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I'm a networking newbie using AppGameKit Studio Tier 1. This past week I added local multiplayer to a game I'm selling on Steam, which works great! Big thanks to everyone at AppGameKit who made implementing this simple & painless.

I'd now like to add online multiplayer. I'm looking for a user-friendly way to host & join games between two players over the internet.

I see that AppGameKit can connect to another computer when given an IPv4 or IPv6 address. Would one (or both) of the users need to set up port forwarding for that to work? I'm concerned that changing router settings could be a tall hurdle for casual gamers. Is there a way around that, either through AppGameKit or using a third-party solution?

I'd love to get advice or tips from anyone who's had experience with AppGameKit online multiplayer.

When using multiplayer over the internet in my experience you would need to use port forwarding indeed, which for quite a few users, may be a hurdle and instructions are hard to give for every router may be different.
Therefor something like hole-punching is used by more sophisticated networking engines, but this is a bit more complicated and I believe requires a third actor to be successful.
It's probably possible to code this with the current set of commands, but requires more in dept networking knowledge. (I see room for an add-on DLC here )


I do not know if any third-party solutions exits for AppGameKit (yet).
For some other languages there are SDK's for the Photon Engine https://www.photonengine.com/sdks#windows which is - so they say themselves - "The world's #1 independent networking engine and multiplayer platform - Fast, reliable, scalable. Made for anyone: indies, professional studios " .

And indeed appears their adoption rate is truly impressive.. However no SDK for AppGameKit specifically, so I don't think this will work under Tier1.
Tier2 perhaps would work for there are SDK's for Windows, Android, iOS, MacOS, Linux and a whole lot more. Dunno if anybody ever tried?


EDIT:
There's also Nakama https://heroiclabs.com/ "Nakama is an open-source scalable server that makes building social and realtime apps and games dramatically easier. "
I see they are working hard on implementing for other programming languages and platforms too https://heroiclabs.com/nakama-vs-photon/ so I'd try to get my foot between the door if I was AGK. For more options=a larger public.

It does seem like this might be the case. But solutions like Photon Server seem to come with a potentially pricey recurring cost.


Yes! If AppGameKit had thoughts about a DLC to bring easy cross-platform matchmaking to Tier 1, I would jump on that Kickstarter.

So if I had the dream to write code in Tier 1 AppGameKit Studio for a multiplayer shooter which I can then later scale up to 1000+ users I'd be dreaming literally is what you guys are saying?!!?

You're better off using an engine that is made to support your specific need.

It does feel like this is an area that TGCs should look into. AppGameKit Tier 1 makes programming local games really accessible. Would be great if they could also crack online multiplayer!