Mobile Multiplayer

General Feedback & Requests
1

Can I please request you add multiplayer for iOS and Android. It used to work in UDK if that helps :slight_smile: It seems that this is a pretty big limitation with the mobile platform right now. Even if you could implement local multiplayer using beaconing over wifi that would be a game changer literally :slight_smile:

Many thanks,

:slight_smile:

2

Hi Insanerob,

This can already be setup at the moment using Blueprints or C++ for mobile. The setup should not be much different than a normal multiplayer game. The biggest hurdle is getting the order of operations right for the setup of a multiplayer networked game.

If you’ve not had a chance to look at the Networking & Multiplayer documentation this should be a good starting point for you: Networking and Multiplayer in Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.1 Documentation

Coming with 4.10 you will have the ability to use multiple controllers with your device for multiplayer from a single device.

There are plans to add a sample in the future to demonstrate this setup using Blueprints and multiplayer setup, but unfortunately I don’t have a time frame for when this will be completed.

3

can someone? i dont understand.

4

Hi Tim, Thanks for the response, and even bigger thanks for everything that you guys do for us with UE4 :smiley:
Can you please clarify which parts are available in Bueprints and which parts are only available in C++ ? As far as I can tell only Steam has matchmaking and session functions exposed in Blueprints ? I wasn’t even sure that iOS Game Center multiplayer was implemented in C++ as an online subsystem ?

Thanks again,

5

I think Tim is referring to local turn based multiplayer i.e. take a turn , pass your phone to the next player etc. etc . I think

6

Can someone from Epic please clarify what Tim said … I’m getting mixed answers all over the place. One post on the iOS forum stated that there was no netcode in the source for iOS multiplayer, there are definitely no multiplayer Blueprints for iOS, Steam online subsystem is documented but not Google or Apple. Please can you clarify if Google and Apple online substems will work for multiplayer in c++ ? If it’s not in place can you add it as a feature request ?
Many thanks,

7

We’ve done Multiplayer on Mobile. It’s no different to doing Multiplayer in a PC or Console game. All the syntax and methods are identical.

Google and Apple have Online Subsystems, if you’re using Blueprints you don’t need to do anything special to include them, though you’ll still need to fill out all the required information in the Project Settings. C++ means you’ll have to include them in the Build.CS and Build Target files, but that’s it. Everything is identical.

8

can i create bluetooth multilayer game on BP for android(without using wifi routers, google online services and etc) just bluetooth connection? any info about this

9

You can have a project running on a mobile device that supports multiple controllers via bluetooth connection. This way you can more than 4 people playing on the same device.

10

Please oh please can someone clarify what is current possible in terms of multiplayer on mobile using the online subsystem. This is why I started this as a feature request but have since been told it already is working but with no actual specifics so now I’m just confused :s

1, Multiple devices, multiplayer through Game Center or Google across the Internet : Blueprint , C++ using iOS online subsystem, or not possible ?
2, Multiple devices, multiplayer through Wifi : Blueprint , C++ using iOS online subsystem, or not possible ?
3, Multiple devices, multiplayer through Bluetooth: Blueprint , C++ using iOS online subsystem, or not possible ?

Many thanks,

11

Hi all,

This is something I could really do with the answer to, I think maybe some of the other posts in here have moved away from what has originally asked.

Ignore the multiple controllers on one device, which we know this is coming in 4.10.

Are the below possible, and if so can someone point me in the right direction for documentation. This would be a huge help.

1, Multiplayer through Game Center or Google across the Internet : Blueprint , C++ using iOS online subsystem, or not possible ?
2, Multiplayer through Wifi : Blueprint , C++ using iOS online subsystem, or not possible ?
3, Multiplayer through Bluetooth: Blueprint , C++ using iOS online subsystem, or not possible ?

I’m sure there will be other games that rely on the above multiplayer aspects, this is a show stopper for our game. Really hope we can get some answers to this thread don’t want out game to be finished before we’ve had the chance to get it out there.

Thanks in advance guys!! keep up the hard work.

12

There are people on the Android forum asking exactly the same thing and getting no answers either. Please can Epic clarify the current state of mobile multiplayer as per the three points in the previous posts. Tim’s post suggested that it works but no one seems to know how to go about it at all :S

Thanks again,

13

What we’ve done before is used local LAN-based WiFi between Android tablets and PC (but Android-Android also works fine) - with a WiFi router.

