Use the PlayerArray from game state, and use the GetPawn function from the player states within

[rough kestrel]

so I have a VR pickup which can only be picked up by a specific player. If I dont store it in game mode where do I put ir?

[chrome bay]

That should really be dealt with by the pickup itself

No sense in polluting your gamemode with details/code for another system

Data/code locality matters a lot more in MP, you have to think about architecture more

In SP you can pretty much do whatever

[rich locust]

well then store the "specific player"`s playerstate on the object, and check if owner when interacted

[chrome bay]

Yeah something like that

The object should determine who can pick it up, or the player state should determine what it can pick up (or a mix of both) - none of that is really relevant to the gamemode

More of a design thing really

[rough kestrel]

i am new to mp in ue4 ☹ sadly boss wants mp vr

so if I do get a player from game state, how are they stored? in order of which logged in first?

[rich locust]

Im not sure how

why is the order matters

[chrome bay]

Yeah order is not maintained IIRC

[rough kestrel]

or should I set some variable in the pawn itself on post login to crosscheck with. Like post login, the pawn has an int assigned unique to it. Like first user is 1 second is 2

[rich locust]

you dont need it

[chrome bay]

I would check out cedrics Network Compendium btw, it covers a lot of this starting out stuff

[rich locust]

unreal handles it by it self anyway

you can just go with playerstate = playerstate

they are instanced not just a library

[rough kestrel]

didnt get it. I want say the second user who logged in to be able to grab an object. How would I track that?

[rich locust]

just store the login time on server

to servers system time

then just order it

[rough kestrel]

another way of thinking. Say a user who joins is auto assigned to a team. How to store that? does that change stuff?

[chrome bay]

I would just assign each player their own ID that you manage, even if it's just a simple counter

If login order matters that is

[rough kestrel]

yes what I want exactly

[chrome bay]

Team you would usually assign to a PlayerState yeah

[rough kestrel]

how does one access that? controller?

[chrome bay]

Controller->PlayerState

Def read that compendium, it'll answer a lot of Q's about the overall framework

[rich locust]

you can also access it via pawn too

[chrome bay]

https://cedric-neukirchen.net/

[rough kestrel]

bingo that could do it way cleaner. Gonna try that tomorrow and hope I dont get another yelling 😅

[rough kestrel]

so post login I could asdign it via game mode?

[chrome bay]

If your boss doesn't know the challenge of Multiplayer they are in no position to be bossing anyone 😄

[rough kestrel]

long story on that one. Our servers guy told him it will take a month to get a framework but no. Sadly they pay well

[chrome bay]

🔫

[rough kestrel]

😭

will let you know if it worked

[chrome bay]

For MP resources look at the compendium + the ShooterGame template project from Epic

[spring geode]

So…im kinda new to Unreal, and i’ve been doing only singleplayer games, can i do multiplayer games the same way as singleplayer or is it diffrent?

[chrome bay]

Ignore anything you find on YouTube because 99% of it is either nonsense or bad practice

Multiplayer tbh can only be e x p e r i e n c e d

[rich locust]

oh yes yes,

In theory multiplayer is easy

[rough kestrel]

also, how would I get reference to a player pawn whose Index I set in player state

[rich locust]

the problem starts when you need to design it

because its not just replicated or not

3 extra function types

[rough kestrel]

thats all of game dev aint that the truth?

[rich locust]

or tell the blueprint to replicate or not

but no

[chrome bay]

It's honestly quite easy once you get your head around replication but it generally requires more advance planning and more volume of code to get even simple things implemented.

[spring geode]

is that reply to mine or?

[chrome bay]

Once you've learnt the "oopsies" of replication (usually the hard way), it starts to fall into place.

@spring geode Just in general tbh 😄

[spring geode]

ok ok

[rough kestrel]

I know but I am not getting the amount of time. I got VR replication working in a week with scarce documentation its been a pain

[spring geode]

well is it a special way of programing in multiplayer or id it like the same as singeplayer, like if i did singleplayer games is it going to be almost the same to do multiplayer or?

[chrome bay]

A lot of MP is all about writing code that safely handles all the obscure race-conditions you wouldn't normally deal with that only surface 1/100 times etc.

[spring geode]

sorry if my english is bad

[rough kestrel]

you have to write extra code for server client side plus manage bandwidth

[chrome bay]

Definitely more volume of code, but Epic's ShooterGame resource is a great one (bit old), their YouTube tutorials not so much.

