Hello, I’m just a beginner with 3 months into a project starting from 0 knowledge on scripting/blueprinting. I know certain things cause issues with multiplayer, and my goal is to have multiplayer in my game whenever it’s done, though that will take years. So, what can I avoid doing now to make integrating multiplayer easier later on?
I’ve seen on various topics people suggest avoiding event tick as it is based on frame rate, so I’m using delay loops triggered by an event instead. I would guess that the Get Player Character node should either not be used or be added onto at a later date, since index 0 would mean only the 1st player? I’m also avoiding using bindings in widgets as I’ve heard that is far more taxing on performance than simply making the code yourself to set texts and whatnot.
I just don’t want to make my game impossible/ridiculous to make multiplayer by using easily avoidable techniques, so help me out! Thanks.
My inspiration for multiplayer would be things like Dark Souls and I guess even Watch Dogs, the drop-in invasion style PVP and even co-op. Who knows, that might be even harder than a shooter with 12v12 lobbies.
I guess my question then is: will I just be completely screwing myself over for later if I make an entire game and then try to add multiplayer, or is it still possible, yet incredibly difficult, later on?
I could just make it a purely singleplayer experience and it would be largely the same, but I feel for longevity’s sake, multiplayer adds hours and hours .Just look at Dark Souls, if there weren’t invasions, it would be dead already, yet there’s still multiple large channels on YouTube and the player count is quite good for a 2 year old game.
If you are thinking on adding MP later, at least get familiar now with how things would be done in MP, things like not relying on gamemode for data (because if clients want to read from it, they won’t be able to, use gamestate instead), or knowing that giving commands for clients, you need to be owner of things… converting a game to MP is mostly a rewrite because from the start the game may be coded like “do this thing” instead of “tell the server to do this thing for me”…
Although in the end, even if you tried your best to keep things “MP Friendly” without doing MP, turning on the switch at a later time will nevertheless come with a big amount of work, so as @franktech said, It will be painful to start with multiplayer, and if you decided to do it, make sure you really know the type of multiplayer you are doing.
Well I suppose I am fortunate to know the exact kind of multiplayer I want, but unfortunate to have absolutely no knowledge on the subject. So far I’ve really only made the player character, 1 enemy and many widgets, I don’t know to what extent the “multiplayer workflow” mingles with BPs, whether it’s mostly for level stuff or literally everything you make needs to be made a certain way.
I guess if I want MP, I’d have to learn it sometime anyway, so I may as well learn it now before I set myself up for making the game a second time.
What about the basic like setting up the character movement animations, controls, is it like that it is a completely different process? I mean I would expect that the most of this part is the same?