Set Up Matchmaking with Pragma Engine #

This tutorial uses Pragma Engine 0.0.99 to demonstrate how to implement matchmaking functionality.

Pragma Engine uses a Matchmaking Plugin to provide matchmaking functionality. You can build your own matchmaking plugins to customize matchmaking behavior to suit the unique needs of your game.

As this is a simplified tutorial, we’ll be using the Pragma-provided WarmBodyMatchmakingPlugin matchmaking plugin, which is a configurable implementation of the Matchmaking Plugin. The WarmBodyMatchmakingPlugin performs warm body matchmaking, which means it simply matches the first available players together until a complete match is formed. In this tutorial we’ll enable the Warm Body Matchmaking Plugin and the necessary matchmaking-related functions to the Party Plugin we implemented in the Parties tutorial.

Enable the Warm Body Matchmaking Plugin #

Goal #

Enable the the WarmBodyMatchmakingPlugin plugin using the YAML file.

Steps #

1. Because the WarmBodyMatchmakingPlugin is a configurable implementation of the Matchmaking Plugin, we can pass specific parameters in our configuration YAML to change its behavior. Enable the plugin by editing 5-ext/config/dev.yml to add the following config:

game:
  pluginConfigs:
    MatchmakingService.matchmakingPlugin:
      class: "pragma.matchmaking.WarmBodyMatchmakingPlugin"
      config:
        numberOfTeams: 1
        playersPerTeam: 1

This configuration enables the WarmBodyMatchmakingPlugin by adding it as a configuration value under the Matchmaking service. For ease of testing, we set the numberOfTeams value to 1 and the playersPerTeam value to 1. Default logic in the WarmBodyMatchmakingPlugin dictates that a game instance will be started when there are exactly enough players to satisfy the Config.playersPerTeam and Config.numberOfTeams configuration.

Define matchmaking queues #

Goal #

Add the game mode we defined in the Party Plugin tutorial to ExtMatchmakingKey so that when in matchmaking, one matchmaking queue will be created for each game mode.

Steps #

Matchmaking queues are identified by distinct matchmaking keys. Matchmaking keys are configurable using the ExtMatchmakingKey proto.

1. In your 5-ext/ext-protos/src/main/proto/shared/matchmakingExt.proto file, edit the existing ExtMatchmakingKey messages to match the code below:

message ExtMatchmakingKey {
  party.GameMode game_mode = 1;
}

Note: Make sure to import “shared/partyRpcExt.proto”; 2. Build the protos so they’re available for use when implementing the Party Plugin by running the following command in the terminal from the platform directory:

make ext-protos

Override the Matchmaking Key function #

Goal #

Implement the buildMatchmakingKey() function to build the ExtMatchmakingKey according to the party game mode.

Steps #

1. The buildMatchmakingKey() function must be implemented in the TutorialPartyPlugin we created in the Implement the Party Plugin tutorial.

override suspend fun buildMatchmakingKey(party: Party.Party): ExtMatchmakingKey {
    val partyExt: ExtParty = party.ext
    return ExtMatchmakingKey.newBuilder()
        .setGameMode(partyExt.selectedGameMode)
        .build()
}

2. Recompile 5-ext. Run the following command in a terminal from the platform directory:

make ext

Next steps #

Congratulations! You now have a custom implementation of the WarmBodyMatchmaking Plugin. Continue to the Social tutorial or see how to apply the WarmBodyMatchmaking Plugin in Unreal.