Question on how I should setup server messages to other players

Development Programming & Scripting Multiplayer & Networking
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Hello, I am new to networking with unreal engine and was wondering if anyone could give me some advice on what I should be using. The plan is to release the game on steam, and to use some of the steam networking options, but I’m honestly unsure of what exactly I need for my purposes here. There are so many plugins, and not really sure what I should be using.

I currently have a menu system that I made that will make http calls to my web server. This allows players to make clans/guilds, etc. This information is stored in a mysql database outside of unreal engine. The issue is when a player sends another player a clan invite the player who gets the invite currently needs to close the game, and reopen it to see the clan invite. Basically needs to refresh on the server calls in unreal engine.

What I would like to do is have some form of networking implemented where if player 1 sends player 2 a clan invite unreal engine will send player 2 a rpc call and say “Hey you have a new clan invite, lets refresh the server code”. This would allow player 2 to get the clan invite without closing the game and reopening it. Obviously if player 2 is not online this wouldn’t really matter, cause once they do launch the game the invite would show for them.

I did look into unreal engines networking and using sessions, but im not really sure if this is what im looking for, I honestly dont know. I see that there is a default limit of 16 players per session, so unless I changed that this probably wouldn’t work for me. I need to be able to connect 100s of players to a session and then basically send rpc calls to these individuals based on username, or a GUID.

Any help is appreciated.

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How do you want to set up Unreal Servers?

Do you want to let players to be their own listen servers and host game sessions? (Players as servers, they can easily cheats)

Or does your game have a official/public dedicated servers for players to join as clients? (Cost of hosting servers but the game can track and ban cheating players)

Depends on what type of games yours are. You gonna set up RPC base on the server type. Both clients and server would prob use your web server to access your database.

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For the menu stuff I figured it would be ok to use listen servers because all the major code is double checked from my web server. For gameplay I was thinking of letting the players run their own dedicated servers on their machines similar to how ARK, or Minecraft allows. I do already have unreal built from source.

I was looking a bit into this video which helped explain some of what im looking for. This is done through just using listen servers right?

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The video is using listen server. Does your menu stage needs to be a listen server? Like you have a pre-game lobby before joining a dedicated server. If so you can follow the video and make similar RPC calls. Copy the system to a dedicated server shouldn’t be much different.

Some note:
Listen server would be different than using unreal engine’s session to search servers. Because you’d want to use session list for dedicated servers. One way is to use steam and join friend. Or manage a separate listen server db on your web server for players to find one another to join.