Hello, I just created 40×40 km. tiled terrain in World Machine and its ready to import to UE4. but I heard there are some problems with large terrains working with multiplayer. I want make something like DayZ multiplayer game with large open world.
Possible to make something like this? I´m not a programming king, editing something in the UE4 source code will be pretty challenge for me.
I would recommend streaming your terrain for a large open world. Ive started playing around with that as im attempting an open world type of game project myself.
The engine doesn’t support something that big for multiplayer
Even local LAN multiplayer for few players too?
What is the max size for multiplayer?
I ask because im working on some things and im about to post some questions … not to hijack …
Whats the best method for setting up an open world, tiled, landscape at high res?
Can i do an 8k res @ 64kx64k ?
If im using tiled, what if someone is on a mountain and looks out, will the distant tiles be “missing” due to the player not being X unreal units away from that tile, so, its not rendered in?
Can i setup a single heightmap @ low res (say 2k) and use that as a “blanket” (call it Map1) on my tiled map set (map2) to 8k res and set the res in-game for “map1” to super low? This should allow the landscape to always be seen, but, just super low res. Rendering in the high-res as people get closer and closer to the tile … right?
Would that just add more weight to the map itself, effectively lowering FPS due to having to load in 2 maps (or 1 fulle map +X amount of tiles @ high res)…
etc etc etc … lol
The engine supports 20km size maximum, it can be larger by using World Composition but world composition is not supported for multiplayer–I believe world composition shifts the origin to keep things running, but if you have people far enough away then it can’t do that which is why it wouldn’t work for multiplayer. Also, from what I understand, physics still have issues at the 20km limit and you’d want to keep it smaller than that anyway.
So I’m guessing that A-Life system which is used in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series is also impossible.
Really looking forward for Dovetail’s TSW. They says it uses UE4 and it will also support multiplayer. Trains usually moves along large worlds.
A-life is totally doable in UE4 - A-life systems are in no way dependent on having large terrains. STALKER’s terrains are actually comparatively pretty small to a lot of UE4 environments. There are one or two really cool interviews out there with STALKER’s AI programmer, but creating an A-life system comes down to two things - first is a goal-oriented AI system that models various needs and objectives, such as hunger, thirst, health, current mission etc, and how to fulfil these goals.
The other part is a system to simulate AI behaviour outside of the loaded level. STALKER achieves this by basically placing actors not in the current level into a turn-based behaviour simulation that runs in the background and keeps track of an actor’s rough geographical location and status. Both of these systems are tough to get going in any engine unless you are a dedicated coder, but it’s totally possible to do.
TSW is a heavily modified UE4, and they stated that they cut ties with many core system components to find better solutions to their special needs. You can do that, just team up with some fellas. They started as a 6 man band.
@Beaucephal is just right about that too. Nothing is impossible as you can see.
A couple of the online UE game use 30+km … Ark for example is reported to be 36km x 36km.
They are using World comp, and, multiplayer. Yes, they are using a edited 4.5.1 UE engine, but, i would think the results would be the same for supported mass landscape size in mutiplayer. Not saying your wrong, just saying that there are a few examples of this being achieved already (even on 4.5.1).
When doing new maps for Ark, the only thing i had to be aware of was keeping X and Y between 1,000,000 and -1,000,000 for replication reasons. (people and dinos would fall into the world and become invisible after those location points)
Sure, I think the case though is that the engine doesn’t support it by default. I think for multiplayer you’d have to handle players separately and then join them to the same coordinate system when they are close enough.
A newbie question here. If I wanted to create a vast open mulitplayer world, it’s not doable in Unreal 4? I’m very new and starting from scratch with everything, I’m learning how to create terrain at this point. Let’s say I wanted 1000 square KM for argument’s sake. I will have people helping me along the way, but I’d like to get any future problems cleared up now.
Would I have to divide it into loading zones like Otherland, which btw is huge and made with Unreal 3, or would Unigine be the answer for something like that, although it costs a fair bit to license it so that’s not really viable for me at this time.
AFAIK the original Ark Map is 8x8 KM. But it uses world composition.
Just load the Ark Dev Kit and see for yourself.
If you’re new then I don’t recommend doing an open world game, it’s a lot of work and it would be better to gain some experience on a smaller project.
It’s possible if you buy high enough capacity servers that can deal with the huge processing time it would need to be able to keep far away distance, in shot without fading. With large maps at current, UE loads them in square by square the closer you get to it - DayZ also use’s draw distance imo. The only difference is, DayZ use’s servers that can load that distance into shot quickly before a player even reaches it.
Fortnite was made using Unreal Engine so the comment about UE not being able to hack large multiplayer games is false. The only thing you would need is a big enough capacity server in order to render fast and also, have high capacity to handle so many players on one map at once.