☝️Getting Started

Getting started with Steam Multiplayer

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Introduction

So you want to build a multiplayer Steam game? We can help!

Your first stop should be our Design article on Multiplayer it covers the fundamentals that you'll need to know before you get started. Once you have your head wrapped around the concepts and a design in mind come back here and we will get started.

Local Multiplayer

Local multiplayer is the simplest and least common in the current market, especially for PC games. This method doesn't require any additional technology beyond a means to understand when input comes from 1 player vs. the others. Steam Input identifies each controller uniquely so this is a trivial matter usually accomplished by asking each player to press a button to "register" and then associating that controller with that player.

Remote Play

This is a feature of Steam API where a remote player can Steam into your local game. Your game will see this user as another local user so if your game is configured for local multiplayer this can usually be used right out of the box.

Unity

Networking

Installing requirements

Pick an HLAPI you like and go with it, I will use NetCode for GameObjects in the rest of this not because it's best or my favourite, etc. but because it’s the "standard" Unity pushes.

For all their hemming and hawing about how their HLAPI is the best, most are so strikingly similar that if you’re bumping up against the differences in a way that hurts your game you might want to consider a custom solution more specific to your game … its easier than you might think. We might cover that in a later topic.

Aside from your HLAPI of choice, you will need of course

Steamworks.NET

Heathen’s Steamworks (I suggest Complete, but Foundation might do you)

UX Complete can be a big help as well if you want to manage your scenes directly though some HLAPI NMs do some crude scene management.

Configuring Steam

Setting up your Steam project. If you going with a P2P model nothing special to be done here but if you're going with a Client-Server setup and intend to build a Steam Game Server then you also need to configure your Steam App for that. You can read more in Valve's documentation for Steam Game Server here.

For a general understanding of what P2P vs Client/Server is please read our design article. Interestingly a lot of people have a misconception as to what P2P and Client/Server mean ... it is wise to click those links and check the terminology.

As to general project architecture check out these articles, concepts such as bootstrap scenes can be a big help in most projects.

Unreal

Unreal's built-in networking tools and features are unaffected by Steam API and will work as normal. The only consideration to keep in mind is regarding the Online Subsystem. The following link explains what an Online Subsystem is and how it relates to Heathen's Toolkit for Steamworks SDK - Steam API.

Heathen's Toolkit for Steamworks SDK will by default enable the Steam Sockets Subsystem as the default Socket Subsystem. You can disable this by adding the following to your Engine.ini

[/Script/SteamworksComplete.Steamworkscomplete]
bUseSteamNetworking=False

You can learn more about Unreal Online Subsystem and in particular why it is not great when working with Steam and Steamworks SDK.

Online Subsystem

The Net Driver you choose defines how you will connect, Unreal's built-in Steam Sockets Net Driver is unfortunately out of date and dependent on the incompatible Online Subsystem Steam.

Sockets NetDriver

You are not required to use a Steam Networking Sockets-based NetDriver just because your game is shipping on Steam. You can use any NetDriver you like. Each NetDriver should have its own documentation and instructions on how you should configure the engine for its use and how it should be addressed.

Learn more about the Sockets NetDriver for Steam in the Unreal section of the Knowledge Base.

If you configure your project to use Heathen's Steam Networking Sockets-based NetDriver (or any compatible Steam Networking Sockets-based driver) then the sample scene can be used to host (start a listen server) and connect to a session.

You will want to open the BP_Example widget to its Node Grpah and update the button click events to open the multiple levels of your choosing.