Question about logs

[LordaxPL]

Hello, it’s nothing that would hold me back, but I’m trying really hard to go through the process of connecting to Steam as carefully as possible. I’m using Unreal Engine 5.2 and I stumbled upon a few things that seem odd to me, I would really appreciate it if someone could give me at least a brief description on the following log lines:

It’s worth mentioning that I had to uncomment bInitServerOnClient=true in DefaultEngine.ini to get it working

LogNet: Display: SteamNetDriver_0 bound to port 7777
LogNet: GameNetDriver SteamNetDriver_0 IpNetDriver listening on port 7777

Does it mean our game is local? A few chapters back, when hosting games in LAN, it would listen on port 7777, too, so does it mean it cannot be played over the internet yet?

LogOnlineIdentity: STEAM: Obtained steam authticket

What is steam authticket? Is it the same as SteamDevAppId?

LogNet: ReplicationDriverClass is null! Not using ReplicationDriver

I know we haven’t done much in terms of replication yet, but should I worry about that? Will we be setting ReplicationDriver in the future?

LogOnline: Warning: STEAM: No game present to join for session (Game)

This is one of Sam’s logs and I don’t have it. Does it mean there is something wrong and I’m not hosting? Although I tried pressing shift + tab to enable Steam Overlay and it works fine, it shows my friends, current session time, etc, so it looks like I am connected

There is one more unusual thing, when I ran the game via cmd, Steam added Spacewar to my library and whenever the game is running, Steam says Spacewar is running as well, is it a bug? My guess is that it’s because of the AppId, it’s 480, if I’m not mistaken, Spacewar uses the same one.

I know this is a lot of questions, but I want to get it well from the start, I hope it helps not only me, but other developers who might have similar questions, thanks in advance for reading through it all!

[beegeedee]

The best thing I can do here is point you at the documentation for Steam in Unreal Engine. I will then explain a few issues with Steam in UE5.2 which are inconvenient.

Online Subsystem Steam Interface in Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.2 Documentation

So, the UE docs for a change are quite good and includes everything you need to set up Steam. Now the cavaets.

1. When using the NULL OSS, you must exit the steam client in UE5.2 or later.
2. Running from command-line doesn’t work i.e. launching the editor with -game pointing to the project. For some reason it fails to acquire the Steam client and defaults to NULL
3. As a result, testing needs a packaged build. This means every change you need a new packaged build.

Now, to join or a game, you’re going to need a machine hosting a game and it has to be 2 different PCs. So, package your build, pop onto another machine and try it out. You need 2 steam accounts too (just create a new Gmail address and use that)

answers to a few of the questions:

1. The app id is your registered app or the demo ID (480) - when you are almost ready to play test, you’ll want your own ID which you have to register with Steam.

2. AuthTicket is a key that acknowledges you’ve got a signed in steam client and can connect to Steam.

3. Seeing port 7777 indicates to me there’s an issue and it is reverting to the NULL OSS. Steam uses their own range of dedicated ports (which you can google - quite a number) which is why I think it didn’t work

Read through the link I sent you and I hope this helps.

[LordaxPL]

Hello, thanks for such a quick reply! From what you wrote I understand it’s enough if I build the game, run it on other machine, host a session from there and then join from my computer, did I get it right?

Also, in the link that you’ve provided (thank you! ) there’s an entire section about downloading Steamworks SDK, I assume it is redundant? I failed to compile Spacewar, it was giving me errors all the time and in one question someone recommended skipping it and not doing anything with the SDK as it was already included since some newer version of Unreal, I’m not sure but it could be your comment, so was it ok if I skipped everything regarding compiling and playing Spacewar? I would get back to it if something failed in Unreal, but so far it seems like everything is working fine

I also get this:

LogTemp: Warning: Online Subsystem has been found: STEAM

When launching the game from command-line, does it still mean that Unreal fails to acquire the Steam Client?

[beegeedee]

Don’t worry so much about steamworks. In the early days of Unreal, you would use the steamworks library from Steam to enable multiplayer but it is now integrated. It is possible to use your own custom version but don’t go there unless you really need to.

That message you are seeing means it is indeed connecting to Steam. This is interesting as I see a lot of people who can’t get this. I wonder if it’s OS related, Steam version or something else. Typically I have the latest and usually running from command-line for me fails. It could be Windows 11 vs10, or mac. Who knows. This is a good sign and may simplify testing.

The most importing thing is both machines must be using identical code. Packaged builds are a good way of ensuring this happens.

[LordaxPL]

Just to clarify, the log that I quoted in the last message was called by me, it’s called in GameInstance Init function, so it’s not something that comes directly from Unreal, here’s the code:

		UE_LOG(LogTemp, Warning, TEXT("Online Subsystem has been found: %s"), *Subsystem->GetSubsystemName().ToString());

I don’t know if it changes anything, but I just wanted to point out that it’s not Unreal directly that returns this log.

Anyways, thank you so much for your replies and taking time to help me! You resolved all my doubts, all I have to do now is to build my project and test it with two computers, thanks!

[beegeedee]

No, this is correct. The issue I was seeing was even though everything had the full steam configuration, it still output NULL with this message. So it is good to know that it is likely an implementation difference.

Thanks.