[spring geode]

okayy, so its similar right?

to making singleplayer

well i will try it out soon if i will be stuck i will come back

[chrome bay]

Shortlist:

* Locality of code and data, general code design matters a lot.
* Code needs to safely handle all kinds of race conditions. (actors not being available when you think, different order of ops etc.)
* Need at least some C++ knowledge, Blueprint MP hits a wall early on.
* State = Replicated Vars
* Events/Calls = RPC's, (but sometimes vars).```

[spring geode]

Thanks

[chrome bay]

But otherwise check the pins, lots of stuff there

Any YT series' pinned there are probably okay. Just be wary of YouTube Gurus who spend more time chasing clout than actually engineering or shipping games. The difference can be stark... TBH that applies to everything though not just Multiplayer 😄

[violet sentinel]

😄

[fading birch]

There's a lot of little bad practices there that have shot me in the foot down the road too. Granted, you don't know it's a bad practice until you run into a situation where you realize it is.

There's also several different ways to do one thing. Some better than others depending on the situation

[glad escarp]

Easier said than done. 😉 Hard to tell which is which until you've watched some of their videos all the way through. And coming from a beginner/novice standpoint, it's hard to tell even after watching since you don't know how to judge it. lol. When I'm learning new stuff I find myself following tutorials and then coming to places like this to learn from real devs how to make my code the way it should have gone in the first place.

[chrome bay]

Yeah, I think it's why MP is so hard to teach - there's just too much situational stuff you don't really fully understand until you see it in context.

[fading birch]

Code needs to safely handle all kinds of race conditions. (actors not being available when you think, different order of ops etc.) is one of the hardest things to get right imo

and you'll end up chasing your tail for days

[chrome bay]

Yeah for sure, that's one of the more difficult parts to deal with and why it takes 3-4 times as much code volume sometimes to do simple things.

[fading birch]

just throw it in tick until it's valid

[chrome bay]

🔫

[rough kestrel]

got this from the server dept head. Gonna read it again I guess

[fading birch]

that's also in the pins, 2nd one

I reference that document very very often

[chrome bay]

Yeah it's a good resource, I'd definitely look at ShooterGame too though. It's a pretty vast resource and a bit old, but still worth looking at.

[fading birch]

it's a gold mind of info

You can also look at Unreal Tournament too

[chrome bay]

Yeah

[fading birch]

it has stuff like a replay system, hit detection, etc

it's quite old

but still holds up alright

[chrome bay]

Though beware with UT, it definitely has a few "this just works for UT" stuff going on

But the folks that wrote it are the old-school devs from Epic, they know their shiz

[violet sentinel]

i really wanted to make something with UT projectiles. having too many projectiles that may bounce and spawning them locally is a problem for me

but if spawning them on server - by time they appear on client they may be already out of bounds

if spawned locally - can not handle bounce and other effects

[fading birch]

@chrome bay I can't remember off the top of my head, but do you recall if it's Shooter Game or UT that does client side hit detection?

I want to say UT

[chrome bay]

both IIRC

[fading birch]

I thought Shooter Game used the rep graph for it

[chrome bay]

ShooterGame has some limited verification server-side

It's not great though

But will get you by for hitscan

Projectiles are fully server-side in ShooterGame

[rough kestrel]

I wonder how UT aligns the bullets to the muzzle cuz pannini deforms the mesh. I know a little out of place but yeah

[chrome bay]

In UT I think they do a funky mixture

[fading birch]

yeah, doing projectiles are annoying since you need to rely on physics, which while deterministic in unreal, is annoying to get in sync with clients.

[violet sentinel]

would it be fair to spawn a fake visual projectile that does nothing and invisible projectile on server to do actual hit / fly physics etc

[chrome bay]

tbh all our bullets are projectiles and they're just data

[fading birch]

I wouldn't go that route personally.

[chrome bay]

spawning actors is just way too costly for us at that level

[fading birch]

unless you're doing a bit of a rewind

yeah, we sort of fake the funk as well

[chrome bay]

So many ways to do it but it just really depends on what you need

[fading birch]

mmhmm

and scale

[violet sentinel]

real ballistic vs replication for multiplayer

[fading birch]

for HLL and BTW it's a bit rough to spawn actors all the time

as that's a lot of overhead

[violet sentinel]

was thinking on using actor pool like UT does

[fading birch]

We use an actor pool for quite a few things and it does help

[violet sentinel]

50-100 proj actors in pool seemed enough

[chrome bay]

it's more a scaling issue for us, 100 players is a ballache

[fading birch]

agreed

[chrome bay]

So we just did something totally bespoke

[violet sentinel]

true

[chrome bay]

Works really well for us but has limited application outside of "bullet shooty weapons" I think

[fading birch]

We went for a different approach. Our deployable/emplaced weapons are technically single round rifles

with more boom

[spring geode]

Does anyone know how to make like “teams”, lets say if i make hide and seek how can i make that one player the seeker and the others hiders, how to make those roles?

