New Blueprint Networking Tutorial Videos Posted

Hello!

We recently posted a brand-new 6-part series on multiplayer networking through blueprints.

You can check them out here:
Part I: Networking Basics
A simple introduction to networking concepts and how to test/launch your game for network play.?v=TbaOyvWfJE0
Part II: Actor and Variable Replication
Walk-through of how to setup blueprint actors and variables for network play, as well as a look at networking-related iconography in blueprints.?v=ZsDRDAdtA9w
Part III: Function Replication
Walk-through of using function replication, when to use function vs. variable replication, and explanation of reliable vs. unreliable function calls.?v=wutqpyDKnCQ
Part IV: Network Relevancy
Explanation of what network relevancy is and why you need to know about it whenever making networked content.?v=6w8_eC5qlSs
Part V: Adding Networked Features to 3rd Person Template - Part I
Plan out the addition of some simple networked features to the blueprint 3rd person template and then setup the character blueprint according to the plan.
v=htdI2dh-aek

Part VI: Adding Networked Features to 3rd Person Template - Part II
Conclusion of adding simple networked features to the 3rd person template, including setting up a simple bomb blueprint.?v=Un7pGHb61Sc

FAQ
Q: When I follow along with the 3rd person template in parts V and VI, my client doesn’t spawn in!
This is unfortunately a bug that seems to have cropped up between the latest version and when I initially filmed the tutorials. The good news is that it should already be fixed in the upcoming 4.1 release. Sorry for the inconvenience in the meanwhile!

EDIT: The root cause of this issue is related to collision between the characters trying to spawn at the same spot. Until 4.1 comes out, a work-around you can use is to move the server character out of the way, then swap to the client window, bring up the console (bound to the tilde key ` by default), and type “reconnect” without the quotes. Completely forgot about such a simple work-around until user “themxer14” brought it up, so much thanks to them!

Q: Where can I get the tutorial content map used in parts II, III, and IV?
We’ll be releasing this map for free as part of the content examples in the future. It’s not quite ready for distribution yet (needs some descriptions cleaned up, etc.), but we really wanted to make sure to get some info on blueprint networking out, so I jumped the gun on the videos before the map was all the way finished!

Q: How can I easily change where the players spawn when they join?
I totally overlooked this aspect while filming the tutorial, wanting to focus on replication, etc. As it turns out, this part of the process is not as easy as it should be right this second exclusively through blueprints. We’re working to make this easier and add hooks for blueprints to choose starting spots in the future.

Thanks for checking out the tutorials and feel free to hit me up here or on Twitter with feedback, questions, etc.! Special thanks to Zak for teaching me the ropes of filming a tutorial!

I just finished watching them all. Thanks for posting these. Even though I don’t plan to do any networking in my project your videos where easy to follow and you can learn a lot from them. Thanks again :slight_smile:

Billy, again, thanks for the tutorials. Truly super-awesome and have really helped me progress with my game.

For those that are impatient, I cracked this particular nut with some hackery but it works well enough and could be extended fairly easily to handle teams, etc.:
https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?2107-Come-Learn-Blueprint-Multiplayer-with-me!-(aka–s-a-Glutton-for-Punishment)&p=12895&viewfull=1#post12895

Can’t wait to use the ‘real’ solution :stuck_out_tongue:

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

You guys are posting tutorials faster than I can learn them! (That’s a good thing ;))

Do you think you could do some C++ tutorials any time soon? I’m finding that area much harder to get documentation on, because everybody is excited about the blueprints. Not that blueprints or bad or anything, quite the contrary, but I still want to learn to do more advanced coding as well.

Thank you very much, glad to hear!

Also glad you found them helpful. As a gameplay programmer, most of my day-to-day work is in an already established project that is a hybrid of native C++ and blueprints, so I don’t always personally know all the gotchas of setting all the pieces up in blueprint myself. The player spawn problem is a good example. We’ve been handling that in C++ in Fortnite, so I wasn’t aware that could use some love in blueprint town until recently. The engine team is on the case though! I actually started an email thread today also about providing some thoughts on the forums re: pawn BP replication, because I see from your thread and some others that is causing some confusion vs. characters.