If you get two phones / devices to connect to each other first via an adhoc wifi connection, then one of them hosts a game session, the other should be able to join it, but I’ve never tested that with Bluetooth. All of my netcode has also been done in C++, because (IMO) it’s easier and you get finer control over replication, something we needed at the time.

The first thing I would do would be to look at the Engine source Google Sub-system, and the OnlineSubSystem libraries to see what they support. As far as I know, there is no support for actually creating the Bluetooth / WiFI connection in-game. according to this post however, you can include other existing third-party libraries in a C++ project to use Bluetooth

14

Hi. Can someone suggest if we can do a bluetooth based mobile multiplayer?? Is there a way that can be done??

15

+1 for more info, in particular google play services.
apparently matchmaking, the very essential core, just doesnt work according to this old thread
searching turns up nothing about a fix or anything

16

Please, can someone from Epic please answer this thread. All the feedback from people in this thread shows that we don’t know what the current state of multiplayer ( matchmaking,hosting,joining sessions) is on mobile. I can’t find any documentation specifically around this . Can you please clarify the below.

1, Multiplayer through Game Center or Google across the Internet : Blueprint , C++ using iOS or Google Play online subsystem, or not possible ?
2, Multiplayer through Wifi : Blueprint , C++ using iOS or Google Playonline subsystem, or not possible ?
3, Multiplayer through Bluetooth: Blueprint , C++ using iOS or Google Play online subsystem, or not possible ?

Thanks,

17

As already explained above, the core network IP subsystem is the same on mobile as PC / console. If you can find the IP address of a server you can connect to it (any NAT punch through and firewall issues aside).

Blueprints - you are probably gonna have a bad time (not an expert).

  1. What you are talking about is ‘presence sessions’ (finding friends via external services) in UE4 terminology. The UE4 back end implementations were very sparse last time I looked. There is another issue here - are you talking peer to peer or do you have a dedicated server living somewhere on the Internet. Commercial products often roll their own platform agnostic match making system.

  2. As per @thejamsh I have Android working across local wifi via the OnlineSubSytemNull (LAN beacon - same subnet). At the time, I believe I had to fix a bug in the engine source to get this running as server (was a while back 4.6? and may already be fixed in 4.10).

  3. Real time game Networking (not peripherals) via Bluetooth. Not there at present and probably not likely in the near future. UE4 runs on IP networking. In theory you could create an IP transport layer on top of an existing channel between two Bluetooth paired devices - there are various ‘share your Internet via Bluetooth’ apps around. Not sure how you would pair devices from within your app (API security concern restrictions).

While I can’t speak for Epic, I suspect they are developing ‘bang for buck’ features first. A feature for match making on a particular platform/service probably isn’t a very big priority for them (eg. 4.10 github now has splash screens on Android ‘out of the box’ - 19 months after the first release).

18

what he is talking about is Game Center for ios and Google Play Services for android.
these are implemented ‘a bit’ in ue4 but perhaps not any of the multiplayer aspects.

he is not talking about NAT punchthrough or expensive dedicated servers or any of that, these are services that are as good as part of the os (ios and android)

19

Psychogony, I am specifically talking about Game Center and Google Play services, as tegleg says, where the matchmaking etc. are all done in an external UI that is built into android and iOS.
For info this works in UDK (UE3) using uscript where you create delegates for server and client that are called from the subsystem once Game Center decides who is hosting and who are clients.

It’s good to know that you have tested local multiplayer successfully on mobile though, I may have to resort to that :slight_smile:

20

Yup - my bad, apologies for any confusion caused.
Looks like Game Center / Google Play have evolved a lot since I last looked at them (not a big phone guy).
You mean this stuff

Had a dig around the 4.10 preview 4 github code for IOS/Android, but I dont see much beyond login, friends, leaderboards, achievements and store.
IOS has a GKTurnBasedMatchmaker, but from the description on developer.apple this is no go for real time networking.

So unless I am missing something, the ‘real time networking matchmaking’ components of Game Center and Google Play Game Services aren’t (yet) tied to UE4.