In the past I used C++ to make text games, I knew how challenging it can be. So when I started with Unreal, I made a commitment to stick with blueprints. I reasoned this would be a learning phase and I’d just experiment by following different tutorials. After some time, I wanted to make a major multiplayer survival game project. I would post the game online on a free gaming site. I began developing my game working with AI, lighting, sound, NPCs, and recently procedural generation. I wanted my game to foster emergence. To do this I began designing emergent systems whereby everything was interconnecting with each other. The game was rapidly becoming complex. I decided to start looking into multiplayer.
My initial plan had been to create a full game and then add multiplayer functionality to it, but to my horror I discovered I was going about this the wrong way. The Unreal documentation said that I should had been incorporating multiplayer capability into my game from day 1. Similarly I had never packaged my project, I had always assumed that since it worked in the editor it would work fine as an executable. It was at this time I grudgingly abandoned nearly half year’s worth of work. I created a new project and I said we are gonna do this right this time. I’m gonna create a workable project from beginning to finish.
Which brings me to the present. The reason why I’m pushing myself to endure all this torture of engine source and C++ is because I want a completely functional game from beginning to end. Once I have those systems in place working, I can gradually add and test all those game play elements I had to abandon. I want to avoid packaging a 20 gigabyte project and 100s of errors swamping me all at once. I’d rather deal with 1 or 2 errors at a time. Basically, I don’t want to put in another 6 month’s worth of work only to have to take a sledge hammer to my project again.
The main reason why I was creating a dedicated server was for replication practice. I have a second computer. I figured if I could get the multiplayer working on both of them it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to get them working on friends or strangers computers. Though I am concerned about security issues dealing with strangers. But now you are telling me that I can test all the multiplayer features on my own system, and Unreal has a fully functioning dedicated server project.
So basically you are telling me if all the replication works properly in the Unreal editor server and editor client windows, it should work identical if its ported to other computers and servers? This would be a welcome relief cuz then I could return to focus on my project development instead of fighting with compilers and 7 hour builds.