Hi i’m currently making my game and well the multiplayer settings are weird. I thought it would’ve been way easier to set it up but apparently it isn’t.
Every tutorials I’ve tried aren’t working and my animations aren’t syncing. It’s just hard to keep going if the only solution is to not do it.
I don’t understand how some revelant settings or replication settings can change stuff even when they’re not supposed to ? And not when they’re supposed to ? Please someone explain without me having to watch videos for 2 hours or reading the documentation for 4 more.
part of being a programmer is staring at stuff for hours and hours, not knowing what to do, and then eventually figuring it out. It’s not always going to be easy
When I’m in your position, I usually just stop my current project and make an empty project. Then try to achieve a really really simple example of what I’m confused about in the empty project.
So, if you’re confused about replication, start a new project and just replicate some really simple things like color changing and animations. Then you will eventually learn the fundamentals and maybe be able to fix your original project.
Also, see if there’s some other way of getting the result you want, like instead of using replication, just use RPC’s everywhere
A trick for learning things you don’t know is to find a marketplace asset for a system you want to build. Generally most systems are robust as they account for features that would appeal to all game demographics that use that system. You can go through their code, read their documentation, figure out how it all works. Then build the system you want in your game and customize it with only the features you need.
There are free projects of nearly every type that you can break open and study. If you need a better understanding with help, purchasing an asset with an active developer might be better. All the ones I have talked to have been very helpful and will try their best to help you get their code to work in your project.
Also keep in mind, game development is a massive field of skill-sets. It requires patience, dedication, thick skin, and a ton of luck to make it in the indie and even professional world. If it was as easy as flipping a switch to turn on online mode and multiplayer just works, we would see a ton of MMORPGs and other types of multiplayer games taking over the multiplayer market. However as you can see its mainly AAA companies with massive budgets and teams. A few lucky indie companies too that played their cards right, but that’s it.
Someone wise once said, “If it was easy to do, everyone would be doing it.”
If this is truly a path you want to follow, don’t give up, stay motivated and remember you will make mistakes, it will take a long time. Good luck
Multiplayer is a huge beast with lots and lots of layers and complexity. Not only do you have character replication to worry about, there are lobbies, sessions, and loads of other factors. There is no “out of the box” solution that I know of.
I have 7 years of experience with UE4… and I am not even trying to make a “multiplayer”.
It is not just hard to develop in the engine, it is also a problem to latter find a good server, some are way too expessive, and on top of all that… it is even harder to make all work with the specific store, even the stores themselves (talking from experience) tell you not to do it until you actually have a team of people monitorin sales all day long… It can become a target for hackers, etc.
The “use the marketplace” tip, I wouldn’t go for it… the marketplace is filled with lots of assets not even well made, or over-made so hard that your FPS drops to 8FPS by just loading those assets and projects, and if you try to use a plugin to make the multiplayer work, guess what, unless you have a massive C++ experience, what are you going to do when the developer of that plugin stops updating it (which happens a lot), what happens if it does works locally (which happens a lot) but after packaging and publishing it in the store, it just doesn’t work at all… now your neck is pending on someone else to respond your emails and fix that plugin in 3 months…LOL
Multiplayers are for bigger teams, and small indie studios (15 to 30 people) with experience in that field… or of course bigger studios.
I agree using marketplace assets without truly understanding them will lead to problems. But dissecting them and learning the code that you need for your game, optimizing and customizing it for your game will work.
You are right about code plugins, but that’s the point. Don’t use marketplace assets in your game unless you know what you are doing, but use marketplace assets to learn how systems are made so that you can design your own.
For example you talk about code plugins not being updated and not working on packaging. If you instead of relying on the code plugin, dig into the C++ figure how it works, then implement only the parts you need into your game and truly understand whats happening you can make it work. Never rely on someone else to make your game(unless on a team), take control or always be waiting on someone else.
Another great example is ALSV4 a free animation system that is very good looking. Except it has several bugs built into that have not been resolved. So what do most developers do that use this system successfully? They either fix all the bugs or rip apart the code and rebuild the system with only the features they need in their game, also replacing all the bugged features with other features that work.
In every software field there are tons of assets that are not even well made that are successful. However if you don’t even know how to recognize whats good and whats not good, how will you be able to determine if your code is good or bad? Especially if your debugging knowledge is limited.
For beginners learning is the priority, no one expects a beginner to make a game in less than year except the beginner.
In the end, knowledge is knowledge, how you acquire it and use it is on you. Whatever works best for you is whats best for you.
But also the fact that you can make a multiplayer game, also doesn´t guarantee it´s success, many AAA studios release multiplayer games, and 1 to 2 years after, their servers stop working because they just failed to sell well, or they do sell, and then 80% of the people want a refund after the release week…LOL,
Sometimes smaller projects with a simpler approach make crazy sales in days (the thing is… not many stores approve simpler games, with lower indie quality, not sure why… Epic should, there is a market for every game out there, some android games sell 50K per day, without crazy graphics), some people think that since Fortnite makes billions, copy pasting that idea, changing the scenario and mechanics is going to work, well no… games like that sometimes rely on lots of marketing, crazy strategies and promo budgets, if you do have a six figure budget to directly compete with the best, then I would say: try. If you don’t, you won’t even have the time to do all that, instead, make a game that feels unique, and interesting, believe me… people don’t care about UE5 ultra realistic or amazing graphics… If so, then why even Battlefield 2042 sometimes has the worst graphics ever…LOL, people cares about gameplays, they don’t mind if your game has 200 ultrarealistic levels or just 5, but 5 amazing ones that people will remember after they play, either because of style or how interesting they are.
