Parties

The party feature let players your game play with only their invited friends. This is a great way to let players play together without having to worry about strangers joining in.

tip

Some other games or game engines may refer to parties as a private lobby or room.

How Parties Work

When a player starts a party, they are given a link which they can use to invite their friends to join the party. Once in party mode, the matchmaker will only match the players to other members of the same party, instead of matching them to random players from around the world.

A number of other features are also affected by being in a party:

• Regions are ignored when in a party, so players from different regions can play together.
• Chat will be limited to only within members of the same party.
• OnlinePlayerScoreboards will only show players in the same party.

Even though the players are in a party, they are still playing your game, and so Accumulators or Preferences will still work like normal, and any changes to them will persist, even after the party ends. This allows your players to make progress together.

Starting a Party

Attach a PartyIntent to a Button to allow players to open the party dialog. You can use the IsPartying property to determine whether the player is currently in a party and change the button text accordingly.

This is an example of a snippet you can add to your home page to encourage players to start a party:

P(fontSize=0.9) {
    if IsPartying {
        "Invite more friends to "
        Link(PartyIntent, bold=true) { "this party!" }
    } else {
        "Invite your friends to "
        Link(PartyIntent, bold=true) { "party!" }
    }
}

Party Toggle

You can also place the built-in PartyToggle element in a Toolbar to allow players to quickly switch into or out of a party. This toolbar button automatically changes its look based on whether the player is currently in a party or not, and opens the party dialog when clicked.

Toolbar {
    PartyToggle
}