[violet sentinel]

so just a dedicated subsystem to handle projectiles and add/remove the projectile data
and ticking subsystem simply batch updates the projectile movement and issue hits / traces?

[chrome bay]

yeah pretty much exactly

And data assets for projectile properties, and a couple of virtual functions for creating/updating the data

[fading birch]

PlayerState is a good place to store a team id.

[violet sentinel]

i'm trying to convince to not use a blueprint for each projectile type and use data assets

but ppl for some reason keep doing that

[fading birch]

just mark it as replicated, and set it from gamemode

[violet sentinel]

every variation a separate bp class

[fading birch]

oO

[chrome bay]

haha

[fading birch]

That's literally a perfect reason to use data assets

[violet sentinel]

nearly 120 projectile blueprints and 120 data assets, could boil it down to just 1 bp and 120 assets

[chrome bay]

Most of the game is held together with tape ofc but this is one thing that's worked out really well 😄

[violet sentinel]

yeah

and glue

[fading birch]

and brute force

[spring geode]

i once tried to do multiplayer game but the other player couldnt see like bullets or flashlight, what was the problem if you guys maybe know?

[fading birch]

sounds like some variables weren't replicated

[violet sentinel]

or if you spawning them on server then most likely by time it gets chance to replicate to client it may be already outside of level

[spring geode]

if i was only working with blueprints and i dont know c++, should I even try to do multiplayer game?

[violet sentinel]

relatively simple should be doable

[spring geode]

Okay, i want to try to do like hide and seek do you think it will be hard to do?

[violet sentinel]

yeah

but still better learn c++ 😄 for lobbies and other stuff

[spring geode]

Oh, well if i will need some help with it or if i get stuck can i ask for help here?

[spring geode]

true, but it seems like its hard to learn tho

[fading birch]

anything worth doing is difficult.

[spring geode]

right…how old are you guys and when did you start doing unreal?

[empty bluff]

Back from work now. Reason i asked the question, was because i was looking at what Net Cull Distance Squared did, and how it culled out actors on the Client very nicely when the Character went out of the Distance of it. So i thought about how a Server could achieve the same culling.
I mainly thought of this because of performance considerations. And by performance i think of both physics simulation and ticking actors (which i ofc. know should be kept to a minimum)
Im not as such worried about server-cheating.

[glad escarp]

Anyone know why I might be getting stuttering on a replicated actor's rotation? It translates vertically and horizontally without any stutter and in the server viewport, it rotates smoothly as well. But in client windows (listen-server model) the rotation stutter steps. I'm running the rotation code from the actor itself using a server RPC that just changes the rotation rate on a Rotating Movement component.

[hollow eagle]

A server cannot do that. If the server isn't simulating an actor, then who is?
Rendering is already handled by occlusion culling and has nothing to do with client/server.

The most you could do is put an actor to "sleep" if it's too far away from all players. But you can't just have the server ignore actors that otherwise need to be active.

[rough kestrel]

One question will any custom variable added to player state be replicated?

[violet sentinel]

if marked as replicated

[empty bluff]

Good point. It is the server simulating physics yes, so if i have a player that plays on the server-machine, but lets say i have a world with 10k physics actors, then i need to put the 9.9k to sleep?

[rough kestrel]

So that has to be done manually? Why if I have to just set it one time from game mode?

[violet sentinel]

any variable you want to replicate has to have either UPROPERTY(Replicated) & added to GetLifetimeReplicatedProperties or checkbox if it is a blueprint variable

[summer tide]

So I have a replicated variable that I set from other character component to my player character then use that variable in animbp to select animations to play. But the clients won’t see the anim how to fix?

[empty bluff]

@summer tide as i understand it, whatever variable you use in an animbp, needs to replicate for it to work.

[rough kestrel]

Got this last week. What I ended up doing was setting the variable in the actor and then sending that value on each change to the anim bp. For some reason animbp variable replication was pretty faulty for me

[summer tide]

THis is what I have. So the RiderAnimType variable in my AnimBP also needs to be replicated, is that what you saying? https://gyazo.com/d1e1ddc16fb47e05a8a46fadc808b26f

[empty bluff]

if this is a animBP, then i belive yes.. try it out

[summer tide]

Doesn't work 😦

The other clients don't see the animation

[summer tide]

THat's what I'm doing.

