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Jason Andersen avatar image
Jason Andersen asked

PlayFab Multiplayer

Hello,

I am currently working on a 2-4 player game being built in Unreal Engine 4. My UE4 is built from source, and I added the PlayFab plugin to the project. One thing I did was remove the version info from the .uplugin so it stopped throwing the popup warning about it being built for a different UE4 version, but it does still seem to work.

My first main question is if there is a way to update a server without totally re-uploading the assets. Currently, the way I made my server run on Multiplayer 2.0 was by moving all the assets including the binary and a few dlls into a zip file, uploading them all together, and then giving the path to the .exe. But what if I make a few changes locally and want to quickly update just the server binary file? Or maybe I want to update just a single asset. Do I have to repackage the entire zip file and upload it, or is there a faster and more efficient way to do this?

Unrelated, it does not seem like the GSDK is integrated with the UE4 plugin, so I'm currently adding that manually to the project via the C++ version of it. Is that the correct move?

Another thing is that I intend for the game to be cross-platform. Will the UE4 plugin work on all platforms? It seems to suggest it will work with at least PC, XB1, PS4, and Switch which are the target platforms for my project, but I wanted to be sure.

The last thing I was wondering, since it seems as though the UE4 plugin is less supported that most other versions of the PlayFab SDK, is if I should just remove the Plugin? I could instead just integrate the C++ version of the SDK which appears to have a bit more support and documentation.

I just wanted to make sure I am heading in the right direction with this stuff.

apissdksunrealCustom Game Servers
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Citrus Yan avatar image
Citrus Yan answered

Hi Jason, I will answer your question in sequence:

a) In my opinion, simply removing the version info may not be a good idea since the plugin is built for a different UE4 version, there may be some kind of hidden dangers. It's better for you to either update UE4 to a proper version or change the Plugin with the right version.

b) Yes, you need to repack the entire zip file and re-upload it. It's more efficient if you do it programmatically, here is the Multiplayer Server API reference you may find helpful.

c) Yes, the GSDK is not integrated with the plugin, you need to manually add it to your project.

d) Yes, UE4 plugin will work on all platforms.

e) It's more convenient to interact and manage your project settings using the plugin. However, if you insist, integrating C++ version should also work fine.

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Jason Andersen avatar image Jason Andersen commented ·

Thank you for your response!

One thing I thing you misunderstood is that my UE4 is updated to a proper version. I'm on version 4.22.3, but your plugin is for 4.22.1. There's no available version of your plugin that I could find that's built for a newer version. That's why I removed the version info.

As a suggestion, it would be incredibly helpful if there was a way to incrementally modify uploaded server assets. Often times we just want to make a quick change to something specific and then test, and if the entire build with assets has to be re-uploaded and then redeployed that can add 20-30 minutes to turn-around time which is costly when it comes to development.

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Citrus Yan avatar image Citrus Yan Jason Andersen commented ·

Oh, I see, the plugin is not up-to-date, but I am sure there will be updates in the near future. About incrementally modifying assets, I think you can make a feature request here: https://community.playfab.com/spaces/24/index.html.

By the way, Locally debugging maybe a good way for you to run some tests with the server.

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