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caue-waneck avatar image
caue-waneck asked

Matchmaking 2.0 without hosting

Hello! We are currently evaluating using Playfab Matchmaking 2.0 with our game, and I'm confused about whether it's possible to use the matchmaking features without also hosting the servers in Azure and using `AllocateServerMatch`.

I've found conflicting documentation about this - While this question seems to indicate that it isn't possible without using backfill in a way it's unintended, this question's answer states:

> So this new Matchmaking will only help you gather players together. You will need to manually allocate the servers to the matched player, pass connection info to members of that match to connect, all of these will be done by yourself.

Is it really possible to manually allocate servers to the matched player? How would that work? Will Playfab always return a match id and we then need to allocate a server for that match? Or do we need a pool of servers to be available and registered with Playfab? Or is that not supported?

Thank you!

Matchmaking
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Sarah Zhang avatar image
Sarah Zhang answered

>> Is it really possible to manually allocate servers to the matched player?

Yes, it’s possible. However, currently, PlayFab doesn’t provide the official integration for it. There is no corresponding documentation. As the second answer said, you need to design and implement the corresponding “server architecture” on your own, including designing the matchmaking server, the game server pool, and server allocation logic. The matchmaking server is used to call PlayFab Multiplayer API, get the MatchIDs, manage the matches, allocate the server instances, etc. The game server pool is used to provide game server instances that can be allocated.

>> How would that work? Will Playfab always return a match id and we then need to allocate a server for that match?

If you host the servers externally, the process to allocate the custom server instance with PlayFab MatchMaking results would be complicated. Without discussing technical details, the process of allocating servers could like this.

  1. Clients do the MatchMaking as normal.
  2. After clients complete the MatchMaking, they send MatchId and match Info to the matchmaking server.
  3. For every MatchId, the matchmaking server allocates a game server instance for it, then sends the allocated server instance’s IP address and port number to the corresponding clients.
  4. Clients connect to the server instances.

>> Or do we need a pool of servers to be available and registered with Playfab?

As the above answer said, we suggest you create the game server pool, and you need to import the PlayFab SDK to the server executable. You needn’t register it with PlayFab. PlayFab doesn’t provide integration for the external server pool.

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