[spring geode]

I will maybe try to make a hide and seek type of game but i have no experience in mutliplayer, i will watch tutorials ofc but if i will have some issues or problems is this the right place to ask for help?

[fading birch]

Within reason.

Most stuff you should be able to solve on your own with some googling

if you get stuck there, we'll give you a nudge in the right direction

[spring geode]

Thanks a lot

[empty bluff]

@hollow eagle Clicking the Host button, I want to start a server on my machine. Is it an option to "spawn" a dedicated server and then connect to it when clicking it? (instead of starting a ListenServer)

[hollow eagle]

You could, but why would you want to?

You'd waste even more resources like that.

[empty bluff]

ok, so ListenServer is the way i suppose

[violet sentinel]

dedicated server is a thing on its own

only fully functioning LS can be properly ported to dedicated with influx of fresh authority bugs

😄

[kindred widget]

I don't really see a problem with using a dedicated server. Running it on separate cores than you're gaming on can help.

[empty bluff]

kk, roger that

[kindred widget]

Ram is cheap. CPUs aren't. 🤷‍♂️

[hollow eagle]

RAM isn't the only issue

You're duplicating all kinds of work by running a dedicated server in the background, and you get almost zero benefit.

[empty bluff]

well, lets say i want to go with a dedicated server, so all players are clients, even the one playing on the same pc which runs the server, does anyone know if there's a guide or example of such a setup?

[violet sentinel]

aside from making a Server target should be same

but adds more troubles, since everything is a client things like lobby have to be thought out

[hollow eagle]

And again, there is zero reason to run both a dedicated server and a client on the same machine.

you will not save resources, you will end up using more.

[violet sentinel]

^

[empty bluff]

hmm ok i think i understand... will see how it goes with a listen server then

[hollow eagle]

Certain systems need to run regardless of whether you're a server or a client. So now you're running two sets of those systems, loading assets into memory twice (and hitting the disk twice as hard), ticking a world twice as much (because there will be overlap in what happens in a tick between servers and clients). Any predicted actors will hurt performance even more since you're now simulating things on both the server and client.
All this to save on some nebulous rendering cost on a client... that didn't need saving in the first place because unreal doesn't just render all actors naively.

A server needs to know about all (networked) actors, that doesn't mean it has to render every single one if it's a listen server.

[empty bluff]

oh but wait... just so i understand... lets say, as a listenserver player i stand 5000km from a door, and some client opens that door, if i could see that door from the Server player, it means he would see the door open? regardless of any replication settings?

[hollow eagle]

if there's absolutely nothing blocking the way and your clip plane is set past 5000km, yes. Neither of which seems realistic.

[empty bluff]

well, but in theory he would see it open then

what clip plane are you talking about btw?

[fading birch]

the network culling one

and visual too i imagine

[hollow eagle]

I was talking about the camera frustum. We're talking about on a listen server

network culling doesn't apply there

[fading birch]

fair point

it does for other clients tho yeah?

[hollow eagle]

yes

[fading birch]

just not the host

since they need to know

[hollow eagle]

which shouldn't matter, because something 5k km away is probably too far away to render anyway

this is sounding a lot like premature optimization anyway

make something that actually has this as a problem and then you might have a reason to think about this

[empty bluff]

ah i didn't know the camera had a clipplane

the 5k was an example 😉

[fading birch]

5k is a very very long way away

a more realistic example would be someone on the other side of a wall

[hollow eagle]

https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/RenderingAndGraphics/VisibilityCulling/

even in that example they wouldn't render unless their bounds were sticking through the wall

[fading birch]

Yeah

[hollow eagle]

you can even see exactly what's being rendered by going into PIE (or standalone), hitting ;, then hitting f

it'll freeze rendering and give you a free-cam to see what's actually being rendered by the engine

[fading birch]

r.VisualizeOccludedPrimitives 1 is good to see what's being occluded as well

[empty bluff]

i may be missing it on that page, but i don't see a place where you can define how far a camera renders

[fading birch]

You don't set it in the camera afaik, you set it per actor

[hollow eagle]

There's that, but the camera itself should have a far clip plane. I don't know how (or if) its exposed though.

The point of that page was to point out that the engine already handles only rendering stuff that's visible.

