Hello, Is it even possible using blueprints only? I guess it will require MySql database? Just give me some basics about linking to the database for a multiplayer rpg game? Thanks
I guess, if you are more or less proficient with C++, then adding database support should be as easy as linking MySQL or any library to any other C++ project.
Blueprints are a bit different stuff - you will need to create some data structures and classes to expose your database connection to blueprints, but in general I think you should avoid it. Database layer should be abstracted away as much as possible and blueprints should not even know where the data comes from.
Be warned that storing data in a database will bring lots of different issues to deal with. At first, databases are not that great for storing large chunks of data, like meshes, audio assets, images. These things should be left on disk storage but you can use your database to catalog them, store version numbers to detect changes and link to game player accounts.
Storing player data is even more tricky because you wouldn’t want to store everything. You’ll have to decide, which game character properties are important and must be stored and which ones are temporary and won’t cause any harm if will be lost forever. For example, you’d want to store player experience points, health, inventory, but you might choose to ignore player’s current position in 3D or 2D space. If there is inventory in your game and you pass items from one player to another, you’ll definitely need to do that in a single transaction to avoid losing items or having duplicates of them. And if you store some data which change often, you’ll need some in-memory buffer to avoid writing to the database often because databases are slow as hell compared to modern real-time shooter games. There are different strategies to deal with databases and they are described in various articles on gamasutra and other portals, highlighting different mistakes and gotchas.
Good luck with your project!
Here are some links which might be useful:
http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/cpp/
Conferences - O'Reilly Media (the architecture slides start with page 25)
Cowboy Programming » Evolve Your Hierarchy
mmo - What kind of databases are usually used in an MMORPG? - Game Development Stack Exchange
is there any video tutrioal how to do that?