Quick Match Lobby Control

Code free drag and drop quick match style session lobby tool

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Introduction

Create a session lobby and manage a quick match style UI with ZERO code required.

Quick match based lobbies are the simplest and cleanest user experience for your player in common game design. They present very little to no real UI elements concerned with the "lobby" rather the user or system defines the search arguments and searches for or creates a new session to match players with. This approach requires the least amount of input from players typically reducing match wait types by using more flexible search parameters when needed.

DOTA 2 Example

Screen captures of DOTA 2 "Play DOTA" option is a true example of Steam Lobby used for Quick Match matchmaking. The player hits one button, optionally selects preferences like ranked vs unranked and the system does the rest based on the player's stats, rather or not they are in a party, geo location, rankings, etc.

Halo Infinite Example

Screen captures of Halo Infinite's "Quick Play" option is a prime example of a Quick Match Lobby setup. The player hits one button and the system will find an appropriate match based on the player's stats, rather or not they are in a party, geo-location, rankings, etc.

Features

Authentication

Automatically checks the VAC and auth status of connecting user asking users to leave if they fail the checks you have configured.

Simple Quick Match

Search for a match and join, if none is found create a match and wait. Quick match is one of the best options for a quality user experience in most session-based multiplayer games. The Quick Match Lobby Control's main function is this, your user with a single push of a button will be placed in a match with any party they may have as quickly as possible with as little input required as possible.

Event Driven

Optional Unity Events are available in the editor and in code to help you drive additional UI and game logic based on Quick Match status change.

Working Status

A simple `Status` enum is available for use cases where Event Driven is not desired or possible. You can test the `WorkingStatus` of the control to see when it's idle, searching, waiting or starting.

Easy Access

Easily access critical information about your Quick Match session for simple and efficient integration with any networking HLAPI you would like. Quickly access the lobby, owner, the local user's member and much more.

Prefab

A production-ready prefab is available and configured with the features displayed above.

Events

Evt Process Started

public UnityEvent evtProcessStarted;

This event is invoked when the system starts the process of quick matching and can be used to trigger other game logic that should happen when the process starts.

Evt Process Stopped

public UnityEvent evtProcessStopped;

This event is invoked when the system stops the process of quick matching such as from a cancel and can be used to trigger other game logic that should happen when the process stops.

Evt Lobby Full

public LobbyDataEvent evtLobbyFull;

This event is invoked when the lobby becomes full e.g. all available slots are populated with users. This is usually used to start whatever your networking API requires to start a network session.

Evt Game Created

public GameServerSetEvent evtGameCreated;

This event is invoked when the owner calls Lobby.SetGameServer() or uses the SetGameServer methods on the Quick Match Lobby Controller. This indicates to all members that the network session is ready for them to connect to it.

Evt Enter Success

public LobbyDataEvent evtEnterSuccess;

This event is invoked when the user joins or creates a lobby e.g. lets you know the local user is now in a session lobby.

Evt Enter Failed

public LobbyResponceEvent evtEnterFailed;

This event is invoked when the user attempts to join an existing lobby but for some reason it failed. The event parameter will indicate what went wrong.

Evt Created Failed

public EResultEvent evtCreatedFailed;

This event is invoked when the user attempts to create a new lobby but for some reason it failed. The event parameter will indicate what went wrong.

Evt State Changed

public UnityEvent evtStateChanged;

This event is frequently invoked and will trigger when any data change happens such as user's coming and going, authentication failing, etc. This can be used to drive general game logic that simply needs to know when to check the system for a change.

Fields and Attributes

Idle Group

public GameObject indelGroup;

This game object is enabled when the system is **NOT** processing. This is useful to place a "Play Button" or similar elements in that you want to be "turned off" when the system starts processing. You can similarly use the `Evt Process Started` event to control your UI

Processing Group

public GameObject processingGroup;

This game object is enabled when the system **IS** processing. This is useful for placing a "status message" object in that should be displayed when the system is working.

Update Rich Presence Group Data

public bool updateRichPresenceGroupData;

Indicates rather or not the system could update the player's `steam_player_group` and `steam_player_group_size` rich presence data.

Kick When

public EAuthSessionResponce[] kickWhen;

A collection of authentication response codes that if seen on authentication the user should be asked to leave.

SearchArguments

public SearchArguments searchArguments;

Used with any form of search performed through the Lobby Manager including the Search and QuickMatch methods. This is used to define the "search arguments" e.g. the rules to be tested when searching for lobbies.

The SearchArguments data type is an internal class:

[Serializable]
public class SearchArguments
{
    /// <summary>
    /// If less than or equal to 0 then we won't use the open slot filter
    /// </summary>
    public int slots = -1;
    public ELobbyDistanceFilter distance = ELobbyDistanceFilter.k_ELobbyDistanceFilterDefault;
    public List<NearFilter> nearValues = new List<NearFilter>();
    public List<NumericFilter> numericFilters = new List<NumericFilter>();
    public List<StringFilter> stringFilters = new List<StringFilter>();
}

The fields of the class are as follows

• slots If less than or equal to 0 this will be ignored otherwise this will indicate the number of available slots that resulting lobbies must have. For example, if you wanted to find a lobby for you and 3 friends then you would provide a value of 4 in this field to return only lobbies that had 4 open slots.

