Hey everyone.
I'm redesigning my multiplayer architecture to work in a more manageable structure. At present, client and server classes are separately defined and ultimately share little in common. Simple functions that interface with additional data must be separated for the sake of perhaps one function call, and it is explicitly serialised. Anyway, this is mostly network terms. What I wish to understand is how Unreal (the solution I'm building off) handles the entry points for server and client routines.
For the most part, there is little difference between how the server and client actors run; certain functions are suppressed because they're not client-side or server-side, and certain functions are simply invoked at the other end. However, the fundamental difference exists somewhere in the loop. I understand that both the Server and Client have predefined events that are called onCollision etc.
My first question is how are server and client-side functions separated if they both need to be called but do different things? For example, collision events would do different things on the server and client, If the client-side actor was autonomous it would play a sound before the server called playSound, but on the server it would tell nearby actors but the current actor to hearSound. How is this achieved?
Secondly, how are events sent to the server? It seems like they are sent in an RPC after the client's autonomous actor runs the simulation client-side. But if this is the case, how does the simulation get called? I know of a playerTick function, but how does this choose which function to run? Is it a simple if-switch? If ROLE == ROLE_AUTONOMOUS server_func() else client_func()?
Lastly, simulated functions. I know that the question has been asked many a time, but I would like to clarify their purpose.
I'm writing this solution in Python, so I have a lot of duck-typing possibilities I can exploit. I intend to use decorators to define when functions should be called on the remote side (@remote(world_info, target=SERVER)). I therefore assume that any function without a remote call can be called by either side. I think once I clarify the above points I may answer my own question, but until then what does the Simulated keyword actually mean for the client and server?
Many thanks for your time,
Angus.