Viewport on dedicated server

Hi,

For debugging purpose, it would be useful to see what’s going on the dedicated server using a debug cam that can fly around the environment. Is it supported by the engine? How can I achieve this?

Thanks

Indeed, this can be seen has two distincts problems.

  1. Having graphics on the dedicated server
  2. Interacting with it to determine where to render from (debug cam or else).

When there is a will, there is a way. I don’t mind digging in the engine. If anybody have pointers on where to start, that would be good.

Thanks

The dedicated server (dedicated server) cannot use ANY graphics of ANY kind. That’s the point of it, really.

You could use a listen server and use console commands to turn rendering off/on and adjust the screen and such

Note: I’m sure there’s some way around the DS having no graphics, but I imagine it wouldn’t be simple.
But I’m also pretty sure the DS doesn’t have a “player controller” and can’t interact with anything like you’d think.

An easier way to do that is define a new player that has the ability to fly (player can be a camera with a controller only). You can do that through gamemode spawn methods (add a special parameter input such that you spawn and control a debug camera instead of your regular player character. Of course this has to be done with a client and not on the dedicated server itself.

Think of it as a gamemaster player if you ever played an MMO, you could add your own method of verification such that only you can access it.

The whole point of using a dedicated server is that you save alot of resources by not having a graphical component and it would take more effort than it’s worth to redo the whole dedicated server system.

It’s a very good suggestion and it would solve how to interact with the dedicated server to navigate around the world.

I know that dedicated server are meant to save resources and I obviously plan to “ship” without graphics. I just find that it would be useful mostly for physics and animations.

Anyhow, I’ll give it a try and I’ll update the post when I’ll know how much modifications to the engine are needed to achieve this.

Thanks