• distance An enumerator that indicates the max allowed distance between the searching user and the members of the resulting lobbies. For more details on the values see Valve's documentation on ELobbyDistanceFilter, in summary

  • Close Only in the same Valve region as this user

  • Default In the same or near by Valve region as this user

  • Far Up to half a world away

  • World Wide No filtering at all

• nearValues Key value pairs that the system should search for "nearby" values for. See Valve's documentation on this feature for more details. In summary, this doesn't "filter out" lobbies but rather effects the sorting, the closer a lobby's metadata is to matching this value the higher it will be sorted in the resulting list. This is useful for say "Player Rank" whose min and max player rank is as near the player's actual rank as possible. To do this you could set near values of minRank = myRank and maxRank = myRank this would not exclude any lobbies in and of itself but would sort lobbies such that top results were nearest "my rank" ... this assumes minRank is the rank of the lowest ranked player in that lobby and maxRank is the rank of the highest ranked player in that lobby
• numericFilters Instructs the search to perform a numeric filtering operation on these fields and can filer by the following methods

  • Equal to or Less than

  • Less than

  • Equal

  • Greater than

  • Equal to or Greater than

  • Not Equal

• stringFilter Instructs the search to perform a string filtering operation on these fields which can be filtered by the same methods as numeric filters. Valve doesn't explain what the result of each is so test to confirm desired results.

CreateArguments

public CreateArguments createArguments;

Used by the Lobby Manager any time a lobby is created with it, this would apply to Create as well as QuickMatch when no lobby is found and Create on fail is set to true.

The CreateArguments data type is an internal class:

[Serializable]
public class CreateArguments
{
    public string name;
    public int slots;
    public ELobbyType type;
    public List<MetadataTempalate> metadata = new List<MetadataTempalate>();
}

the fields of the class are as follows

• name This will be set as metadata on the lobby when created e.g. MyLobby["name"] = value;

• slots This is the maximum number of slots this lobby will have ... this is including the owner of the lobby.

• type The type of lobby to create, you can learn more about the available types above.
• metadata Metadata fields are to be set on the lobby once created. This is a simple string key and string value pairing. Metadata is what is used when "filtering" or "searching" for lobbies.

Lobby

public Lobby Lobby { get; set; }

The lobby the manager is currently managing. This will automatically be updated when you use the lobby manager to create, join or leave a lobby. If you create, join or leave a lobby from outside the manager then you should update this field accordingly.

Owner

public LobbyMember Owner => get;

Gets the Lobby Member data for the current lobby owner.

Me

public LobbyMember Me => get;

Gets the local user's Lobby Member data for the current lobby.

HasLobby

public bool HasLobby => get;

True if the manager is managing a lobby, false otherwise.

Searching

public bool Searching => get;

True if the system is searching for a match at the moment.

IsPlayerOwner

public bool IsPlayerOwner => get;

True if the local user is the owner of the managed lobby, false otherwise.

AllPlayersReady

public bool AllPlayersReady => get;

True if all members of the lobby have marked themselves as ready, otherwise false.

IsPlayerReady

public bool IsPlayerReady { get; set; }

Returns true if the player has marked themselves as ready on this lobby. This can be set to mark the player as ready or not on this lobby.

Full

public bool Full => get;

Returns true if the lobby is currently full, false otherwise.

Slots

public int Slot => get;

How many people can join this lobby if any lobby at all

Member Count

public int MemberCount => get;

How many people are currently in this lobby if any lobby at all

Game Server

public LobbyGameServer GameServer => get;

The current game server is set by the owner of the lobby if any

Working Status

public Status WorkingStatus => get;

The current status of the system

• Idle Not processing

• Searching If currently searching for a match

• Waiting For Start A match found but the lobby was not full and the session not started

• Starting Match found and the lobby is now full ... the owner should be starting up the network session

Timer

public float Timer => get;

The amount of time since the process started.

Methods

Cancel

public void Cancel();

Stops the process of searching and if in a lobby exits the lobby

Run Quick Match

public void RunQuickMatch();

Starts the process of searching for and or creating a session lobby as required.

Set Game Server

public void SetGameServer();
public void SetGameServer(string address, ushort port, CSteamID gameServerId);
public void SetGameServer(string address, ushort port);
public void SetGameServer(CSteamID gameServerId;

This can only be called by the owner of the lobby and should be called when the network session is ready for the members to connect to it.

If no parameter is passed in

SetGameServer();

The system will assume that the owner of the lobby is the server e.g. a P2P session where the lobby owner is the "Host"

All other overloads require you to indicate what the connection information is for the session.