Connect to the Lobby service

Last updated on December 19, 2024

Overview

The Lobby service is a component under the Play service which acts as the main hub for your player activity. This service provides a continuous connection between your players and also acts as the entry point for the game client to interact with the Friends and Presence services.

This How-to will walk you through connecting your game to the AccelByte Gaming Services (AGS) Lobby service using AccelByte OSS (OSS), Unreal Engine, and Unity.

Prerequisite

• Access to the AGS Admin Portal.
• If you're using Unreal Engine or Unity, you must have installed the AccelByte Unreal or Unity SDK. This includes credentials for your game client:
  • Client ID
  • Client Secret

Connect your game to the Lobby service

To connect your game to the Lobby service, follow the SDK installation steps for your game engine.

AccelByte OSS

There are two ways to connect to the Lobby service in the AccelByte Online Subsystem (OSS):

Automatically connect to the Lobby

Set the bAutoLobbyConnectAfterLoginSuccess parameter to true in the [OnlineSubsystemAccelByte] inside the DefaultEngine.ini file. Once set, OSS will try to connect to the lobby upon a successful user login.

Manually connect to the Lobby

If the automatic option does not work, you can manually call FOnlineIdentityAccelByte::ConnectAccelByteLobby by running this command.

// Manually connect to lobby

int32 LocalUserNum = 0;

FOnlineIdentityAccelBytePtr IdentityInterface = StaticCastSharedPtr<FOnlineIdentityAccelByte>(OnlineSubsystem->GetIdentityInterface());
AB_TEST_TRUE(IdentityInterface.IsValid());
IdentityInterface->ConnectAccelByteLobby(LocalUserNum);

Unreal Engine

AccelByte::FRegistry::Lobby.Connect();

Unity

AccelByteSDK.GetClientRegistry().GetApi().GetLobby().Connect();

Go Extend SDK

connectionutils.NewWebsocketConnection(&configRepo, &tokenRepo, lobbyMessageHandler)

Python Extend SDK

import asyncio
import accelbyte_py_sdk.services.auth as auth_service
from accelbyte_py_sdk.core import AccelByteSDK
from accelbyte_py_sdk.core import MyConfigRepository
from accelbyte_py_sdk.core import HttpxHttpClient
from accelbyte_py_sdk.core import InMemoryTokenRepository
from accelbyte_py_sdk.core import WebsocketsWSClient

config_repo = MyConfigRepository(
    base_url="https://****.accelbyte.io",
    client_id="********************************",
    client_secret="********************************",
    namespace="********",
)
token_repo = InMemoryTokenRepository()

sdk = AccelByteSDK()
sdk.initialize(
    options={
        "config": config_repo,
        "token": token_repo,
        "http": HttpxHttpClient(),
    }
)

result, error = await auth_service.login_user_async(
    username="********",
    password="********",
    sdk=sdk,
)
if error:
    exit(error)

ws_client = WebsocketsWSClient(
    uri=config_repo.get_base_url(),
    access_token=token_repo.get_access_token(),
)

await ws_client.connect()

# do something

await ws_client.disconnect()

Java Extend SDK

import okhttp3.Response;
import okhttp3.WebSocket;
import okhttp3.WebSocketListener;

import net.accelbyte.sdk.api.lobby.ws_models.MessageNotif;

public class MyLobby extends WebSocketListener {
    ...
    private OkhttpWebSocketClient wsClient;

    public MyLobby(...) {
        ...
        wsClient = OkhttpWebSocketClient.create(configRepository, tokenRepository, this);
    }

    @Override
    public void onMessage(@NotNull WebSocket webSocket, @NotNull String text) {
        super.onMessage(webSocket, text);
        if (text.contains(MessageNotif.getType())) {
              final MessageNotif notif = MessageNotif.createFromWSM(text);
            ...        
        }
    }
    @Override
    public void onOpen(@NotNull WebSocket webSocket, @NotNull Response response) {
        super.onOpen(webSocket, response);        
    }
    @Override
    public void onClosed(@NotNull WebSocket webSocket, int code, @NotNull String reason) {
        super.onClosed(webSocket, code, reason);
    }
    @Override
    public void onClosing(@NotNull WebSocket webSocket, int code, @NotNull String reason) {
        super.onClosing(webSocket, code, reason);        
    }
    @Override
    public void onFailure(@NotNull WebSocket webSocket, @NotNull Throwable t, @Nullable Response response) {
        super.onFailure(webSocket, t, response);
    }

C# Extend SDK

LobbyService lobby = new LobbyService(sdk.Configuration);

//async
await lobby.Connect(false);

//sync
Task connectTak = lobby.Connect(false);
connectTak.Wait();

What's next?

After you have connected your game to the Lobby service, your game lobby is created. Configure the settings for your game's lobby in the AGS Admin Portal. See Configure the Lobby service.