DEV Question: "How to play with friends"?

[noblemaster]

There is a lot of people asking how to play with friends in the chat. I am honestly not sure how to address? I am not too familiar with Steam (sorry!). What's the thing I need to add/change? Is this about the Steam game invite-system?

[noblemaster]

+ Bump

The number of times this has been asked compared to the number of answers this thread has received, i.e. 0, is staggering! Can someone enlighten me?

[Tegeo]

Probably best to fire off an email or something to Steam asking them.

[luckz]

They probably want to use the Steamworks API invite system to invite other people into a game, and to be able to join a game a friend is hosting or is a member of.

[noblemaster]

I found the Steamworks API for friend invites! I am currently implementing it. I hope that's what was meant?

[luckz]

Once a user is in a lobby as host (or also guest):
allow to use Steam Overlay (Steamworks API) to 'invite' friends, while also allowing any friends to themselves use the 'join' feature, as long as the game hasn't started. of course friends then need to be prompted about potential entry fees, if those for the gambling mode and whatnot are billed before the game has actually started (I wouldn't know).

as far as I've seen there is no hot-join feature -- joining an existing multiplayer game -- so all of this should only be available in the lobby phase and disabled afterwards.

for fun, you can also expose some information about the current game status to Steam friends ('view game info' button). it might be seen as stalky, though. I've commonly seen it used to show realtime information about the game being played. in AoC IV, such realtime information would be the nation played, the current turn, maybe whether the player is playing or waiting, in a game or in a lobby, and so on.

[noblemaster]

Yes, you can hot-join games that are already started :)

re-current game status: I am working on that too.