my brothers and i are conceptualizing a game. if we decide to use an engine i’ve narrowed down our choices to godot or unity. it may be our game is simple enough we don’t need an engine, but we’d also like to learn so we may just use one anyways. the game we are envisioning will have one large lobby where players can form individual games that other players can join and play once full. no need for auto matchmaking or any algorithm to automatically match players

in my research and watching brief tutorials i think i have a handle on how to use the engine to create the game client, but the part i can’t seem to find is how to connect a game client to an online lobby or matchmaking server. is this something that is typically done outside of the engine? would i write my own server code in some other language (go, python, c#, etc…) then have the client (via the game engine) communicate with it?

are there any good resources to read? what is a good way to narrow down language choice?

new here, first post in fact. thanks in advance for the conversation!

Neither Godot nor Unity have built-in networking support.

Unreal Engine does have some built-in networking support, and with the companion Epic Games Services, you also get accounts/lobbies/etc. The built-in networking support can also be re-purposed for Steam, Google Play, or the iOS game kit.

Often, lobbies are actually just another “game level” running, where the rules are different. (In Unreal speak, this is a different GameMode.) Then players that match up and want to play, use server travel to all join the “game” they select.

It is actually possible to build a reasonable game on top of Unreal Engine with entirely just blueprints/wiring, you don't have to write C++, at least for moderately simple games, but if you want to dive in deeper, Unreal requires C++. Also, Unreal requires pretty high-end target (gamer) hardware, and very high-end development hardware, or you may suffer quite slow build times. On the other hand, Unreal solves a bunch of problems that large teams run into, that the other engines can't solve – things like “we have multiple level designers working on the same level at the same time, and they need to interact through central source control” and such.

you say godot doesn’t natively support networking… is it even possible to create an online game with matchmaking in godot or unity? what would that involve? what would it look like from a conceptual level? since my goal is a 2d online game, are there better options for me?

ive been reading the documentation on godot, and there is a whole section for networking - https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/networking/index.html​

it seems as if it may be possible to do what i am looking for all within godot, but it may not be the most efficient

i am reasonably comfortable with networking and programming, but have never implemented anything like this before. i am wondering if it would be better to start down the path of having it all contained within godot, or working on the backend server outside of godot and then somehow linking them together. the latter seems more performant and flexible, while the former seems a bit easier yet potentially slower and less full featured. maybe i start with the easier solution and move away from it where/when i find it is necessary