Next Steps
You've got the core loop working: players log in, pick a character, get into a server the backend started, and their data is saved. From here, add what your game needs. This page is a map of what's available and where to start.
Getting Players Together
| Feature | What it gives you |
|---|---|
| Parties | Groups of players that matchmake, queue, and travel together |
| Friends | Friend lists, requests, blocking, and seeing what friends are playing |
| Realm Contacts | Per-character contact lists within a realm |
| Guilds and Alliances | Player-run organizations, with tags shown next to names |
| Text Chat | Realm, guild, server, and private chat |
| Ticketing | Tuning matchmaking, queuing, or writing your own flow |
Building Bigger Worlds
| Feature | What it gives you |
|---|---|
| Zones | Split a world across multiple servers and move players between them |
| Sharding | Automatically add copies of busy zones |
| Instanced Dungeons | Private instances players enter from a persistent world |
| Sync Items | Actors whose state is shared between servers and optionally saved |
| World Data and Zone Data | Saved state for a whole world or one zone |
| Interactables | A pattern for things players interact with, without RPCs scattered everywhere |
| Realms | Multiple realms, maintenance windows, and a default proxy |
Accounts
| Feature | What it gives you |
|---|---|
| Authentication | Steam, Epic, Discord, Twitch, JWT, and username/email accounts |
| Transactional Email | Email verification for email accounts |
Before You Ship
When you're ready to test in a production-like environment:
- Package your game, including a Linux dedicated server.
- Deploy to a local Kubernetes cluster to test the real deployment on your machine.
- Deploy to the cloud.
- Move passwords and API keys into a secrets provider, and replace every placeholder secret from the default config (production deployments refuse to deploy while any are left).
- Set Director Uri (or a
redwood.json) for each environment your builds connect to.
Along the way, the Config Reference lists every backend setting, the Unreal Plugin Reference lists every class and function, and Troubleshooting covers common problems. If you get stuck, reach out!