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

Testing a multiplayer game locally

Testing a multiplayer game can pose a problem as it requires the game to be available across multiple devices. Luckily, UE allows you to simulate this scenario on a single computer, making it much easier for developers to create and test multiplayer games. In this section, you will learn how to use your editor as a server and launch other game instances locally.

Playing as a Listen Server

It’s time to start testing how the game works in a multiplayer environment. You’ll be doing this by using UE’s Net Mode feature:

  1. Open the Change Play Mode and Play Settings menu by clicking the hamburger button next to the Play button, as shown in Figure 3.7:
Figure 3.7 – The hamburger button

Figure 3.7 – The hamburger button

  1. In the Number of Players field, enter the number of players you want to simulate; for instance, 3.
  2. Then, select Net Mode | Play As Listen Server, as shown in Figure 3.8:
Figure 3.8 – The Net Mode settings ...