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Making your First Request

Here we will guide you through the process of loading the Beamable Window in your project and creating a simple request to retrieve user information.

Note

This tutorial assumes you have already set up your Beamable account and integrated the Beamable SDK into your Unreal project. For instructions on doing so, please review the Setup Guide.

Accessing the Beamable Window

When opening the Unreal Editor of your project, you'll see the Beamable Logo in the upper-right, next to the Settings dropdown. This button opens the Beamable Editor Window. Here, you can log in to the account you just created in the Beamable portal.

intro-beamable-window-location.png

When the login process is finished, you should see the Beamable Window Editor like this:

intro-beamable-window-opened.png

Here's a quick tour of Beamable Window's functions:

  • Home
    Workspace overview, shortcuts to common Beamable Portal pages, and global utilities.

  • Content
    Manage your game's read-only content and configuration data.

  • Microservices
    Run, debug, and manage local Microservices.

  • Play-In-Editor (PIE)
    Configure PIE settings and create or capture PIE users.

Your First Blueprint Request

Now that you are familiar with the Beamable Window, you are ready to make your first Beamable request. We'll do it via Blueprint, but you can do the exact same flow in C++ by making these calls in your Project's GameMode class's BeginPlay function.

To get started, open your Level Blueprint and add the following nodes:

intro-init-sdk-with-login-frictionless

What's going on Above:

The BeamRuntime is a GameInstanceSubsystem that is responsible for controlling the SDK's lifecycle and player authentication. Calling this function will initialize the SDK. You can find a deep explanation about the Beamable Runtime in our Technical Overview page.

Once the SDK is initialized, we can Login a guest account automatically. To do that, we're using the Login - Frictionless Operation node that will login a guest account into the Player0 user slot.

Operation nodes are "purple" Beamable nodes that encapsulate many complex functionalities in a easy-to-use fashion. You can read more about the Operation Nodes Here.

In the Frictionless Login node, we have three flow pins to handle the result of our login operation:

  • On Success: executes if the login completed successfully.
  • On Error: executes if any error happens during our login flow.
  • On Cancelled: used in very special cases and can mostly be ignored for now.

And That's it! If this operation succeeds, you'll have a Guest Account signed-into the Player0 user slot.

With the SDKs default configuration and the above setup, you can enter PIE (Play-In-Editor) and should see several requests' responses being written to your Output Log window. After you see the final GetMe request, you can exit PIE knowing you've made your very first request to Beamable. Congratulations!

Next Steps

Now that you've made your first Beamable Request, you can take a look at the Technical Overview page to understand more about how the SDK is structured and identify the best path to using it in your game.

Also, take a look at our Samples, they are a valuable source of practical information and good general reference.

Issues and Reporting

  • We highly recommend using verbose logging log Category Verbose when encountering an issue stemming from our SDK (Log Categories can be found in BeambleCore/BeamLogging.h file).
  • This verbose logging will print a lot more information about requests being made and what the SDK is doing. Its meant to aid us in diagnosing issues that you may encounter when using the SDK, NOT for production use. To turn it off in the same editor session, just run log Category Display in the editor console.
  • When reporting an issue to us, try to reproduce the issue with the logs of the relevant systems set to Verbose and attach them to your report. It usually helps us A LOT.
  • To contact us for support or suggestions, head to our Support Portal.