Pre-Game Lobby: Groups vs Lobby?

devsleeper

Hi,

I'm looking at the Lobby system and it almost sounds perfect for my needs (gathering participants before entering a game experience); but I'm curious how it would go for a Pre-Game lobby, which is a very popular and common use case. (Fortnite, etc honestly I can't think of a single online game that doesn't do this)

I see there is no Invite to lobby, and brainBot is suggesting I use the platform's messaging service to invite but I just wanted to confirm this is the only way to go about it and that lobbies would be fine for a situation which is persisting before matchmaking takes place.

I'm also wondering would Groups be better option?

Groups reads as more of a long term persistent thing for guilds, clans and so on but the API does look like it fits all my needs [create, invite, kick, transfer ownership], but maybe there is a more restrictive rate limiting on creation etc that would be an issue for people creating and deleting lobbies every session.

JasonL

You can set up a lobby type with no server by leaving the server dropdown unselected in the lobby type configuration.

In this setup, the lobby will disband after sending the STARTING event once it's full. At that point, you can use
the OnLobbyEvent callback and connect your players to Photon Cloud when the DISBANDED event is received.

Lobbies in brainCloud are flexible, they can be used to gather players before transitioning into hosted servers or async offline matches, and more.

JasonL

Currently, lobbies are the only supported way in brainCloud to connect players to a hosted server. If you need a session-based gathering that transitions into a hosted game, lobbies are the right option.

Also, note that the lobby creation APIs include a parameter called otherUserCxIds, which you can use to invite/add additional users (who are already connected via RTT) directly into the lobby.

devsleeper

@JasonL Thanks,

I guess in the case of Photon Realtime which doesn't have servers BrainCloud would call on for matchmaking, the idea would be to create a cloud script which is called by BrainCloud through matchmaking, and in theory simply return a room Id the realtime clients can use to connect?

The only doubt for Lobbies is that BrainCloud's matchmaking seems like it's tightly coupled with the Multiplayer concept in that in order to create a lobby definition, you need to define a Room server, and to define a room server you need to pass either a BrainCloud hosted room or Custom, and to that I'm trying to trying to understand where Photon Realtime fits where I don't have any servers to call or IPs to supply BrainCloud.

JasonL

You can set up a lobby type with no server by leaving the server dropdown unselected in the lobby type configuration.

In this setup, the lobby will disband after sending the STARTING event once it's full. At that point, you can use
the OnLobbyEvent callback and connect your players to Photon Cloud when the DISBANDED event is received.

Lobbies in brainCloud are flexible, they can be used to gather players before transitioning into hosted servers or async offline matches, and more.