Godot-matcha is an addon that lets you use WebRTC for multiplayer games by handling matchmaking using WebTorrent trackers. Conceptually it’s quite an interesting, novel approach.
WebTorrent uses a modified BitTorrent protocol that allows it to work with WebSockets. A WebTorrent tracker is essentially a directory service that keeps track of torrents offered by users. A torrent is uniquely identified by its info_hash, so if you have the torrent information, you can look up who is offering a file for download.
Rather than tracking a specific torrent file, godot-matcha generates a random identifier, which it uses as a room (or lobby). If another player has the same identifier they exchange the WebRTC’s SDP details to establish a connection.
Connecting players this way is essentially free. This is a suitable approach for mobile games, for example, where you start a game, and share an identifier with someone else to join in. Mobile party games, for example, use such an approach: One player starts a game, and others join by using some random id such as “FJRLE”.
While godot-matcha is a great proof of concept, I’ve done some testing that showed that the various clients disagree on their unique IDs. This results in challenges when setting the multiplayer authority, a key part of making the high-level multiplayer abstraction work well. The reason for the mismatch is how godot-matcha creates offers, which sets a random id as peer ID before the peers are even connected.
This release improves weight management. Inventories can now configure an option weight limit, and item stacking and item transfer strategies are weight-aware. The crafting demo and crafting mechanic in the inventory tour have been improved. Auto-crafting is limited to the crafting slide, so that items don’t automatically and unexpectedly get crafted while stepping through the …
Godot Engine is an open-source game engine. With the 4.0 release on the horizon, it’ll gain quite a bit of attention. And it’s an engine worth keeping an eye on. Internet Gaming. Serious business. Game development is serious business. The global gaming market size was 203 billion USD in 2020 (per fortunebusinessinsights). It is predicted …
Just a couple of days ago, Godot 4.0 alpha 17 was announced. Today, Godot Engine 4.0 beta 1 was released. Be sure to check out the announcement. There are lots of improvements across the board; rendering, lighting, physics and navigation, animation, and scripting.
Are you using @onready to reference nodes? There’s a better way! Here’s a simple example of how many tutorials use @onready to reference nodes: That script is attached to a CanvasLayer node with a ProgressBar called HealthBar. And yet, when running the scene, it will throw an error: This is because there’s actually a spelling …
godot-matcha: Free multiplayer without a server
Godot-matcha is an addon that lets you use WebRTC for multiplayer games by handling matchmaking using WebTorrent trackers. Conceptually it’s quite an interesting, novel approach.
WebTorrent uses a modified BitTorrent protocol that allows it to work with WebSockets. A WebTorrent tracker is essentially a directory service that keeps track of torrents offered by users. A torrent is uniquely identified by its info_hash, so if you have the torrent information, you can look up who is offering a file for download.
Rather than tracking a specific torrent file, godot-matcha generates a random identifier, which it uses as a room (or lobby). If another player has the same identifier they exchange the WebRTC’s SDP details to establish a connection.
Connecting players this way is essentially free. This is a suitable approach for mobile games, for example, where you start a game, and share an identifier with someone else to join in. Mobile party games, for example, use such an approach: One player starts a game, and others join by using some random id such as “FJRLE”.
While godot-matcha is a great proof of concept, I’ve done some testing that showed that the various clients disagree on their unique IDs. This results in challenges when setting the multiplayer authority, a key part of making the high-level multiplayer abstraction work well. The reason for the mismatch is how godot-matcha creates offers, which sets a random id as peer ID before the peers are even connected.
In contrast, the godot-demo-projects repository has a webrtc_signaling demo, which uses the lobby/signaling server to tell the clients their ID, so that all clients (including the one acting as the server) add the same peer ID.
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This release improves weight management. Inventories can now configure an option weight limit, and item stacking and item transfer strategies are weight-aware. The crafting demo and crafting mechanic in the inventory tour have been improved. Auto-crafting is limited to the crafting slide, so that items don’t automatically and unexpectedly get crafted while stepping through the …
Is Godot is the Linux of Game Engines?
Godot Engine is an open-source game engine. With the 4.0 release on the horizon, it’ll gain quite a bit of attention. And it’s an engine worth keeping an eye on. Internet Gaming. Serious business. Game development is serious business. The global gaming market size was 203 billion USD in 2020 (per fortunebusinessinsights). It is predicted …
Godot Engine 4 reaches beta
Just a couple of days ago, Godot 4.0 alpha 17 was announced. Today, Godot Engine 4.0 beta 1 was released. Be sure to check out the announcement. There are lots of improvements across the board; rendering, lighting, physics and navigation, animation, and scripting.
Ditch @onready, use @export instead
Are you using @onready to reference nodes? There’s a better way! Here’s a simple example of how many tutorials use @onready to reference nodes: That script is attached to a CanvasLayer node with a ProgressBar called HealthBar. And yet, when running the scene, it will throw an error: This is because there’s actually a spelling …