What is a session? Is it mandatory to have one in a Multiplayer Game?

Development Programming & Scripting Multiplayer & Networking
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1

Hi!

This is a question. I’m having a lot of problems with the forums to ask questions.

This the first time I try to develop multiplayer games. I’m using Unreal 5.

Do you know any good resources which talk about what are sessions in Unreal?

I only find tutorials about how to implement them. I want to know which is a session, when to use, how it works…

I’m asking because I don’t know if it is mandatory to have a Online Session System on all multiplayer’s games.

I have found that there are different types of session systems:

  1. Online Subsystem Null.
  2. Steam
  3. Epic

But I don’t understand the differences between them because I don’t know what sessions are.

Thanks!

2

This is a very deep rabbit hole, but to keep it simple: A session is the representation of an online room / lobby hosted on the backend. The hosting player, and clients also have one.

You don’t necessarily have to use the online subsystem and sessions, but the engine expects you to use them so you may have to override some functions in the GameMode and GameSession classes.