How to get seamless level traveling for beginners (In Blueprint)
This is assuming you have already successfully followed other tutorials on how to create / join sessions.
Open Level is the node you use in single player to transition to a new level, but if you have a multiplayer game, Open Level will not transfer everyone connected to the session when you run it on the server. You can use Server Travel instead. Server Travel does not have it’s own node in Blueprint, so you can run servertravel as a console command. I’m running this command using a custom event in my game mode.
Here I am appending the level name to the command “servertravel”. IMPORTANT: there is no space after “server”, but there must be a space AFTER “servertravel”. Through testing I’ve found out that the map names are not case sensitive.
Server travel by default will disconnect all players from the server, and reconnect the clients after traveling. This is recreating the player controllers and is error prone if you aren’t careful. To avoid this there’s an option for seamless travel. Seamless travel makes your player controllers persistent while server traveling. You should use this option for Steam games I’ve been told.
Enabling Seamless Travel
- Open your game mode’s blueprint, in the blueprint’s class defaults, there is a check box to enable seamless travel.
-
You will want to set a Transition map. A Transition map is an empty map to briefly put all players in because loading a new map while still processing all the data from your current map is not optimized. Create an empty map for this purpose.
-
Set your Transition map in your Project Settings. It can be found in the “Maps and Nodes” tab of your Project Settings. However, it’s tucked away in a little drop down, click the arrow under the Game Default Map to expand the advanced options. Set the Transition Map to your newly created empty map.
I tested this and it works for me. DISCLAIMER: I am a beginner, so take my word with a grain of salt. If I made any errors in this tutorial, hopefully an experienced user will correct me.