As far as I can tell, the initial level/map information is baked into the executable, at least for shipped builds. This is based on various bits of information, some of which may be out of date, on the internet.
What I am trying to do is have it so that users can run their own servers, and advertise them through a central server. A separate “loader” program, like so many games have these days, will handle the player logging in and selecting a server. The “loader” will then spawn/run/execute the Unreal Engine based game, passing various bits of information, which could be encoded in a URL, to the game. These would include:
- Server IP address.
- Server port number.
- User ID.
- Authentication token.
I am planning to implement my own GameInstance subclass or something like that to parse the URL, grab the game world information from the server, and provide it to the game. I would ideally like to pass the URL on the command line and have Unreal Engine use the value there rather than the one in DefaultEngine.ini.
How do I do this? Does it work using the command line for “Shipped” builds?