The Journey to Multiplayer, Part 2 - Joshua Newton

Joshua Newton

06/20/2025

This past week, I've been completely focused on getting multiplayer to work. I spent a lot of time trying to fix the implementation I had completed the previous week, but after a few days, it seemed like a futile effort. So, I decided to completely restart. Since this entire server hosting issue was new to me, I figured I should find another resource to follow and try again. And this time, I was successful. I'm still not entirely sure what I did wrong the first time, but I'm fairly certain that there was a small configuration missing somewhere. I followed along with this Udemy course: https://www.udemy.com/course/unreal-engine-5-cpp-multiplayer-shooter/?couponCode...
Now I have a working plugin that can theoretically be used to setup a basic server in any unreal project. It's not fleshed out, consisting of only a generic host and join, but it can be integrated into different code bases fairly easily. This was a fantastic way to introduce the code into my team's project since I was able to develop it as a plugin. This ensured that I could bring the code in without breaking what my teammates were doing.

The next challenge on my plate is replication. In the attached videos I demonstrate both the server and client sides of the multiplayer session functionality, but you can also see there's plenty of replication issues. This is because we haven't gotten familiar enough with Unreal's replication systems to get them working for this week's build. However, this will be a major focus for me in the next week and beyond. The team is starting to form some generic roles, and mine is definitely that of a network programmer. I'm looking forward to figuring out how to get the different aspects of the game that my team has developed to sync up between all clients and the server.

My first attempt at this was the cube you can see in the videos. This serves as a generic example of how to replicate variables and objects in Unreal. You can notice in the videos that the cube can move and has its position match up on both client and server sides. It also has a text variable on it that counts down from 100 and is also synced. So I have the basics of replication understood, but now I have to apply it to the much more complex logic of the actual game.

I'm very much looking forward to facing this challenge, and I hope to have much more done for next week.