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LiveOps sample

This demo showcases how you can use the Beamable Unreal SDK in LiveOps game projects. Particularly, it focuses on the Player Stats, Announcements, and Inventory Systems.

The LiveOps sample's "Player Stats" screen, explaining the Beamable Stats feature beside a my_sample_stat counter showing 1 and an Increase Stats button.

Introduction

Aside from the BeamableCore Plugin, here is what the sample contains:

  • BEAMPROJ_LiveOpsDemo Unreal Plugin.: Contains the UE implementation for the sample's client. The core code is inside LiveOpsDemoMainMenu.h and part of the implementation is done through BPs inside the folder UI_BPs folder of the BEAMPROJ_LiveOpsDemo project
  • Microservice/LiveOpsDemo Microservice: Microservice containing code that is used by the sample for various inventory and stat related things

To set up this sample you will need a Beamable Account and a Realm. To configure the repo for the sample run dotnet beam unreal select-sample BEAMPROJ_LiveOpsDemo.

Setting up the project

To set up an organization and realm to run this sample, follow the steps below.

  1. Go to the Beamable Portal and create a new Beamable realm called liveops-demo
  2. Compile and open the BeamableUnreal editor project
  3. Sign into your Beamable account and go to the liveops-demo realm
    1. Optionally you can hit Apply to Build after the realm change is done
  4. Set up the content:
    1. First, run the command dotnet beam content restore --pid DE_1816044586323024 --name LastPublished-global to bring all the content from the sample to your current realm
    2. Open the Content window
    3. Ensure there is an item content with the name "sample_item"
    4. Ensure there are 2 currency contents with names "gems" and "coins"
    5. Click Publish to publish those new contents to the realm
    6. See the Content System documentation
  5. Set up the Announcements
    1. Open the Beamable Portal
    2. Choose liveops-demo realm from Beamable Portal
    3. Go to Communicate->Campaigns
    4. Click on Create Campaign
    5. Initialize the campaign scheduling, content, and the gifts it provides and save it 1. Make sure the type is Announcement 2. In the Content section, add a Gift that gives some amount of "coin" to the user. Optionally, you can also gift them an instance of the "sample_item" with a property called level set to 1 3. You can leave the rest as the default

Running the sample in editor

Now you are set up to run the sample.

  1. Open the Unreal editor
  2. Go to the Beamable -> Microservice window
    1. You should see the LiveOpsDemoMS service there. Select it
    2. Click Run and wait until you see the Service ready for traffic log line (and the running icon in the Microservice's card to change)
    3. After you are done with the sample, do not forget to come here and stop the service
  3. Reset PIE Users to clear any existing data
    1. Go to the Home window
    2. Click on Reset PIE Users
  4. Open the LiveOpsDemo Level if it is not opened yet
    1. You can find it inside the BEAMPROJ_LiveOpsDemo Content folder
    2. If you cannot see plugin content in your content browser, you can change the settings of the UE Content Browser to display it
  5. Play the LiveOpsDemo in the Editor

Tips and tricks

At runtime, the sample works in the following way:

  1. Every time you run the demo, it will initialize the player inventory with 3 sample items that have the an item property called level set to 1
  2. It will also initialize a Stat "sample_stat" with the value 1
    1. You can also click the button next to the sample stat stat to increment it
  3. In the announcements page, you will find all the announcements you configured via the Portal (provided the schedule you put in makes it active)
    1. You can click on any announcement
    2. Doing so shows its content and all the rewards/gifts that could be claimed through this announcement (if any)
    3. You can claim the gifts inside the announcement by clicking on the claim button
  4. In the Inventory page, you can see each of the "sample_item" instances the player has and their level at the right portion of the screen
    1. You should be able to upgrade the item level using the upgrade button

Can I use it as a template?

This sample is not meant to be used as a template directly, however, its components are free for you to copy and use in your own project. Here is what these are:

  • The LiveOpsDemoMS Microservice : located inside Microservice/LiveOpsDemoMS
  • Beamable code and blueprints inside BEAMPROJ_LiveOpsDemo plugin