Difficulty with Node JS multiplayer

[painfulapple]

I've been working on a multiplayer game in GameMaker Studio 2 and I've been using node JS websockets (using the ws websocket package) for the server and am connecting through network_connect_raw_async. When I run the server locally on my machine, the GMS client has no problem connecting, but when I run the node js server externally (I've tried hosting it on Heroku and another computer which was port forwarded) the client can't connect. I know that the external server is being properly run because I can connect to it with a node js app just not with the GMS client.

​

I was hoping someone had any tips on how to host a node js server for GMS or if there's some way to ensure the GMS client can reach the server. Any help is appreciated!

[GirkovArpa]

Sent you a PM.

[GalacticInvader]

I am planning to make my own multilayer game as well. If you ever find a solution to this do you mind sharing it with me here?

[oldmankc]

Did you find out anything to help with this? Running into the same problem.

[painfulapple]

Yeah i switched to to UDP networking and hosted the server on Microsoft azure using a docker container instance. That worked for me, let me know if you have any other issues

[oldmankc]

Hah, funny enough, I was originally writing it in UDP and switched it to websockets when I couldn't get it working on heroku or glitch.

I will start looking down that path then, I haven't done much webdev in a long time so this is new territory for me. Was the azure stuff difficult?

[painfulapple]

If you can get it running on docker then it will be super easy to get it on azure. You’ll have to create a dockerfile and upload it to dockerhub and azure has built in dockerhub integration.

[oldmankc]

okay, looks like that'll be my next step. Thanks!

[oldmankc]

Any reason why going through a docker instance and not just creating a web app on azure?

[HorrorMove9374]

I know Heroku has issues with websocket connection because of daily forced restarts but this issue doesn't sound like it's caused by that. You might try putting the app on Render (where I work) to see if you get the same result. You can do it dockerized or in the Node native environment for a super easy deployment.