Steam Multiplayer Tutorial Series?

General Feedback & Requests
42

Hi

Just wanted to update you. Apparently there were some pretty serious issues with the capture software/device that are causing the video team’s work to proceed extremely slowly. We have a new solution in place for future videos already but getting this one processed is taking much longer than expected. That work is ongoing and I will keep you updated as I get more information.

Sorry for the delay on these videos!

43

Thanks, . It seems like this tutorial series is jinxed in a very strange way :frowning:

Can the video guys give us a rough date for the release? I’m checking this thread and the youtube channel almost every hour since a week for this (in my case) extremy high anticipated series :o

44

+1 polygon

Thanks , eagerly waiting!

-M

45

While were waiting for these much anticipated videos to release. Think you could tell me whether or not they will cover a full steam implementation? Or perhaps even better dedicated servers on steam? Cause right now im not quite sure steam, and more especially dedicated servers on steam are even possible right now without some pretty hefty re-plumbing of the Onlinsubsystem in C++. PS. I’d love to see EPIC do up their own backend as a service for their dev’s… Just a thought. Could be profitable. =)

46

I completely agree :slight_smile:
Setting up a dedicated server is quite uncomfortable at the moment and it would be great if Epic would focus more on this topic in the future. And what I really hope is an implementation of the social system that has been introduced for Paragon and Fortnite. The launcher should - in my personal opinion - become similar to Blizzard’s Battle.net or steam. This would be great :slight_smile:

47

I don’t think you’d need to do anything that crazy to support dedicated servers. All you should need to do is make sure your dedicated server build starts a game session on startup and registers itself with steam. There’s some hoops to jump through on the Steam side to make sure your dedicated server can connect to steam, but that should be mostly in steam, not the OSS. Maybe I’m crazy, but that’s what it looks like you’d need to do having never done it myself.

This would be cool, but it would be an epic mountain of work/maintenance. It would probably be easier for them to just make sure they have a well documented workflow to get dedicated servers working on the most popular providers. I don’t think Epic could reasonably compete with the resources Amazon and Microsoft can pour into cloud services/support.

48

For those looking for information on how to even ‘turn on’ Epic’s Steam integration, I’ve made this tutorial.

Its one of many in a series about multiplayer projects and platform integration. If you would like to keep up to date about future tutorials, I’m livestreaming the tutorial creation over at http://www.twitch.tv/awesomeallar

49

i saw that yesterday pretty easy explanation, any revealing JIRA Feedback Reporting tut? :smiley:

50

Hey all,

W has been jumping in here with updates but wanted to provide one as well as I just heard about the issue with the recording. Sadly it looks like I’m going to have to re-record the series over again due to the audio issues our editors discovered when prepping the series for release. :frowning:

Agreed about this series being jinxed lol… I’m working with our team here to see if I can release the finished project so that you can jump into it and dig it a part in the mean time while I determine when would be a good time to sit down and re-do this. With GDC coming up in two weeks, I’ve got other things on my plate so I won’t be able to do it until after then but is the first thing on my list post-GDC to do.

or I will post an update once we determine how we can release the project for you guys to download and take a look at.

-W

51

Thanks for the update ! Sorry for the poopy series of events.

Releasing the project would be a great stopgap though, so +1 from me on that idea. Looking forward to the series when it materializes eventually anyway :slight_smile:

As far as things that would be nice to know in the meantime, the stuff I’m most confused by is the difference between Lobby and Internet sessions in the Steam OSS here:

OnlineSessionInterfaceSteam.cpp Line 230


if (Session->SessionSettings.bUsesPresence)
{
	Result = CreateLobbySession(HostingPlayerNum, Session);
}
else
{
	Result = CreateInternetSession(HostingPlayerNum, Session);
}

And then also what you guys use for chat. Do you guys just use RPCs/replication, or are you using Steam’s lobby chat interfaces for sending messages?

