Can you actually make a multiplayer game with blueprints?

Development Programming & Scripting Blueprint
1

I know its been asked before. Trust me, iv’e done enough google searches, and linking me to stuff that doesn’t answer the question without going into specifics of the essence of the question i’m asking is not going to help.

So with that being said, ill keep it simple with a hypothetical.

Can a game as complex as Fortnite/ Counter Strike be remade purely with blueprints?

With all the elements that these types of games have (like server browsers/matchmaking etc.)

Good things to note are: If I were to make a game it would be on steam (im pretty sure this affects networking)

And there’d be server-client matchmaking (correct me if im wrong, but what my understanding of what this means is, servers would host games with, in my case, a small number (6) of players, one of them would be host. Im pretty sure this is what call of duty does. However it would absolutely have to be a small number of players because most people’s internet cannot handle more than about 7 clients connected to a game at once.

I’d do this because Im unable to pay for servers of course.

Or there would just be dedicated servers that people pay to host like garry’s mod or unturned.

Some things ive noticed might be a problem with blueprints that, if true, completely invalidate the idea that blueprints can make a complex game are:

Writing to files https://forums.unrealengine.com/deve…48293-file-i-o
Because im pretty sure that applies to saving data in a video game too.

Also i’ve heard that something called voxels are not possible without coding, which im pretty sure is how Fortnites building mechanic works.

Also ive heard that dynamic meshes arent possible without coding (im not sure id use this though)

Also I remember trying to make a game back in November, and having trouble with the character movement component’s collision mesh not being able to go into a prone position (it only does stand and crouch). I then thought, well, I might as well make my own movement component and apply it to a pawn class. I asked how to do this and the forums told me that this is only possible with c++.

Also, the reason I came here is because the first comment on my reddit post wasnt exactly helpful, and I hope nobody here does the same, because this type of thing happens just about every time I make a forum post like this. Reddit - Dive into anything

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Then this is why I absolutely hate the fact that the general consensus here is that “Blueprints are able to do everything that C++ can, just with more work”, because clearly thats bs. I can link a few forum posts saying this but i’m sure you’ve seen them before. Its misleading a lot of aspiring indie developers who can better spend their time learning to code.

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just curious, where does C# fit on that spectrum and if better than blueprints, yet easier than C++, why doesnt blueprints offer it? unity uses it, sure, so does cryengine

and what good is the blueprinting phase if as some of you say the end results with blueprints are useless?.. what steps do you take to go from a game fully coded with blueprints to C++?

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You don’t make a game using only Blueprint or C++. You use both and the % of each is up to you and your knowledge.

Fortnite and Paragon have a lot of Blueprints but there is no critical code inside. Their Blueprints are often just data.

You can do a lot of things in Blueprints, enough to ship a game like Paragon, Counter-Strike or Fortnite. Will it be AAA quality in terms of networking/performances? Surely not. Especially if you don’t have a solid programming background. But there will be all of the mechanics you want.

A lot of things are not “exposed” to Blueprints (meaning you can only do them in C++). But either you can find a work-around or you can write a small C++ logic that exposes it for you.

You can do a multiplayer game 99% in Blueprints but it won’t be top-notch performance is the correct answer to me.

It’s not because you have to do some of the things in C++ that Blueprint should be discarded.

EDIT: But if you are wondering what language should you learn between Blueprint and C++ (admitting you are starting from scratch) with the objective to make a multiplayer game, C++ would make more sense. You’ll find yourself doing a lot of Blueprint anyway.

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The C++ coding in Unreal Engine is not much more difficult than using C# in Unity, however the macros being thrown around in UE4 makes it a bit tricky at times.

You probably could make a multiplayer game in pure blueprint but you are bound to run into certain limitations that you either have to accept or get a C++ programmer to fix.

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well, thats the problem as someone pointed out above is theres not a whole lot of tutorials or information about converting a blueprint to C++ in any gaming engine for that matter… nearly all UE4 tutorials are BPs and nearly all unity is C#… if both are relatively useless for making good multiplayer games then why isnt there more tutorials on C++ development aspect of it?

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No matter which game engine is used, nobody should build ALL game logic on top of interpreted scripts or compiled virtual machines.

Blueprints are VMs (virtual machines).
Unity’s CSharp is a VM.
Python is a VM. etc…

To me seems like Unity’s userbase is a cultism where people refuse to see the truth for whatever reason they might have.

Some people built entire games fully on Blueprints and published on PS4, but those games will never run as performant as would if they used C++ where it matters.

Btw, new developers always want to start with Multiplayer. More often than not are bound to fail and this is not game engine’s fault.

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A certain level of proficiency you only acquire with experience. Be it in university or working on the field.
What you’re asking is for professionals to transfer all their experience to you through “tutorials”, but they are very busy making games; Also, tutorials rarely work for things this deep.

Someone would have to manage a way to take one of those pros from the trenches and bring it to teach you all the things he/she knows… How to achieve that “for free” while such professional could be earning around 100K/year instead?!

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i might actually have the C++ tutorials already found to do much of what i am looking for actually… i may have to start converting things to C++ or just start a new project from scratch as im not so far into it that that’d be a huge loss… what i am making is not overly complex, but it is a first person multiplayer

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When doing multiplayer games even the simple things can become troublesome if you don’t know exactly what you are doing… believe me. But eventually it all starts to make more sense when you have found a good way to debug it.

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from what i could understand as well as that nativization is actually pretty good when comparing C++ vs blueprints where as in some cases blueprints is like 1/20th the speed of C++ in some applications, blueprints nativized seems to be closer to 1/2, which seems like it’d be plenty for online multiplayer games… i wonder how much effort epic is going to put into nativization in the future because it certainly has potential for using the simplicity of blueprints to make a game and convert to C++ to play it

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you know, the more i go through the C++ tutorials the more i realize its really not as bad as some people make it out to be… is it as easy as blueprints? nah, do i need to really “know” everything about C++? not really… but learning the functions specific to UE4 as i go along with some tutorials, its really not that bad

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As I told people numerous times:
You don’t have to learn the “real C++”. You just need to learn Unreal’s API; Unreal’s C++ really isn’t as hard as that “raw” C++ (mixed with C) that .NET users fear so much.

There are a few regions of Unreal Engine that the source code is very hard to read (for reference gathering), but most of the time when you get stuck you can just Shift + Alt + F in Visual Studio (with Visual AssistX installed), instantly finding tons and tons of sample code to learn from.

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this is true… i bet theres probably even a repository of C++ unreal scripts out there somewhere to search through… i know theres a site for C# stuff for unity… but i agree with above… its not as hard as full blown C++

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“Can a game as complex as Fortnite/ Counter Strike be remade purely with blueprints? With all the elements that these types of games have (like server browsers/matchmaking etc.)”

-Until recently this wasn’t possible, but the “Multiplayer with Blueprints” plugin on the Unreal Marketplace changed everything. You can now make a AAA quality game with scalable servers, matchmaking etc. all with blueprints, saving thousands of hours.