Im trying to work out whether a listen server or a dedicated server will be required for my game.
I’ve heard that listen servers are usually for about 8-12 players and my game will have up to 20 in a game.
I dont need any persistent saves or loads, every match will be self contained. However my game is a little more complicated than the average shooter and contains an inventory system, AI, keycard system for doors, multiple ship functions for turrets and power and takes place on a 7 level ship that is the size of a multiple cod maps.
There may also be character vehicles, ships that can fly from one station to another and more small arenas for planets and stations that one can fly to using smaller ships.
This leads me to suppose that a listen server model would likely not be enough for my needs, although Im more than happy to be told Im wrong as that would be a lot easier.
It’s really all up to you… Since your project sounds quite complex, you should likely use C++ and the Gameplay ability system. With C++, you get to build the dedicated server, so I suggest you might as well use that.
I would also like to chime in and say that the reason why you would want to create a dedicated server, is so that the game can be hosted on a cloud server, something like AWS or Azure.
If the server is hosted as a listen server, the player hosting will be able to cheat.
Yea I have the basic movement, shooting and logic in C++.
Do you know any good resources for building a dedicated server including navigating to that server, building the browser and getting it to work with steam/as a standalone?
I’ve had a bit of trouble finding resources for anything more than setting up an initial connection to the dedicated server.
Dedicated servers also can’t handle as many players as large MMORPG, and you need to consider the cost of assuming dedicated servers. The advantage of Listen Server is that the player’s own computer is the server, and you don’t have to pay any server costs.
As far as I understand AWS has scalable servers that would probably cost $100/month or less given the small scale of my game. I don’t mind the cost, it’s more that the documentation and walkthroughs for setting up dedicated servers is more limited than listen servers. Also, I am wondering how big of a game a listen server can handle these days. It sounds like I should go dedicated though given the expanding scale of my game. It’s not a small arena.
As far as I understand AWS has scalable servers that would probably cost $100/month or less given the small scale of my game. I don’t mind the cost, it’s more that the documentation and walkthroughs for setting up dedicated servers is more limited than listen servers. Also, I am wondering how big of a game a listen server can handle these days. It sounds like I should go dedicated though given the expanding scale of my game. It’s not a small arena.
AWS/Azure on-demand dedicated compute is the way to go. UE Games are CPU and Memory intensive. Any player wanting to host is going to need a beefy rig.
Servers load the entire game world. So a listen host is going to have to load everything, meanwhile connected clients will only load a fraction of the game.
MMOFPS games like Fortnite and PuBG use on-demand compute VM’s from either AWS or Azure. Battlefield (EA/DICE) having been using AWS cloud VM’s ever since the BF1 release.
For PuBG specifically they use Kubernetes to spin up instances as needed. Every single game round is played on a freshly spun-up server instance. When the round ends the instance is spun-down.