52

**** it :mad: that means additional weeks of work on these tutorials but every cloud has a silver lining so maybe you can extend it and put there some extra topics like stable networking for 64+ players; server scalability; server performance; load balancing; redundancy; game world synchronization etc. Can at least some of these subjects find place in upcoming series? :confused: If no then I hope you will expand multiplayer topic :stuck_out_tongue:

53

Hey ,

thanks for your post! It’s very sad to hear that you seem to have such strange issues with this series (especially because it’s the tutorial I’ve ever waited for since I work with unreal engine 4)
But I’m really glad to hear that you will work on it after gdc :slight_smile:

Hoping for a release of the project in the meantime :slight_smile:

Best regards and thanks for your effort,

54

Too bad that you have to re-do all the work, but this can be an opportunity to improve it. One thing I’d like to see is game world synchronization as Sadaleus said.

For example: I create a game session and before loading the level 4 guys are chatting in the lobby.
I press GO and we start playing, everything works perfectly.
Then 1 guy quits and another one joins.
How can we make it so the new guy sees the game exactly as the other 3?

There is a question related to this here: Instanced Static Meshes do not replicate over network? - Asset Creation - Unreal Engine Forums

Even if you don’t talk about this thanks anyway, it’s my most anticipated UE4 tutorial ever.

55

Just wanted to bump this thread and ask about the current roadmap for the series :slight_smile:

56

Another bump.

57

April bump :smiley:

58

Hello

I am sure by now you think that this series was a hoax or some terrible late April Fools prank. Alas, that is not the case. With GDC now in the rear view mirror along with other tasks that I had been assigned, my attention can shift back to getting this out the door. The very good news is that in the time between finishing recording of the series the first time, we’ve upgraded our video capturing machine and software so the quality will be that much better and the turn-around time should be that much shorter. Again it all depends on our video editing team (which I’ve spoken to already and the person working on this says that he wants to get it out the door as much as I do).

The update that I have is that I’m scheduled to re-record the series this week and hand it off to the video team at the end of the week. Could be as early as next week it hits Youtube. I still want to expand up on this so keep your suggestions coming in terms of what it is you want to see from this series. As of now, I’ll probably include all the stuff that I had originally stated so that I can get it out quicker and we’ll update it down the road with your suggestions.

Really appreciate the patience guys, that’s why you are the best community!

-W

59

You get what you deserve and you Epic guys are simply the best developer out there :slight_smile:

I’m really happy about the good news and let’s cross fingers that it will be released next week :slight_smile:

Best regards,

60

I really hope this doesn’t come off as arrogant, but I’d definitely be way more interested in the c++ version of this tutorial. Sometimes it seems like c++ is treated as a second-class citizen in UE4 learning resources. I guess this isn’t so surprising because BPs are UE4’s big shiny feature that attracts newcomers and non-programmers, but it’s a bit disappointing that something as crucial as coding is often left for people to figure out on their own. This is especially frustrating in UE4 because of how atypical and macro-magic-filled c++ is.

It’s somewhat worrying because for the last 2 years, people have kept requesting more c++ learning material in the forums and youtube training, but we barely ever get anything because the amount of people who have never coded before and wish to make an entire MMO in blueprints by themselves probably outweighs the amount of people who want to get serious with c++

But I guess it wouldn’t be too hard to get a general idea of how to handle this in c++ based on the blueprints and maybe a little bit of c++ tips accompanying this tutorial series… Actually, written tutorials would probably be a better format for code. I wish Epic could include a little companion c++ written tutorial with all of their official youtube tutorials

end of rant

Anyway, I’m still excited for this, even if it doesn’t sound like it. Epic is really good at maintaining a lively dev community. You’re doing a great job. A GREAT JOB :cool:

61

Hi Philippe!

I don’t want to go too far afield in the networking thread, but I do want you to know that we are listening on the C++ resources front. :slight_smile:

Lately, have you had a to check out:

There are still a lot of things we want to do in this area, so stay tuned, and definitely know that we do appreciate the feedback! :slight_smile: