Book Image

Multiplayer Game Development with Unreal Engine 5

By : Marco Secchi
Book Image

Multiplayer Game Development with Unreal Engine 5

By: Marco Secchi

Overview of this book

If you’re fascinated by the immersive gaming experiences that enable multiple users to engage in collaborative or competitive gameplay, this Unreal Engine 5 game development book is for you. In this book, you’ll learn the foundational principles behind multiplayer games. Starting with a sample project, you’ll learn how to set up a networked system and make it work. Once the prototype of the project is functional, you’ll start adding game logic, including obstacles and AI opponents, to heighten the challenges and engagement, offering a captivating experience for players. Next, you’ll learn how to debug and optimize the project, before finally deploying the game build and integrating it with cloud services such as the Epic Online Services system. By the end of this book, you’ll have the confidence to develop and manage multiplayer experiences using the Unreal Engine environment, taking your newfound programming skills in your upcoming projects.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
1
Part 1:Introducing Multiplayer Games
5
Part 2:Networking and Multiplayer Games in Unreal Engine
10
Part 3:Improving Your Game
15
Part 4:Deploying Your Game Online

Creating an AI opponent

In this section, you’ll start by creating a class for your hero’s foes, complete with the basic ability to patrol and attack. Sure, they might not be the sharpest guys around, but hey, they’re the Lichlord’s undead minions – not exactly known for their intelligence, are they?

We’ll be starting by extending the Character class, which, as you may already know, can be controlled by an AIController, allowing independent actions during gameplay.

At this point, we want the minion to have the following features:

  • A random patrolling movement around the level
  • A perception system that will allow it to see and hear the player’s character
  • The ability to seek out the player once it has been detected

In the next chapters, we’ll extend the Character class further by adding some more features such as health and spawnable goodies (when the AI has been defeated) but for now, we’ll just...