MMO Starter Kit

[FV Panda]

This is a tough question jonimake. It is not easy to set up a test with thousands of real clients to measure the resources spike.

To give you an idea of how resource intensive it is, I'm currently running it on the very lowest Softlayer configuration ($28/month). The server currently occupies 45 MB of RAM, and the difference isn't noticeable when 10 people connect. The CPU usage is very low as well.

Maybe we should make an event, and have a bunch of people from the community log in at once and see where your set up starts having problems at. We could do similar tests when it is finished to make sure that the features dont lower the number or clients?

[FV Panda]

Is the server currently down? My client will not go past the Login screen.

nevermind

[FV Panda]

Okay so i decided to put as many instances as i could on to the demo. I have 10 of my own characters online, and there are 2 others online at the time of this post. My side is of course experiencing performance issues, but I have 10 instances of the demo running at once.

A few things that need to be addressed though:

I can log into the same account over and over again.
The Character List can only hold 8 characters (barely) before going disappearing out of its bounds.
I can log into the same character over and over again as well.

Nothing that isnt to be expected at this early stage, but thought you might want to know.

I have a much better computer at home. Hit me up via email if you want me to log as many as I absolutely can tonight, and I will let you know what time i can multilog at.


Great job though, it seems to be handling my connections well!

[Synt4x]

I haven't had time to dive too deep into this, how versatile is it?
Would I be able to easily convert this for a FPSMMO or would it be easier to start from scratch?

[Sitrec]

Fantastic work CodeSpartan! I'm sure this will be very helpful for a lot of players.
I'd suggest splitting it up in components so someone that is only interested in the server part of it doesn't have to bother with the target combat if they're doing something else for example.

[Denny]

Big cred for the effort!

Closing note: MMO's are pretty feared in indie gamedev community and new users who have a MMO dream are often laughed at. There's also an aura of secrecy about them, maintained by people who have once dived into MMOs a little but failed and are unwilling to share their knowledge with the others, prefering to discourage them instead. Well, they are wrong. It IS possible to create an MMO, it is NOT rocket science, and NO it doesn't necessarily cost millions. Just as Unreal 4's graphics would cost millions to achieve some few years ago, those things just become more available as the time goes. My goal is to create the best MMO kit for Unreal, with extensive documentation that covers not only how to work with the kit from within Unreal, but also things like how to order and set up a dedicated Softlayer server.

I can't help but bite on this passive aggressive message. Your structure looks perfectly fine as it is now. Tell me though, what happens when you start having hundreds of players? Thousands? Then thousands of NPCs roaming for the players to grind? How do you handle bigger lands, where you need to zone of areas to separate server clusters? Server transitions? Possible instances? How much of the game logic is handled server side to counter user exploits?

Using the built-in networking system is perfectly fine for a prototype or starter kit, but make sure not to give people false hopes of the capabilities on the server side. There is a reason why MMOs run in dedicated server halls.

Don't get me wrong. An MMO can run on one server if it is a basic game with proper optimization. I'm just calling out for full transparency on the capacity on your solution. Otherwise people will start to spam you and ask "Why is my MMO lagging so bad?! I only have 200 players active.".

The starter kit looks really good so far. Good work.

[CodeSpartan]

I'm just calling out for full transparency on the capacity on your solution.

I would also like the full transparency on the capacity of Unreal's dedicated server, but Epic hasn't provided us with those numbers yet. As FV Panda has proposed, I'll just have to organize a stress test event myself and hopefully enough people will log in.

Tell me though, what happens when you start having hundreds of players?

I would address the issues and make sure those hundreds have a good experience. Believe me, I would love having access to hundreds of players to test this with.

How much of the game logic is handled server side to counter user exploits?

I'm taking exploits quite seriously. Some of the things that are handled server-side currently (client-side too, but the server has the final say): NPC AI, a check that this user can attack their target, a check that the attacker is in range, a check that the attacker is looking at their target, death and respawn, damage calculations. All of these provide examples on how server can be authoritative, so that the users can study them and make their own authoritative checks based on those since each game is different.

[CodeSpartan]

I haven't had time to dive too deep into this, how versatile is it?
Would I be able to easily convert this for a FPSMMO or would it be easier to start from scratch?

Hi, if it was me, I would definately not start from scratch, even if I was making a totally unique MMO. Login/registration, character creation, saving and loading of character stats on world enter/exit took quite a while of time to do. Also, chat and combat log. If you're familiar with Blueprints it shouldn't be hard to convert the game logic for your game.

