Multi-User Collaboration - LAN only? VPN possible?

Community Community & Industry Discussion
1

I am extremely surprised at the lack of posts about this new functionality added (as beta) in 4.22. I would have thought tons of people would be trying it and reporting their successes and failures. So far I have only seen posts (on reddit) from two people having tried it. Both tried it on LAN and only one succeeded.

Reading through the documentation on it, it seems to me this functionality was intended to function over LAN only. This does not appeal to me (and I would guess not to many others) as I am not working on projects in an office with others - we are not on a LAN.

It would seem to me that this functionality would still work decently between remote networks given a host with a reliable and fast internet connection, whether the dedicated server be modified to accept remote connections or a VPN set up between collaborating machines. However, I lack the proper knowledge to accomplish either of these things.

I had attempted to set up a VPN myself but my lack of experience with VPNs (and networking in general) made it a frustrating and unfruitful experience. I can’t help but feel like someone more knowledgeable would be able to tackle this with relative ease.

So does anyone have any experiences they could share with this tool? Would anyone be willing to try out different methods of making this work with remote hosts?

2

You can use Hamachi to VPN everybody onto one persons connection.

3

I tried that but I wasn’t sure it was working right, we couldn’t ping eachother and the session browser still wasn’t able to detect other sessions

4

i tried via softether VPN (awesome vpn btw) and could not get the Multi-User browser to list anything, LAN works fine though

im thinking it has something to do with multi-cast / VPN interaction

5

You guys might try Tunngle, it works sometimes when Hamachi doesn’t.

6

i managed to get it working on LAN and VPN simultaneously (softether VPN)

on the pc that will act as the SERVER, you must edit the following file:

C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_4.22\Engine\Programs\UnrealMultiUserServer\Saved\Config\Windows\Engine.ini

modify the file to contain:


[/Script/UdpMessaging.UdpMessagingSettings]
EnableTransport=True
UnicastEndpoint=1.2.3.4:0   ##   This must match your VPN adapter IP
MulticastEndpoint=230.0.0.1:6666
MulticastTimeToLive=1
EnableTunnel=False
TunnelUnicastEndpoint=
TunnelMulticastEndpoint=

modify the UnicastEndpoint to your vpn ip

EXTRA: i had issues with multicast ip 230.0.0.1:6666 for some reason, 234.0.0.1:6666 works though, if you modify this you must adjust all the clients in unreal >> project settings >> udp messaging >> multicast endpoint= 234.0.0.1:6666

you can also try modifing unicast endpoint= 0.0.0.0:0 to your vpn ip

7

after some reading ive learned that multicast is NOT supported by most VPNS, but softether seems to support it

8

That’s awesome! Thank you for the information. It will be a little bit til I can try this again. Out of curiosity, how well did this function over the VPN?

9

I was able to try this tonight. Had the same issue where 230.0.0.1:6666 wasn’t working, switched over to 234.0.0.1:6666 and suddenly it was great

10

oh nice glad you got it working, it seemed to work well when i was testing, but it was only about an hour or so

11

Hello there

We’re trying to join each other with a friend on the method suggested using softether vpn. I managed as a client to connect to my friend hosting the vpn, but I don’t find his server in the multi user browser. We used the tricks in the “advanced networking” chapter (https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/Editor/MultiUser/MultiUserReference#advancednetworking) and all, without success.

So to clear this out did you managed to join online with this method ? If so I must have missed something here

12

Hello,
I tried with my group and it doesn’t work for us. Could you just say what you change and wich VPN are you using ?

Thx.

13

We’re using SoftEther VPN Server for this and it works via VPN. It creates a remote access to LAN and works pretty darn good. Tutorial in the works for ya…

14

Hi Guys.
I got the VPN to work but i just can’t get the Multi Editor To work (mook06) said that you have to change the unicast endpoint to your VPN Adapter IP but whats that ? Do you mean the SERVER IP From Softether ?

15

Hello, someone can explaine how to do, when i start the server he connect to 230.0.0.1:6666, i try to change the adress but nothing change. Can i have some advice please.

16

@mook06 how did you set up softether vpn?

17

sorry guys i havent touched unreal since early last year, not sure if what i set up back then works with the newer versions

18

When I used it, it was… Not great. Not everything got synced properly. I would create a new actor and my friend couldn’t see it sometimes. Or updates wouldn’t propegate to others unless they left and re-joined. Not only that but there’s like 0 documentation on how the sessions work… All of your work, the action history is saved to a ‘session’. And when the session ends, all your work seems to go away too.

It looks like a feature that needs a lot more refinement before it is really feasible to use. I gave up on it after an hour of playing around.

19

i had a similar experience and decided to not use it

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