[Unreal Engine] - How To Open Ports For Multiplayer (Port Forwarding)

This video will show you how to open ports (port forwarding) for Unreal Engine multiplayer and explain why it is required for online connections.
Unreal Engine Multiplayer Tutorial: • [Unreal Engine] - How ...
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[@EliasWick]

⚠Disclaimer: If you open ports on your router and you still can't connect with your public IP address, it's very likely that you have been given a private IP address by your ISP. What this means is that you will have to reach out to your internet provider and ask for a public IP address. As far as I know, there is not really a good way to find out if you have a private or public IP address. If anyone here know how you can see if you are on a private or public IP, please let us all know. Happy developing you wonderful folks!

[@fetusness]

Thank you for this video brother!!! 🙏🙏🙏

[@EliasWick]

Thank you Adrian, and thank you for subscribing! ❤️

[@ficuskorealive1792]

I successfully set up and connected the multiplayer as you suggested. thank you

[@EliasWick]

Awesome! Glad you got it running!

[@MrEm4x]

How are you only at 6000 subscribers, this is better than most tutorials!

[@EliasWick]

Hehe, thank you very much MrEm! I hope to upload more things in the future regarding multiplayer that could be helpful for the community.

[@SS-gu2tx]

If you're familiar with the concept of NAT punchthrough you really should do a video on it, in the context of UE5

[@yuvallivnat-schwartz7630]

hey cool vid, do i enter the the port number in the game? like what do i type into the ip box widget thing in-game?

[@EliasWick]

Thanks! Yes, you enter the IP Address. You can enter the local or public IP address. However, in order to be able to connect to the public IP address you need to open the port 7777.

[@fetusness]

Hey Elias, so I have a question- I noticed that you selected the device name, from the drop down menu, rather than setting a static IP address for your device. It was my understanding that a static IP address was required for this process of port forwarding, am I mistaken? Thank you, Adrian

[@EliasWick]

Well an IPv4 address is required. You don't need a static one, however, if you open ports and your IPv4 adress changes, you will need to open ports for your new IP again. address again.

[@fetusness]

@@EliasWick I see- thank you for clearing this up :) Cheers, Adrian

[@aberrythvtt]

4:00 So, in my port forwarding settings theres 4 boxes: "internal ports" start and end, and "external ports" start and end. I'm gonna guess that "internal ports" is the same as your "local ports" which you left blank, but for the "external ports" do I put - for example - 7777 in both the start and end boxes, just one, or am I in the wrong place? Edit: nevermind, it won't save changes unless I put something in all 4 boxes, so I guess 7777 in all 4?

[@EliasWick]

Yes, you should put 7777 in both start and end boxes. If it doesn't allow you to save without entering numbers into every box, enter 7777 in each one. On my router they have combined the start and end boxes into one. Instead if writing 7777 in start and 7777 in the end box, I can just enter 7777:7777 or simply 7777 if it's just the one port. To test if your ports are open, try to connect to your server via a public IP address. By default your local IP address, the one found using CMD should work. However, if the public one doesn't work, it means that something went wrong. I have a RT-N12E Asus router, and I have the following fields I can fill in: Service Name, Source Target, Port Range, Local IP, Local Port, Protocol. The service name is the name I can use to identify what the port I am opening is doing. The source target isn't really used when porting in my router. From a google search it says: Source Target: Rules that only the IP address can be forwarded for the match port. The port range is the port you want to open. The Local IP is which device that should allow the port forwarding. The Local Port is used to forward a port from the client machine to the server machine. This is left blank in my case. The protocol determines which protocol you should use. Let me know how it goes! :)

[@OutFinity374]

Great Tutorial❤ I have a question, does this work from different connection. Like is this for global Mutiplayer?

[@EliasWick]

Yes! This works for both LAN connection and WAN (Public) connections.

[@OutFinity374]

@@EliasWick Thank you bro, you're the best❤️

[@damian8051]

Thank you for the information. Just to clarify on a below users question - if you have a client and listen server on the same LAN, can you still 'simulate' a long distance connection by having the client open the public IP address of the server? or does it not work this way. I know that this would be a LAN connection, I just mean hypothetically if you wanted to deliberately connect as if it wasn't on the same LAN

[@EliasWick]

Yes there is a way to simulate a long distance connection. In Unreal Engine it is called Network Emulation. Here is a good link regarding the subject: docs.unrealengine.com/5.0/en-US/using-network-emulation-in-unreal-engine/

[@damian8051]

@@EliasWick Thats awesome, thanks very much!

[@EliasWick]

@@damian8051 No worries! Have a good rest of the day! :)

[@flexcg675]

Brother, do you have a tutorial on how to create a voice chat in multiplayer?

[@EliasWick]

No, unfortunately not; but there is documentation about the subject here: docs.unrealengine.com/5.0/en-US/voice-chat-interface-in-unreal-engine/

[@flexcg675]

@@EliasWick oh, thanks bro!

[@muhammadinaammunir6761]

Can we make multiplayer games without dedicated server. I mean players should be able to connect over internet with each other but no dedicated server.

[@EliasWick]

You have two options, dedicated server or listen server.

[@abeermanchanda1168]

I followed everything you did in the video correctly but I am still unable to connect through public ipv4, I can easily connect with the local ipv4 however it doesn't work with public ipv4 though I have forwarded the ports correctly. Even the ip address I mentioned is public.

[@EliasWick]

Can you host other games? Your Internet provider can still block you from opening ports.

