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 a multiplayer game prototype

For this project, gameplay will not be the primary focus; I want you to concentrate on the core components of the multiplayer framework. Accordingly, the game will be quite simple and abide by the following basic rules:

  • Each player should control their character
  • The server will spawn item pickups at random positions
  • Players will capture pickups and gain points from that
  • The game will go on indefinitely

Using a pre-made project such as a template is a great opportunity for you to gain hands-on experience with the main multiplayer capabilities in UE without having to waste time creating a project from scratch. Here, you’ll start by creating your own multiplayer game prototype by using the TopDown template.

Setting up the project from a template

When you are ready, launch UE 5 from the Epic Games Launcher. Then, follow these steps:

  1. Select Games | TopDown from the available templates.
  2. Set the project...