Broadcasting a match to huge amount of spectators (in-game)

Development Programming & Scripting Multiplayer & Networking
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1

Hi there,

I am wondering whether it is possible to broadcast a multiplayer game in such a way that, let’s assume, a 1000 spectators can watch the game. If each of those spectators would enter the game as a real spectator with all the logging into game (Pre-, PostLoad …) being handled this would simply overload and slow the server on which the game is running on.

The goal is to have the possibility to enable an ideally infinite amount of spectators to watch the game live so that they are for example able to look at the match from their own camera that they control in-game. Streamings like twitch just allow a spectator to watch a single video/audio stream.

I find it hard phrasing my question, maybe I’m simply missing a keyword which could lead me to the correct answer.

I’ll be looking forward to your answers!

Best regards,

2

Just found this:

There don’t seem to have been any updates on it. But it somewhat sounds related to what I’m asking for.

3

I just came up with an idea. Using the network replay system one could record a demo as a spectator and stream this demo to a vast amount of spectators. This would also enable to use another server for broadcasting (I’m not very knowledgeable about broadcasting in general).

Question is whether it is already about to be implemented: see NetworkReplayStreaming (NetworkReplayStreaming | Unreal Engine Documentation)

4

Found something in UE4.8 release notes:

We have a system that allows you to easily swap out replay streamers. This allows you to use a streamer that saves replays locally, or you can use a streamer that is designed to save replays to the cloud with full streaming support. More on that in future releases!

Would be cool to get a bit more insight into what is planned/upcoming!? : )

5

I just found this:

For mass broadcasting, Epic has provided FHttpNetworkReplayStreamer, using web tech to scale this to 1000s of player is the way to go.

This is exactly what I’m looking for.

If anybody has proceeded with implementing huge spectator amounts, I’d be super happy if you shared your experience.

6

I am looking into this right now. Epic provides a streamer, and they even have some Java code for running the web service. However, as far as I can tell, the FHttpNetworkReplayStreamer class used to work with the server, but has since moved on to some other API. It would seem to me that if the streaming class is using a newer API, then there must be some server code somewhere that Epic is testing the new API against? However, I can’t find much info about this feature online at all. Has anyone here used it??