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Lobby Management in Main Menu: Examples of Implementation

Starting an Online Game

User Experience

After creating or joining the lobby, the player clicks the Ready button. Once both players are ready, the lobby owner can start the game. When the game starts, a new multiplayer match level starts loading for both players. After the level is loaded, the game begins.

Solution

This is accomplished in two scenes: MainMenu and Online2PlayerGame. In the MainMenu scene, we check the state of lobby members’ data every time any change is made. If any of the lobby members sets their state to ready, we check if both players are ready. If they are, the lobby data state is set to ready, which activates the Start game button for the lobby owner. After the owner clicks the Start game button, the lobby data state is set to steady, which triggers the players to load the Online2PlayerGame level. Once the level is loaded, each player sets their own lobby member data state to go. When both players set their lobby member data state to go, the game starts.

This whole process is handled by the Matchmaking and OnlineWaitController scripts.

Variables

The following variables are declared within the OnlineWaitController class:

Variable Description
entriesContainer GameObject, in which all entries with player info will be instantiated
entryPrefab Prefab used to display every player’s entry
startGameButton Button used to start the game
entriesList List of all GameObjects instantiated in the entriesContainer
lobbyID GalaxyID of the currently joined lobby
displayPlayerListCoroutine Stores a reference to a Unity coroutine used to periodically refresh the player list in the OnlineWait screen

Methods and Usage

OnlineWaitController.OnEnable

    void OnEnable()
    {
        lobbyID = GalaxyManager.Instance.Matchmaking.CurrentLobbyID;
        displayPlayerListCoroutine = DisplayPlayerListCoroutine();
        StartCoroutine(displayPlayerListCoroutine);
    }

Once the OnlineWaitController script is enabled, we:

  1. Assign the GalaxyID of the entered lobby to the lobbyID variable with the Matchmaking.CurrentLobbyID method.

  2. Call the DisplayPlayerListCoroutine() method to display and update the displayed list of players. We want this to happen every frame so that the latest data is always shown.

OnlineWaitController.DisplayPlayerListCoroutine

    IEnumerator DisplayPlayerListCoroutine()
    {
        uint lobbyMembersCount;
        GameObject currentEntry;
        GalaxyID currentMember;

        for(;;)
        {
            lobbyMembersCount = GalaxyManager.Instance.Matchmaking.GetNumLobbyMembers(lobbyID);
            DisposeEntries();
            for (uint i = 0; i < lobbyMembersCount; i++)
            {
                currentMember = GalaxyManager.Instance.Matchmaking.GetLobbyMemberByIndex(lobbyID, i);
                currentEntry = Instantiate(entryPrefab, entriesContainer.transform);
                currentEntry.name = currentMember.ToString();
                currentEntry.transform.GetChild(0).GetComponent<Text>().text = GalaxyManager.Instance.Friends.GetFriendPersonaName(currentMember);
                currentEntry.transform.GetChild(1).GetComponent<Text>().text = GalaxyManager.Instance.Matchmaking.GetPingWith(currentMember).ToString();
                currentEntry.transform.GetChild(2).GetComponent<Text>().text = GalaxyManager.Instance.Matchmaking.GetLobbyMemberData(currentMember, "state");
                entriesList.Add(currentEntry);
            }
            yield return new WaitForSecondsRealtime(0.5f);
        }

    }

First, we define three additional variables:

Variable Description
lobbyMembersCount Stores the current number of lobby members; we assign its value by calling Matchmaking.GetNumLobbyMembers(lobbyID)
currentEntry Stores the GameObject that is being currently instantiated (for easier access)
currentMember Stores the GalaxyID of the currently displayed user

Then, we make sure that the displayed list is empty by calling DisposeEntries(). We iterate over lobby members and for each member we:

  1. Assign the player’s GalaxyID to the currentMember variable by calling Matchmaking.GetLobbyMemberByIndex(lobbyID, index).
  2. Instantiate the prefab and assign a reference to the newly created GameObject to currentEntry.
  3. Set the currentEntry.name property (the name of the currently instantiated GameObject) to its GalaxyID (just to make sure that each entry has a unique name in the Unity hierarchy).
  4. Set the values of text objects representing the player’s name, ping and state inside the currentEntry GameObject using the Unity Transform inheritance property.
  5. Add the currentEntry (the just instantiated GameObject) to our entriesList for easier disposal.

OnlineWaitController.DisposeEntries

    void DisposeEntries()
    {
        foreach (GameObject entry in entriesList)
        {
            Destroy(entry);
        }
        entriesList.Clear();
        entriesList.TrimExcess();
    }

This method destroys all displayed entries using a foreach loop by calling the Destroy(Object obj) method for each entry inside the entriesList. Finally, it clears and trims entriesList.

OnlineWaitController.Ready

    public void Ready()
    {
        GalaxyManager.Instance.Matchmaking.SetLobbyMemberData("state", "ready");
    }

This method calls Matchmaking.SetLobbyMemberData("state", "ready") when Ready button is pressed.

