Unity: Matchmaking #

This tutorial uses Unity 2021.3 with Pragma Engine 0.5.0 to demonstrate integrating Pragma Engine party functionality with a third-party game engine. This guide assumes you are proficient with Unity.

We’ve previously built the party flow up until the point players enter matchmaking: players can create a new party, join a party with an invite code, and select their game mode and characters. In this tutorial, we’ll expand the PragmaManager.cs file to implement matchmaking functionality.

Prerequisites

Update PragmaSDK for Unity #

Whenever you make changes to Pragma Engine or update the code, you’ll want to update the PragmaSDK Unity plugin folder. Re-run the update script command from your project’s root directory:

update-pragma-sdk.sh

Enter matchmaking #

Goal #

Allow parties to enter matchmaking using the WarmBodyMatchmaking plugin.

Steps #

In PragmaManager.cs, add an EnterMatchmaking() method:

public void EnterMatchmaking()
{
    Player.PartyApi.EnterMatchmaking(result =>
    {
        if (result.IsSuccessful)
        {
            Debug.Log("Pragma -- Party entered matchmaking");
        }
        else
        {
            Debug.Log("Pragma -- Party could not enter matchmaking");
        }
    });
}

As long as the two players are in different parties and both parties are set to the same game mode, the WarmbodyMatchmakingPlugin will match the two parties, create a game instance, and send the two parties to the game instance.

Players cannot enter matchmaking without being in the “ready” state. A player’s isReady value is automatically set to true when they make a character selection. See Make character selections.

Display game instance information #

Goal #

Alert a player that they have been added to a game instance. This will verify the matchmaking process has succeeded.

The Pragma SDK for Unity provides an OnAddedToGameInstance event that fires when a player has been added to a game instance. We can use this event to trigger a handler function for matchmaking and game instance updates. For now, our HandleOnAddedToGameInstance() function simply print a log entry.

Steps #

  1. In PragmaManager.cs, add a HandleOnAddedToGame() method:

    private void HandleOnAddedToGame(Pragma.Common.GameInstance.PragmaGameInstance gameInstance)
{
   Debug.Log("Pragma -- Added to game instance ID: " + gameInstance.GetId().ToString());
}

  2. In the PragmaManager.cs Awake() function, register our HandleOnAddedToGame() function with the appropriate event handler:

    Player.GameInstanceApi.OnAddedToGameInstance += HandleOnAddedToGame;

Next steps #

At this point, players can enter matchmaking and enter game instances with appropriate matches. Continue to the Social tutorial to learn how to implement sample friend and presence functionality in Pragma.


Unreal: Matchmaking
Social