What is the maximum world/map size for a MULTIPLAYER game?

[Commander_Shepard]

What is the maximum world/map size for a MULTIPLAYER game?

I know for SINGLEPLAYER you can have logically infinite size world by using world composition, origin shifting and level streaming but none of these apply to a multiplayer online game.

So what is the maximum world size in UU (Unreal units) a map in a Multiplayer game can have?

[Legend286]

There is no maximum, only a point where floating point errors become a problem. You would need a good server to run a huge map with a lot of networked objects though.

[Hevedy]

Probably the size of the grid 20km x 20km.
*Nothing is infinite.

[CyberDev]

You can refer to the tests in my thread about the max multiplayer size here
https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?74237-Maximum-multiplayer-map-size-tests

[Commander_Shepard]

@Legend286;327919

There is no maximum, only a point where floating point errors become a problem. You would need a good server to run a huge map with a lot of networked objects though.

@Hevedy;327926

Probably the size of the grid 20km x 20km.
*Nothing is infinite.

*******, I was thinking of a space world where there is like once spacecraft or object in tens of kilometers.

Also if you fly around the map with the speed of an aircraft 20km are like puff and gone in a few seconds. If you fly slow to make it seem a large area then things passing slowly by you gives it away

Does anyone know how to manage a space scenario in 20km of unreal space? maybe making everything smaller ? like scale down everything by 10 to make the world appear 200kmx200km?

[SchnitzelDude]

@Commander Shepard;328734

*******, I was thinking of a space world where there is like once spacecraft or object in tens of kilometers.

Also if you fly around the map with the speed of an aircraft 20km are like puff and gone in a few seconds. If you fly slow to make it seem a large area then things passing slowly by you gives it away

Does anyone know how to manage a space scenario in 20km of unreal space? maybe making everything smaller ? like scale down everything by 10 to make the world appear 200kmx200km?

You can still stream your maps together I think. So if you reached the end of an map just stream in the next map.

[Commander_Shepard]

@franktech;328780

That’s a common technique and what a lot of devs do when making space games in UDK / Unity. Even with UDK, you could get several hours of credible space travel by reducing scale. With UE4’s increased MP map space it would be significant journey time, but you will ultimately hit a limit. What you really want is something without borders, and for that you’re into No Man’s Sky procedural universe territory, which UE4 just can’t do, not in its current form. There are other game engines though. The Britain mentioned doing work in this area a while back in a No Man’s Sky post IIRC…

One more "way over your head" noob with great ambitions:P:) - Community & Industry Discussion - Epic Developer Community Forums)&p=285735&viewfull=1#post285735

oh no , I’m not aiming towards endless space, there will be playable bounds, but I wanted a map space large enough so that you can fly around at full speed for more than 10 seconds.

I made some rough calculations and tests, turns out a Modern fighter jet at max speed flies at about 936 m/sec so with the 20km boundary in UE4 that would be done in like 20 seconds.

So I assume scaling everything down is the way to go, which is actually turning the floating point precision problem into an advantage since at small scale it becomes more significant.

Also does anybody knows if Level streaming in MULTIPLAYER scenarios possible at all? I know we can fake it by forcefully making things irrelevant to replication but that’s not ideal and is prone to failures

[Commander_Shepard]

@franktech;328797

Fake it by making things irrelevant to replication???

yeah assuming level streaming is not available in multiplayer mode:

1. Make a volume that would be boundry for Level A
2. Make another volume that would be boundry for Level B
3. Make things in volume of level A irrelevant to clients whose pawn and camera is inside volume of Level B this will prevent the cost of replicating Level A to client which are in Level B and effectively for clients in Level A and Level B they do not exist for each other

EDIT: Even though everything will exist on the server you are actually culling things between the volumes.

[Commander_Shepard]

@franktech;328797

You’d still run up against the same floating point limit issue, streaming would just offer an avenue into rendering efficiency.

oh sorry my bad , I meant origin rebasing or origin shifting

[Hevedy]

@Commander Shepard;328734

like scale down everything by 10 to make the world appear 200kmx200km?

You will get shadow problems and physic problems.

[SaviorNT]

You could make a seemingly infinite world by using a grid system, but in such that the world itself isn’t infinite, but you could run in one direction forever and you wouldn’t come to a boundry.

1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9

If you go up from 1, you would end up at grid 7, if you go left from grid 7, you would end up at grid 9, etc…