MMO Starter Kit

Development World Creation
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IMPORTANT: The NEW MMO Kit v2 is available on the Marketplace: MMO Kit in Blueprints - UE Marketplace

Discord support: CodeSpartan Support

Steam demo: (link soon)

Everything below the line pertains to the OLD MMO Kit. It will not get updates past UE 5.0
The info remains for historical purposes mostly.

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MMO Starter Kit is available for purchase on: Gumroad - the latest version is for UE5 5.0
Documentation for 4.25-5.0
Unofficial Discord channel

Note to previous buyers: I’ve migrated from Sellfy to Gumroad, so please contact me with the email from which you made the purchase and I’ll send you a coupon code that gets you the product for free on Gumroad.

older documentation: link

Download demo client [Offline indefinetely ~ December 30, 2022)
(330 MB download, 1.5 GB free space required for the install)

The first video: (from 2014, pretty outdated!)

Updates from 2014 to 2022 (click to show)

2022
Update 04/04: 5.0 port
Update 22/03: 4.27 port + fixed some php scripts

2020
Update 06/12: 4.26 port + auto re-target on enemy death
Update 11/05: 4.25 port link

2019
Update 15/12: 4.24 port link
Update 19/09: 4.23 port + new chat server and lot of refactoring link
Update 06/04: 4.22 port + changes link

2018
Update 12/11: 4.21 port + 1 bug fix link
Update 20/07: 4.20 port link
Update 17/03: 4.19 port + bug fixes link

2017
Update 08/12: Minor tweaks and bug fixes link
Update 31/10: 4.18 port
Update 19/08: 4.17 port
Update 26/05: 4.16 port, bug fixes link
Update 23/02: 4.15 port

2016
Update 16/12: Bug fixes, 4.14 port link
Update 04/09: Animated loading screen, 4.13 port link
Update 28/07: Clans, clan chat, 4.12.5 port link
Update 06/04: A reworked Launcher, aggressive behavior tree, ability to delete characters, 4.11 port link

2015

Update 15/11: Group mechanics, private and group chat, 4.10 port link
Update 04/09: Hotbar, localization support, 4.9 port link
Project Genom - a sci-fi MMO built using MMO Starter Kit has been Greenlit link
Update 26/06: Quests, health regen, 4.8.1 port link
Update 01/03: Equipment and better security, 4.7 port link

2014

Update 24/12: Inventory and loot link
Update 6/12 140+ active players confirmed running smoothly! link

Description

Hi everyone,

I would like to present the project that I’ve been working on for quite some time already - MMO Starter Kit. I have been carrying the idea of an MMO kit for more than a year now, and have tried different engines and approaches, but only when I saw Unreal 4 this became a serious project for me. I believe that Unreal Blueprint system can truly allow anyone to create their own MMO game, and with the engine’s next-gen graphics that game can turn out to be truly fantastic.

Anyways, let me sum up the features that are already present in the MMO kit:

  • All source code included
  • Fully in Blueprints. I’m an experienced programmer but Blueprints have totally won me over. The only subsystem that I had to code was the connection to the socket chat server and I made it into a plugin so it’s still being accessed from Blueprints.
  • Persistent storage of data in a mySQL database. Character position and stats are saved when the character logs off and restored when it enters world again.
  • No third-party solution (such as Photon or RakNet) required - so no monthly fees and you are free to host your server anywhere you want. I’m hosting the demo server on Softlayer and will provide detailed instructions on how to set up a server for those who are new to dedicated servers in general.
  • Registration, login and character creation.
  • Authoritative server
  • Launcher/autoupdater that can update the game and itself (separate application, in C#). Because you don’t want to make your users download the full game over again after each minor update :slight_smile:
  • Combat and targeting
  • Roaming and aggressive NPCs that fight back and chase after the player if attacked
  • Inventory and loot, droppable items
  • Equipment
  • Quests
  • Player and NPC respawn
  • Combat log
  • Classic MMO controls (think World of Warcraft)
  • Groups and clans
  • Global, private, party and clan chat
  • UMG user interface

Closing note: MMO’s are pretty feared in indie gamedev community and new users who have a MMO dream are often laughed at. There’s also an aura of secrecy about them, maintained by people who have once dived into MMOs a little but failed and are unwilling to share their knowledge with the others, prefering to discourage them instead. Well, they are wrong. It is possible to create an MMO, and it doesn’t necessarily cost millions. Just as Unreal 4’s graphics would cost millions to achieve some few years ago, those things just become more available as the time goes. My goal is to create the best MMO kit for Unreal, with extensive documentation that covers not only how to work with the kit from within Unreal, but also things like how to order and set up a dedicated Softlayer server.

Credits: I would like to say thank you to Vladimir Alyamkin (ufna) for his wonderful VaRest Plugin, released under MIT license. It’s people like this who move the indie gamedev community forward.