[@abeermanchanda1168]

There is probably some issue with your code as I am not able to connect even by tunneling my port.@@EliasWick

[@hermbiggo_sldigg0]

Hey can i make the IP address be a Word like with i type a word it would know that its that ip address

[@EliasWick]

Yes, you could do something like that. I actually have a "plugin" for this called IP Protect. You can find it on my KZbin channel.

[@hermbiggo_sldigg0]

@@EliasWick yea i saw but i unfortunatly cant buy it iam doing a project for school but i dont want it to be an ip do you have an alternative ? sorry with i cant buy it ;-;

[@EliasWick]

@@hermbiggo_sldigg0 If you know the IP to connect to, you can simply use it like a password. Kind of like: IP Variable = 192.168.1.1 If Textbox.Text = MyUniqueConnectionName Then, Open Level with IP Variable.

[@riuthamus]

This was working before, and then it stopped. I checked my firewall rules and everything, I have another port open and have no issues, but UE5 doesnt seem to like port 7777 for some reason

[@EliasWick]

Perhaps your internal IP has changed? Your router can change it for you if it isn't set to static.

[@riuthamus]

@@EliasWick yeah, I thought the same, but the port forwarding is set up and working for another system. It just doesn't work for 7777. I appreciate the quick comment.

[@jonaspriebeofficial]

by the way even if i cant portforward will this work locally so i could play with people in my internet like my brother?

[@EliasWick]

Yes, locally always works if you use your local IP. Usually 192.168.something.something

[@jonaspriebeofficial]

@@EliasWick sweet just to double check thats the ipv4 address right. also i will test it out but currently when i open the packaged build it says couldnt start process returned 2 something like that so im watching a video on how to fix it

[@EliasWick]

@@jonaspriebeofficial Yeah I think so. Just run IPconfig in CMD and see what it return :)

[@jonaspriebeofficial]

@@EliasWick sweet thanks

[@jonaspriebeofficial]

@@EliasWick My dad got port forwarding setup on my computer if all is well i should be able to play with friends across the world!!😀😀

[@makyuri154]

Heya, how would this go in a p2p scenario? I have created my own crossplay system and only need players to join my game server now. I host it by doing a servertravel with ?listen and afterwards players receive the public IP of the host and they do a clienttravel to that address. This does not seem to work, however, I am testing this with a virtual machine on the same network so I don't know if that why the client on my vm cannot connect to the host using its public IP? Joining with a local ip4 IP did seem to work. Do you know where the problem could be, you seem to have a lot of knowledge about this specific topic.

[@EliasWick]

If you can't connect to your Public IP it's because of a firewall, or more likely unopened ports. You can test your Public IP on the same machine by trying to use it to connect to the server.

[@makyuri154]

@@EliasWick Hmm how are other games then able to let others join without having to fiddle with the firewall or port forwarding? Normally they use GetResolvedConnectString on the online subsystem's session I believe, which is supposed to work but I don't get what's different about it.

[@EliasWick]

@@makyuri154 You need to have open ports, there is no workaround. There are three ways typically. 1. If you let your player host a server locally on their PC. Running an actual Server .exe or in game ListenServer. They need to have ports open. If you let player semi-host a server, meaning that they run an .exe, but have you as a backend mediator that checks and controls all data. The mediator would need to have opened ports. If the players presses play but doesn't host or control any of the data. The server needs to have open ports. No clients connecting to a host will have to worry about opening ports.

[@makyuri154]

@@EliasWick Thank you for the information. But I still don't get how other games do this without port forwarding ( that have p2p games hosted by the players themselves ). These games don't require you to go to your router settings and configure port forwarding haha. Does the online subsystem do something under the hood for it? When using steam or epic, you can host and anyone online can join the server without issue ( not dedicated servers, but hosted by the players ). I'm not sure if you've used the online subsystems before?

[@EliasWick]

@@makyuri154 Do you have an example, a game that does this? Terrain and Minecraft require you to open ports.

[@habibgames9055]

hello sir can i learn how to make a multiplayer vr game?🙏

[@EliasWick]

Yes absolutely, it only takes dedication.

[@Madpvponline]

will this work on 5.3.2 ue

[@EliasWick]

Yes it will! :)

[@OriginRow]

How can I open ports in Google cloud VM ??

[@EliasWick]

I am not sure if that is possible. It would probably be in the settings menu of Google Cloud.

[@flexcg675]

hi bro ! how much clients can connect to host?

[@EliasWick]

I don't think there is a set limit, you can set it yourself using a few host session nodes. Unreal Engine is capable of supporting large-scale multiplayer games with hundreds or even thousands of players.

[@flexcg675]

@@EliasWick thank you bro!

[@EliasWick]

@@flexcg675 No worries! Thank you for subscribing! :)

[@jonaspriebeofficial]

My router is Cox and it wont let me portforward what do I do

[@EliasWick]

If your router doesn't allow you to open ports you will have to find some other method. I don't have much experience, but have heard that Hamachi should work.

[@jonaspriebeofficial]

@@EliasWick Thanks I think I'll just find a different method for creating and joining sessions other than ip address. I recently got it to work for lan but I'll try getting it to work differently so i can play with people far away from me

[@EliasWick]

@@jonaspriebeofficial Sessions won't work either unless they are hosted elsewhere. If you personally host the server, it needs to have open ports.

[@jonaspriebeofficial]

@@EliasWick what if you sue steam advanced session plugin instead of local network?

[@EliasWick]

@@jonaspriebeofficial I am slightly unsure, but as you still host the server and steam only hosts the IP address, it probably don't work. You need a public IP that has been ported. You can simply buy a new router for $29.99 or a used one for $5.

[@spirit_top5]

3:40 i have nothing like this what?

[@EliasWick]

You probably have a different router than I do. There are documentation about routers online which you can read up on.