I’m asking this because in certain multiplayer games, some interactions that happen on the player’s screen looks different than that from other players’ perspective. A good example would be if we have two players that are interacting with an NPC. The NPC is coded to lock its face on the player’s camera whenever they enter the NPC’s collision box. However, player 1’s screen would show the NPC looking at them, but if player 2 where to leave this interaction, the NPC wouldn’t be look at player 1. In both player’s screens, the NPC would be looking at them individually.
Another good example is in the game Sea of Thieves, where the players can see their character’s hand and the object they picked up. Other players would see the character skeleton raising its hand and holding said object. However when the player moves their camera all the way up or down, the hand and the object held doesn’t change, it stays at the bottom right corner of the player’s screen. On the other hand, other players don’t see the character’s arms moving up or down as the player moves their camera around.
This made me realize that maybe these multiplayer games like Sea of Thieves use the FirstPerson Template, I’m not sure because I’m not very familiar with UE4 yet and so would like to know so I can use the correct template for my game.
If you want your game to be first person, use first person. If you want it third person then use third person. Once you’ve got it running from a local player perspective you can then start to put avatars to represent other players into the world. You’ll want to use a different character class for them anyway so just make sure that the attached mesh is a full body rather than just some arms.
Remember, games can use a lot of tricks so just because you’re seeing the world in first person, it doesn’t mean that every other player has to see you or anything else in the world in the same way.
So you use a first person template and add a body mesh to your character? Rather than use third person template and add a camera to the character mesh’s head ?
Neither really. Remember that only the local player (i.e. the one which is being controlled on the computer where the player is sat) needs to be a controllable first person character. For this type of character just use the First Person Template.
For everyone elses character just treat them like they are an NPC. You (the local player) don’t need these character to be locally controllable and you don’t need them to have cameras on or anything, you just need to spawn a mesh that looks right and then perform whatever movement is necessary as you get information over the network. They can look completely different on every players screen if you want.