What (online) multiplayer features are available and how do they work?

Development Programming & Scripting Multiplayer & Networking
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I’ve browsed through quite a bit of the available documentation and found quite a few short mentions of things like dedicated server and replication, but not a single bit of information about how they work and how to use them (probably because it just got released - all ok).

I’m interested in any bit of information regarding (online) multiplayer / dedicated server and even general network functions, but mostly about these questions:

  1. Does UE4 have features built in to built a (dedicated) authoritative server?
  2. If yes, does it handle/support player movement interpolation and physics synchronization?
  3. Are there features to run multiple games (like 10 player instances) on a single server without spawning multiple processes of the dedicated server?

Edit: After posting I clicked my own tags and found some first information which I’ll post here. My questions pretty much remain the same though.

https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/12970/оfficial-network-documentation.html

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#Answers

"Does UE4 have features built in to built a (dedicated) authoritative server?"

yes, absolutely, you can run a dedicated server and have as many client machines connect to it as you want

"If yes, does it handle/support player movement interpolation and physics synchronization?"

Player movement is always interpolated for you (thank you Epic!_

Physics Sync

You must specify during content creation which static mesh actors you want to have replication, in the Blueprints for these static mesh actors.

just do a filter for “rep” after making a blueprint of a static mesh actor.

There are several replication related properties that you should activate.

"Are there features to run multiple games (like 10 player instances) on a single server without spawning multiple processes of the dedicated server?"

You only have the server run one instance of the game, and client machines connect to it and are fed data from the server via replication variables.

To my knowledge the server does not create any extra processes the more clients are connected.

You should just make a dedicated server and have clients connect and enjoy,
it works!

#More Info

If you are serious about networking stuff you should definitely be coding in the C++ and creating the networked gameplay you want.

My Own Real Multiplayer Game

It is not that complicated at all to get started, I’ve already hosted real multiplayer games for my own game project with multiple participants many times just using IP address.

My game is an in-game editor and has very unusual game logic, all of which I have been able to convert into networked environment.

I assure you it is really not that complicated, it is just a few extra layers of syntax in the C++ and then you can be making your own custom networked game logic.

#The Unreal Engine is a leader in the industry regarding multiplayer games, you are good to go

Rama

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Your own game, is it in UE4 or the old UDK?

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UE4, I am from the Beta

:slight_smile:

Rama

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When you discussed multiple games on the sever, how would you do that exactly. From what I’ve seen, the Map is a server so its one map, on instance, one server.

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You basically can run multiple instances per 1 physical server, but it depends on your game how greedy server is