I am trying to get a seamless multiplayer experience in UE4, similar to Journey where players can connect and disconnect from each other without having to reload their level.
It would be great to hear an experts opinion on how you might go about doing this, or if it is possible without writing your own P2P framework.
Failing that, I’m very curious about plans to support P2P networking or server migration for listen servers.
I notice these features are on the Unreal Trello wishlist, but I am curious if I should be looking into writing my own P2P framework or if waiting might work out.
I am also interested to hear what Epics future plans for p2p are. My project is similar in goal, and a p2p solution does seem like the best option.
If anyone else has more info to the original questions, that would also help me greatly in deciding which direction to take
Also if anyone else is in the same boat, chime in. Epic might bump the priority depending on the amount of users requesting/interested in p2p
P2P means that one of clients run a server, register it’s IP to some central server (I’m not sure but some online networks supports that i think), server is assign to there online ID instead of be a server on list, some use matchmaking over that. Now problem is connectivity, because as normal server you need forwarded ports from router and lot of people have problem to do so, and here whats P2P is diffrent from normal client-side servers, it’s tried to solve that. Clients can work as proxy server and let you proxy from one client that is connected to server to get game state and as well as send info to main server about proxied client, theoretically client can also work as server and server can run as client and server connect to client on order (since server and client in network layer of things it’s just who connects to who). In other words P2P is client-side cloud (cloud you have when servers are not logically visible, you just info that there some game instance and and you can connect to it. Client and server deal with it automaticly).
Biggest problem with P2P, is fact that users have crappy ISPs to run server (low upload), which means lower quality connections unlike normal dedicated server in some server room with some 100mbit or gbit upload connections, in PC where you don’t know on what hardware you run there might be potential issue of performence to run a server and client in same time, and when server start to lag everybody will lag, consoles will have same problem is you don’t manage it. Thats why gamers prefer and ask for dedicated server support over P2P. Ofcorse fact that clients runs servers and all you need is some minimum HTTP to manage connections between them makes this solution a lot cheaper then having array of dedicated servers (or else you let users run them, which was most popular method on PC games in past), thats why it’s very popular now days
as far as im remember, torchlight 2 had this think, its like your friend host a game, got dced but you dont got kicked of, even further, he can reconnect again.