The Journey to Multiplayer - Joshua Newton

Joshua Newton

06/13/2025

My primary focus in this opening week of developing Zombats is to research how to integrate our game with Steam for multiplayer functionality. This poses some interesting challenges because I've never done network programming for a game before. We'd like to make the game multiplayer to increase the fun factor. I have more fun with games when I can play them with my friends, a sentiment that many people share. Because of this, we want multiplayer to be in the game as quickly as possible so that we can design the game with that part of it in mind. Right now, there's not enough in the game to show off beyond a short demonstration of a LAN server working that will be attached to this post. 

In order to tackle a task as large as implementing multiplayer in a game, I decided the best course of action was to practice outside of our project. So I found a Udemy course that went over a networked co-operative game in Unreal Engine 5.2.1. This was close enough to what we're trying to accomplish, so I began taking the course. This taught me the basics of networking with Unreal Engine, enough that I now have a nearly functional server system implemented. Currently, it only works in a LAN environment; however, I believe I am close to getting this to work in a Steam environment. There's an issue right now where hosting the server fails, likely because of an incorrect configuration to connect to the Steam network. I'm actively researching this, and it is my next priority for the project.

Once I get the server to work properly, I can start focusing on network replication. You'll notice in the attached video that there are still some networking bugs, specifically that the rifle isn't spawning in the second player's hands. This is because I haven't touched replication code at all yet, but I'm aware of the need to replicate actors and properties in order to keep the server and the clients in sync. I'm looking forward to playing around with this piece of the networking puzzle once I get the server hosted properly.

Meanwhile, my team is doing great work setting up the bones of the project. This is allowing me to take up a sort of lead networking programmer position of sorts. I'm looking forward to working with them even more!