Unreal 4 really needs a Garry's mod of its own.

Community Community & Industry Discussion
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For awhile now I have been touting the super cool social experience I have had with VRChat and I absolutely love the open ended and creative community that kind of environment creates. Garry’s mod was the first time I have ever had the experience of having a social hub where where people can bring in all kinds of random avatars into a world and just hang out and do all kinds of random stuff. I feel pretty strongly that something like this would be absolutely amazing in Unreal 4 especially if it were done with a strong mod community and Virtual reality to back it up. Imagine having the social experience of something like VRChat but with a full blown toolkit like Garry’s mod at the same time on the Unreal 4 engine.

Is anyone already working on this? If so I am very interested in contributing.

I have been toying with the idea of trying to get a base system in place myself but its really not my strong suit to design something that is not gameplay focused. But regardless, this is something that really really really needs to happen.

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Sorry I cannot bring myself to use the private message system they have on here. Its really bad :X

Pine722
> I agree with you there needs to be a social hub on UE4. I’ve actually been making a project that I hope to have a lot of the elements you mentioned.

Awesome! I think in this cause the most that is really needed for now would be voice communication with voice attenuation and a server browser and I have 80% of everything I would need. But its undeniable. An open community project where we can socialize

> There is however some problems I need help with finding solutions to. First, the web browser widget is still in experimental state(and has been for a long time and will probably always be) and is not able to play youtube videos, and it can even freeze the entire game depending what website you visit. It also needs to be replicated to each client even if we got it to a reasonable state.

hmm Yeah, though I will say that VRChat want a pretty long time without the need for

> The next issue is runtime mesh editing & uploading of files. I have not found a good system for this yet, and I’m not experienced enough to know how to do it, it probably requires editing the source code of the engine. You need these systems for users to be able to create their own meshes & textures etc to play around with in the game world.

The easiest solution is to just allow people to download all of the files and keep them on the server the old fashioned way. So if you join a server you can check if it has avatars and you can just use the ones the server already has. Its not ideal but it is the simplest solution for now.

Personally the best solution would be some kind of IPFS setup but it would end up being the most convoluted complex solution. It would also end up putting the cost of file hosting on each person which would be a bit rough. However it would be fantastic to determine ownership of assets especially if avatar creators want to yield ownership when they sell their work via blockchain or something like that. Getting the engine to support this insanity but ultimately speaking it would be the most ideal solution. Then we would be able to just release the mod and not have to pay for servers. Avatar creators can then rent out content ownership for a monthly fee or something to pay for file hosting.

> Even if there are some plugins to help with these issues(not that I’m aware of any), many of the plugins are windows only, in which case I have no interest in them.

Yeah me either, but ultimately the most important starting things to get a very basic system in place is just to get :

  1. Listen or dedicated servers.
  2. A decent server browser.
  3. Run around in desktop 1 of 6 predefined avatars. (Perhaps grab some of the avatars from paragon, 3 male 3 female)
    (Anyone who makes a dedicated server should have no trouble adding whatever avatars they want)
  4. Text chat, name tags, name is your Epic tag?
  5. locally store your friend list via save files? (Use epics friend system?)
  6. Voice chat with distance attenuation.
  7. A Hub world where everyone can hangout.

That would be the first milestone I think.
Do you think you could help with that? I think if we can get just these things done in an open manor where anyone can utilize it for free then we can have a base to work with to go further. My thinking is that this projects base layer is to stay as open and free as possible so more people will be willing to jump in to help out. The next Milestone might require some kind of funding though.

Here is where stuff gets complicated.
6. Options menu to customize various settings. (Key binding, Volume sliders, avatar scale ect.)
7. VR support. (Arms and hands for all 6 default avatars. Maybe full body is that can be a thing.)
8. Ability to play videos.
9. Ability to load web pages.
10. More worlds to socialize in.
11. More default avatars.
12. Full body tracking VR support.
(Hopefully at this point there is a mod community already helping out)

That would be the second milestone I think. (Keep in mind that everything above would need to be done without using anything from the marketplace that isn’t already free. This way the project can remain as a free download)

Here is where stuff gets super ultra complicated. And would work over top of the above stuff in a way where it does not negate previous systems. (Its completely optional)

  1. Decentralized file hosting via IPFS. (We as the creators don’t have to pay for giant servers to store accounts, worlds and avatars)
  2. Integration with cryptocurrency (There are various coins that would work.) to seamlessly fund file hosting and can be used to denote ownership of content.
  3. Ability to buy and sell avatars and games built on top of this system. Its a completely decentralized system where people can build entire games on top of this functionality and profit with no need for a central authority to control it. (We can release the mod and they can worry about the details)

At this point you can then have people join any server they want using an avatar they prefer even if its not on the servers files. Anyone can make any kind of side project they want for free or for profit, and it can all work seamlessly with no need to negate original functionality.

I can open up a Trello and go into more detail. I may even make a video to talk about this more.