[jpreyneke]

Any idea when this will go live?

[CodeSpartan]

jpreyneke, the demo server is live - you can download the client from the link in the first post As for the submission to the Marketplace, first I need to finish the documentation. I've basically created this thread the moment I was satisfied with the demo, so no documentation has been written yet.

[FlyofAvalon]

Few question. Since your using the stock server it will still be one server = one map? Or will it support instances of maps?

Secondly, will it support server to server communication? Or will that be out of the scope of the project?

Either way it looks amazing and I cant wait to buy it and try it out.

[Mr_SquarePeg]

I am really looking forward to this for my game.

That said - I have a few questions -

1. Can we redistribute our server backend if this is included? (For Player Hosted Shards or Private Servers?)
2. Will there be a modification version of this tool for modders who want to modify the game?
3. Can we get rid of the login screen and have a profile based system? (Basically have GOG Galaxy or Steam do the work for login / authentication / etc.)
4. Would you consider providing more tools such as an dedicated dialog tools, Quest creations tools, Mob Creation Tools, etc for this kit?
5. Also how many players (Simulated or Real) have you managed to get in a single server instance so far?
6. Will this be updated for each new version of Unreal 4? If so How long will it be updated for?
7. What are the specs required for the server to run this?

Thank you for your time,

HeadClot

[KITATUS]

Ah man, I'd love to have this. Any ETA on when we can expect this?

[CodeSpartan]

Thanks for your interest guys

Few question. Since your using the stock server it will still be one server = one map? Or will it support instances of maps?

Too early to say, but I've done some testing of the instances and got them to work, so I have good hopes for it. This is on my list, but later down the road.

Secondly, will it support server to server communication? Or will that be out of the scope of the project?

Out of the scope for now. I have a huge list of important and cool things I have to add/fix. I'm interested though, why are you wondering about it? I mean, WoW added cross-server lfg after several years of running, and I can't say that it is a great feature (less immersion and same-server friendships/reputation imo). Or do you mean something entirely different? If you mean cross-server chat, this can be done already in like one click since chat server is separate from the game server.

[CodeSpartan]

I am really looking forward to this for my game.

That said - I have a few questions -

1. Can we redistribute our server backend if this is included? (For Player Hosted Shards or Private Servers?)

Yes, not the source though, just the packaged server.

2. Will there be a modification version of this tool for modders who want to modify the game?

You'll have to do it yourself, the principle would be the same as allowing to modify any other Unreal game. Sorry, I haven't explored this and so I can't give advice on it.

3. Can we get rid of the login screen and have a profile based system? (Basically have GOG Galaxy or Steam do the work for login / authentication / etc.)

Steam login is an interesting idea, I will definitely consider in the future. The project is in blueprints and everything is open, if you have the knowledge how to do a login through Steam/GOG Galaxy, you can do it.

4. Would you consider providing more tools such as an dedicated dialog tools, Quest creations tools, Mob Creation Tools, etc for this kit?

I plan to slowly make the demo project more and more into a WoW clone (with inventory and quests and different NPCs, etc). However, if you are familiar with blueprints, you can do the new game logic yourself. It's not hard at all, and you can use the existing logic/rpcs as examples. Personally, after a month of challenging work, right now I would totally love to do easy stuff like inventory system, instead of doing the documentation, which I must do

Dialog tools - those are tricky. Compared to a certain other game engine, there is no public knowledge on how to make custom node editors in Unreal and the only good way to do a dialogue system is through a node editor like this one. I haven't seen one Unreal node editor made by someone not at Epic yet. When there will be info on how to do it, someone will make a dialogue system very fast and sell it on the Marketplace. Most MMO's have very simple dialogues so I prefer not to worry about it at the moment, it's RPG kit makers who should be concerned about the lack of a dialogue system.

5. Also how many players (Simulated or Real) have you managed to get in a single server instance so far?

I'm organizing a stress test event, can't disclose the details but hopefully we will know the answer to this question this week.

6. Will this be updated for each new version of Unreal 4? If so How long will it be updated for?

I will update it indefinitely if people are interested. MMO's are my passion and I do intend to make some money from selling the kit on the Marketplace so why would I not update it? If I decide to drop it for some reason or if I die suddenly, it will be made open-source.

7. What are the specs required for the server to run this?

The lowest Softlayer virtual server configuration ( $44.60/month with Windows Server) runs it just fine. It has a single core 2.0 GHz CPU and 1GB RAM