The authors of the free assets that are used in the demo:

Sword Girl model (used only on the demo server, not distributed) - Bunt Games
Inventory icons - Ravenmore, Flare icons
Black & white icons for empty slots - game-icons.net
Inventory sounds - qubodup, Akeroyc
female voices - AderuMoro, MadamVicious
male voices - Michel Baradari

The map used in the demo is by Epic Games.

20good
20good1364×768 352 KB

19good
19good1365×768 346 KB

18good
18good1364×756 185 KB

quests
quests1413×806 381 KB

6good
6good1368×769 267 KB

launcher
launcher1181×607 916 KB

4 Likes
2

Looks great ,
what will it cost and when can we have it :slight_smile:

3

Take my money!
As above when will it be available and how much? This couldn’t have been timed any better :slight_smile:

4

10/10 would pay for!

5

Thanks for your interest guys. :slight_smile: In order to release this, I need to finish the basic documentation and also handle some legal stuff concerning the model I’m using in the demo. The price will be $90.

Btw, just saw someone from the forum named Blackmambas on the server, too bad I was afk and couldn’t reply. :slight_smile:

6

I’d love to see this as well.

And is $90 for the code? What would the $90 get me?

Thanks.

7

Sahbaum, everything: the demo project linked above and the two standalone applications (socket chat and patcher/autoupdater). The source of both the Unreal project and those two apps is fully open, no dll’s. Also the documentation, obviously. :slight_smile:

8

Could you also quickly expand on the server side? Is it Unreal’s dedicated server or a third party such as Photon?

9

Interested to know more about this as well, is the server mainly just handling the sql database to store login, spawn location, character & stats? Everything else is the normal UE4 server handling movement physics etc?

I left you a comment on the youtube video with some more questions!

Looks superb & cant wait to use it!

10

Unreal’s dedicated server. My previous MMO-like attempt was using Photon and I didn’t quite like it. Besides, I dislike the idea of paying a monthly fee for a networking solution ($175/month for 501+ ccu in case of Photon).

11

Thanks for your interest in this. :slight_smile: You are right, stuff like who can attack what, calculating damage, NPC AI etc is done by a normal Unreal server (well, not your normal listen server, but a console dedicated server). The client or the server (depending on the situation) connect to the php scripts that connect to mysql and handle the authorization, saving and retrieving character data, etc. Then there is a third server, which is a socket chat server, done in C#. For a serious MMO it would be launched from a separate machine, but for the sake of demo, I just run it from the same virtual machine the main server runs on.

I didn’t find your comment on youtube however, maybe it will appear in a while.

12

How many clients can you handle at the moment?

13

This is a tough question jonimake. It is not easy to set up a test with thousands of real clients to measure the resources spike.

To give you an idea of how resource intensive it is, I’m currently running it on the very lowest Softlayer configuration ($28/month). The server currently occupies 45 MB of RAM, and the difference isn’t noticeable when 10 people connect. The CPU usage is very low as well.

14

I’m a bit worried about the scalability of using Unreals traditional networking. With Photon or Smartfox you rely on a totally independent infrastructure and so you are able to server to a very large number of connections, will this approach work for 64+ players?

15

In case there will be problems with large numbers of players, I already have possible solutions in mind, I could either write my own socket server based of the current socket chat server or indeed switch to Photon (I have experience with it and know the framework). There hasn’t been any indication of those problems though so far.

16

This is a tough question jonimake. It is not easy to set up a test with thousands of real clients to measure the resources spike.

To give you an idea of how resource intensive it is, I’m currently running it on the very lowest Softlayer configuration ($28/month). The server currently occupies 45 MB of RAM, and the difference isn’t noticeable when 10 people connect. The CPU usage is very low as well.
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Maybe we should make an event, and have a bunch of people from the community log in at once and see where your set up starts having problems at. We could do similar tests when it is finished to make sure that the features dont lower the number or clients?

17

Is the server currently down? My client will not go past the Login screen.

nevermind

18

Okay so i decided to put as many instances as i could on to the demo. I have 10 of my own characters online, and there are 2 others online at the time of this post. My side is of course experiencing performance issues, but I have 10 instances of the demo running at once.

A few things that need to be addressed though:

I can log into the same account over and over again.
The Character List can only hold 8 characters (barely) before going disappearing out of its bounds.
I can log into the same character over and over again as well.

Nothing that isnt to be expected at this early stage, but thought you might want to know.

I have a much better computer at home. Hit me up via email if you want me to log as many as I absolutely can tonight, and I will let you know what time i can multilog at. :slight_smile:

Great job though, it seems to be handling my connections well!

19

I haven’t had time to dive too deep into this, how versatile is it?
Would I be able to easily convert this for a FPSMMO or would it be easier to start from scratch?

20

Fantastic work ! I’m sure this will be very helpful for a lot of players.
I’d suggest splitting it up in components so someone that is only interested in the server part of it doesn’t have to bother with the target combat if they’re doing something else for example.