[empty bluff]

doesn't seem to be exposed

gotcha

[fading birch]

Are you familiar with Levels of Detail (LOD)'s?

[empty bluff]

yeah

are you suggesting i could add a LOD with 0 geo?

[fading birch]

nono

[empty bluff]

okok

🙂

[fading birch]

just saying, that helps with render performance as well

if you're on UE5 and using static meshes, Nanite handles that for you quite nicely

if you're not, then LOD's are your best friend for reducing tri counts

[empty bluff]

jup, i've tried UE5 too just for fun

btw found this: https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/far-clip-plane-for-camera/87613/9

and: https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/near-and-far-clip-planes/49119

which mentions min and max draw distances in advanced rendering details, which was what you meant right @fading birch ?

[fading birch]

I was referring to

[empty bluff]

yeah, i believe that's what they mention too

hmm or actually reading it again, it's something else

again, that only show up for static mesh actors though, so i guess it will have to be set for each static mesh component in ie. a BP actor

[viscid monolith]

How would i replicate destruction of bush actor, if i don't need any accurate replication?

Each client should play animations and effects by themselves, server just should notify every client, that bush actor is destroyed

Project is open world survival game

[rich locust]

is the bush actor replicateed ?

[viscid monolith]

No

There are too much of them to replicate

So i turned off replication

[rich locust]

you are going to run into problems

trust me

if you have a large world

I had 5 trials about this

replicated or not

too many actors on map

will hurt

a lot

[viscid monolith]

I know, it's hardest part of networking

[rich locust]

I can help you if you want

We have it figured out and it works perfect

[viscid monolith]

Im working on it for learning networking, so yes, help would be nice

[rich locust]

come to programmer parlor

[viscid monolith]

What's it?

[rich locust]

its voice channel

so I can share my screen to talk you through our logic

[viscid monolith]

Ah, damn, im from phone

Ill be on pc tomorrow, i can dm you

[rich locust]

I will be off for about 2 days

if you can wait we can

im not here tomorrow

sory

[viscid monolith]

No problems, i can wait! Thanks in advance!

I'm not at home this week tho, having vacations after contracts...

[empty bluff]

Would using foliage instead and swapping out instances with actors based on distance work? So that actors would get destroyed?

[rich locust]

it wont

it works to some extend

but if you have 1M + foliage

try removing an instance

and you will see a very noticable freeze

There are posts about this

you cant make multiple foliage instances

so all instances are bound to one controller

[empty bluff]

Hmm.. strange is that freeze only happening for multiplayer?

[rich locust]

it doesnt matter if multiplayer or not

foliage instances are local anyways

so no

[empty bluff]

Coz i made an interactable foliage setup a while ago that seemed to work fine with no stutters, but didnt know anything about multiplayer back then, so only worked for standalone

[rich locust]

its no difference

depends on how dense you want it to be

we had too much resources

[empty bluff]

Think i had 900k instances in my test

[rich locust]

so we came to a point of freeze

bu

but

did you try to remove an instance ?

[empty bluff]

Yeah

[rich locust]

wow

thats interesting

I think we have much more than that then

[empty bluff]

I think atleast.. let me find the video i made

[rich locust]

because we tried it out in packaged build as well

[empty bluff]

Hmm i dont show that many foliages on this video.. but i had a shitload once

https://youtu.be/uYMOBE8VuU8

Anyway what approach did yo use?

[rich locust]

in a nutshell, object pooling

[empty bluff]

Sounds interresting.. would love to hear more details of that setup

[tacit sage]

Hi, I wanted to run steam subsystem inside editor. I've found following question in the internet - https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/433631/using-the-steam-onlinesubsystem-in-the-editor.html, but it's pretty old version. So has something been changed in UE4.26 or in between?

[fading birch]

that's still the case. The steam online subsystem does not work in the editor, you'll need to launch via standalone game.

That said, if you're trying to test session functionality, it's fine to just use the null subsystem as it's functionality matches steam in that regard.

[boreal geyser]

Is there a way to create a server without opening a new level? I want to transition from my "host game" screen to my pre-game lobby where players can chat, which are both in the same level right now. Pretty much all examples I see have an OpenLevel node with the "?listen" option but I want to find a way to set the "?listen" option without the open level node. I am using the advanced sessions plugin. If its recommended that I just move the lobby to a new level, I can do it I was just wondering if its possible to connect to a server without changing levels.

[halcyon totem]

can someone help? I am having a weird issue, for some reason, my rotation gets messed up with this code, and it seperates the camera from the body it was working before I dont know why its acting like this