Quite welcome!

What kind of topics would you like to see C++ tutorials on? For me personally, I can never make up my mind which type of things for C++ would be helpful as a video tutorial vs. a blog post vs. an API document, etc., so suggestions of what you think would be helpful could help guide some things!

Epic is feeding us everyday with great and fresh content in both assets and learning materials. You guys obviously doing this in Epic way : ) For C++ tutorials, my first choose would some hybrid tutorial featuring C++ and Blueprints communication. I think video is not necessary for this tutorial. It can be a blog post or something like that. I would like to see how can i start a new project with basic things like instantiating actors, moving and destroying them, getting collisions and changing exposed parameters of actors etc. with C++ in UE4.

Hi Billy,

I would like to thank you guys for the engine and for the great content and tutorials you are releasing, they are awesome!. About the C++ tutorials, I would really like to have a tutorial about inventorys, how to program the logic of an inventory in C++, a simple one, that would be great :slight_smile:

Regards,

Raul

Thanks for the suggestions, they are definitely helpful! Will forward them along to any of the engineers looking to do tutorial topics.

Added in a simple work-around for the client spawning issue until 4.1 is released, thanks to user “themxer14” for reminding me!

I’ve never understood networking before your videos Billy, and within two minutes of your first tutorial, I’m fully on board with the concept now :slight_smile:
Excellent, clear and concise tutorials. Hats off to you :cool:

Hello,
Great networking tutorials, would be nice to have part 3 and 4 in c++.

Regards,

Marcel

Thank you so much for this great tutorial, I can not wait to try it them we can get the Unreal Engine 4 Software

Been following the tutorials and in my project i am running into some weirdness.

  1. When we run 2 clients and no dedicated server with our own player controller class, we see one player controller that is the child of a pawn??? the other is not?

  2. The other Player Controller shows up three times in the scene outliner, and only one of the player controllers (there are 2 from 2 clients) is selectable?

  3. We are calling a blueprint function that is replicated to run on the server to spawn an actor for each of our pawns, and we see three actors get spawned when there is only 2 clients and no dedicated server. In this function that is replicated to the server, we attempt to set a variable that is RepNotify, and the notify function is NOT getting called all 3 times (which may be related to the fact that there is 3 of them for some reason but i dont know).

Just finished watching the tutorials and am really happy with how much better this is than UDK uscript replication, no more ugly replication block!

I cannot wait for those assets…
That ghost outline still appearing through the floor, kinda like L4D really caught my eye too…

Thank you! I’m glad they helped!

Thanks! We definitely want to get some more information on networking in C++ out there ASAP. The engine and documentation teams are both working hard to get the networking documentation released soon. Part of the reason I skewed toward doing the blueprint one sooner was because I wasn’t sure there were any good blueprint networking examples at all, whereas at least for C++ some of the example games at least have some source code that could be looked at. Even still, definitely want some clear C++ examples sooner rather than later.

You’re welcome!

Hmm, I just tried to reproduce these issues at home and didn’t have any luck. Can you provide some more information about how you’re doing things? I might just be confused with what you did.

:smiley: I need to check in on how the map is coming along, hopefully will be ready for release soon.

Hey Billy, i found a bug in your Bomb Blueprint. The Bomb’s dont explode if there is no player in the explosion radius, the On Explosion event needs to be executed after the ForEachLoop has finished, where as you execute it when Apply Damage is executed, which it is not when there is no player around. Fixed Image

Would it be too much to ask if you also made the project file or map available for this tutorials? ( or even better for all of the tutorials ) You could just host it on the Marketplace or somewhere else on the Launcher. Don’t get me wrong, I like the videos but it would be nice to load up these scenarios and experiment with them.

Thanks

Aha, good catch, thanks for pointing that out! One of the downfalls of making content on the fly, might cause some bugs :wink:

The map in the early tutorial parts will definitely be released on the marketplace when it’s finished. I didn’t actually think about trying to save/distribute the stuff in the last two tutorials when I was making them though.

Hi,
Thanks for the great tutorial! This seems like it would be handy for a whole bunch of things. How about a followup tutorial for deploying a gun turret?