[Question] Multiplayer Prerequisites

Development Programming & Scripting Multiplayer & Networking
, , , , , ,
1

Hi,

I’m looking at starting the multiplayer side to my project, have a few questions before I begin, and was hoping I could get them answered…

1. Will I be able to use my Single player Actors/Blueprints without modifications?

  • I’ve put a lot of work into my character blueprints, and want to know if I’ll have to modify them at all before putting them into a multiplayer environment. Same with my levers, physics objects, and other game assets

2. Can you do multiplayer with only blueprints?

  • So far, I’ve been able to keep my entire project to blueprints. And for simplicity’s sake, I’d like to keep it that way. Is it possible to achieve multiplayer functionality without using C++, and sticking strictly to Blueprints?.. I’ve noticed actors like NetworkHost and BeaconClient and wasn’t sure if those might have something to do with it.

3. Will matinee’s work across multiplayer?

  • I’m using quite a few Matinee’s in my game, and am curious as to weather or not I will need to modify them to run on a multiplayer game.

Any help with these questions would be awesome, Thanks!

-Nate

2

Hi Nathan,

Victor is mostly correct in that you cannot set the replication for functions outside of code. I have discussed this with our replication specialists and have since entered a report to have that feature opened up in a future release of the engine. Additionally, I have spoken with the documentation team and they are actively writing the multiplayer pages at this time. Once they are complete, they will be integrated.

Variables, however, can have replication set via Blueprint by dragging off of a “Get” of the variable and searching for “Set Is Replicated” with Context Sensitive disabled.

Cheers!

Alexander

3

Awesome, Great to hear that the multiplayer documentation is finally coming out. It will be a huge help. Thanks!

4

If I can add/manage multiplayer using only Blueprints, I’d be the happiest game maker in Colorado!

5
  1. Most likely not. Blueprints dont tend to work well with multiplayer(happened to me)
  2. No. At this moment, you need c++ code to make functions server or client based and to replicate variables properly.
  3. Yes, that should work.
6

Thanks for the info, I’ll start looking into Rama’s tutorial on multiplayer now. Hopefully in the future there’s better support for blueprints across multiplayer.

7

The answer for this has changed now with current UE4 versions, except for question #1 - that’s probably always going to be no, you do have to take special considerations for everything when programming multiplayer whether blueprints or otherwise.