I want to learn unreals multiplayer . From other posts I’ve seen this company offers good hosting and it is cheap for what I need 5$ is the cheapest and probably all I need for testing. https://www.digitalocean.com/
1: I have no idea how I would set up a dedicated or master server on their hosting. I’ve never used services to host or even really made my own website.
Can someone explain how setting up a master server on this service would work, are there any guides? Do you just send your dedicated.exe through ftp to the hosting service and then somehow have it execute? Can someone please explain this.
Or is there a easier way to create a master server I don’t need much because I’ll just be using it for testing my multiplayer game with a few friends. I could host a master server on my computer but I’ve had problems in unity with people not being able to connect to me even though I had the port forwarding set up correctly.
What do I need to know to set up a master server and get that to send players to a certain game.
What things do I need to research and be familiar with. Thanks!
Master server can be done in any form, goal of it is to list servers, so you need to make way for server to register to it and way for players to optain it. I think HTTP solution would be the best for something simple and keep list in database. Master server can have just ips of server, the reast of data can be optained from server beacon. The game server need to send HTTP request every few minutes, if its stops to send them you outdate hist master server entry. You could also use diffrent protocols, for exmple communication protocols IRC or XMPP (but you would need to add support for those to UE4). Also some online subsystems support master servers, i think SteamWorks do
As for hosting game server, you need Linux or Windows server where you cen run your own executables and have all needed dependies.
But there is a thing I still don’t get. Like you said master server maintains a “IP:PORT” list of available game servers(sessions), but in my case the IP address of the game servers is a private address (I have only 1 public IP address available at my IaaS provider), so how can I connect the client directly to the game server? Via some port forwarding or NAT punch-through?
I did some research but found no clear answer so I posted a question on this topic How to connect to servers in private network?, it’ll be great if you can check it a bit! Thanks a lot!
If you plan to use dedicated servers in your game, it is assumed that players will host them on server rether then home computers and if they do anyway they should be able to forward port themselves, if you want to do more client side hosting like in majority of console game you need to use some online service that manage it, like SteamWorks.