OnlineWaitController.StartGame

    public void StartGame()
    {
        GalaxyManager.Instance.Matchmaking.SetLobbyData(lobbyID, "state", "steady");
        GalaxyManager.Instance.Friends.SetRichPresence("status", "In online 2 player match");
    }

This method sets the lobby data state to steady when the lobby owner clicks the Start game button. When users receive the information that the lobby data state is set to steady, they automatically start loading the new level. It also sets the lobby owner’s rich presence status to In online 2 player match.

LobbyDataListenerMainMenu.OnLobbyDataUpdated Callback

        public override void OnLobbyDataUpdated(GalaxyID lobbyID, GalaxyID memberID)
        {
            if (memberID.IsValid())
            {
                if (matchmaking.IsCurrentUserLobbyOwner())
                {
                    matchmaking.SetLobbyData(lobbyID, "state", AllMembersReady(lobbyID) ? "ready" : "notReady");
                }
                return;
            }

            GameObject.Find("OnlineWaitScreen").GetComponent<OnlineWaitController>().startGameButton.GetComponent<Button>().
                interactable = (matchmaking.GetLobbyData(lobbyID, "state") == "ready" &&
                matchmaking.IsCurrentUserLobbyOwner());

            if (matchmaking.GetLobbyData(lobbyID, "state") == "steady")
            {
                Debug.Assert(matchmaking.GetLobbyMemberData(GalaxyManager.Instance.MyGalaxyID, "state") == "ready");
                matchmaking.SetLobbyMemberData("state", "steady");
                friends.SetRichPresence("connect", null);
                matchmaking.LobbyManagmentMainMenuListenersDispose();
                matchmaking.LobbyManagmentInGameListenersInit();
                SceneController.Instance.LoadScene(SceneController.SceneName.Online2PlayerGame, true);
            }
        }

This callback is triggered whenever a lobby data or lobby member data was changed. If the lobby data was changed, then the memberID will not be a valid GalaxyID. We use this to check whether the callback was triggered by a lobby data or by a lobby member data change by calling the GalaxyID.IsValid method on the memberID variable. We set the lobby data and the lobby member data to synchronize both players and make sure that both are ready to start the match. In more detail, the algorithm is as follows:

  1. At this point, the lobby data and the current user’s lobby member data under the state key should be set to notReady.
  2. Once the current user clicks the Ready button, we will set their state to ready.

  3. When the above change is detected and the LobbyDataListenerInGame.OnLobbyDataUpdated() callback is fired, we will:

    • Check if the memberID is a valid GalaxyID. Because the change from the step #2 above was done to the lobby member, not the lobby itself, the memberID will be a valid GalaxyID.
    • Call the Matchmaking.SetLobbyData() method to set the lobby data under the state key to either ready or notReady, depending on the result of the AllMembersReady() method.
    • Use the return keyword to stop further execution of this callback.

  4. If both lobby members’ data under the state key were set to ready, then we will set the lobby data under the state key to ready as well.

  5. This will again fire the LobbyDataListenerInGame.OnLobbyDataUpdated() callback.

    • Because the change from the step #4 was made to the lobby data, memberID will not be a valid GalaxyID and the code within the if (memberID.IsValid()) block will not be executed.
    • The lobby state was set to ready, so we'll set the Start game button to be interactable for the lobby owner.

  6. Once the lobby owner clicks the Start game button, the lobby state will be changed to steady.

  7. Once again, the LobbyDataListenerInGame.OnLobbyDataUpdated() will be triggered.

    • Because the change from the step #6 was made to the lobby data, memberID will not be a valid GalaxyID, and the code within the if (memberID.IsValid()) block will not be executed.

    • The lobby data state is now set to steady, so the if (matchmaking.GetLobbyData(lobbyID, "state") == "steady") block will be executed:

      • Set the lobby member state to steady.
      • Remove the connect string from the users’ rich presence, so other GOG users can’t join via their rich presence.
      • Dispose of the LobbyManagementListeners used in the MainMenu, and
      • Initialize LobbyManagementListeners used InGame.
      • Lastly, we’ll start loading the Online2PlayerGame scene.

The rest of this algorithm will be discussed in Lobby Management In Game: Example of Implementation.

LobbyDataListener.AllMembersReady

    bool AllMembersReady(GalaxyID lobbyID)
    {
        uint lobbyMembersCount = matchmaking.GetNumLobbyMembers(lobbyID);
        if (lobbyMembersCount < 2)
            return false;
        for (uint i = 0; i < lobbyMembersCount; i++)
        {
            if (matchmaking.GetLobbyMemberData(matchmaking.GetLobbyMemberByIndex(lobbyID, i), "state") != "ready")
                return false;
        }
        return true;
    }

This method is used to check whether a lobby has at least two players and both are ready to start the game. It will return false if there are less than 2 players in the lobby, or at least one of the lobby members’ state is not equal to ready. Otherwise, it will return true.

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