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Other Engine Onboarding

Hathora Cloud is a scalable hosting platform for online multiplayer games. You upload your server project using the Hathora Console or CLI, and then dynamically create server instances in 10+ regions around the world. You get charged only for the duration of active matches/sessions. It's perfect for dedicated servers that can be run in a Linux environment, and supports UDP, TCP, TLS while also providing DDoS protection.

1. Preparing your server build​

Your server will need to be runnable as a dedicated Linux server.

2. Generating a Dockerfile​

By providing a Dockerfile with your server build, we will be able to scale your server across the globe.

Check out our guide to creating a Dockerfile.

3. Deploy server to Hathora Cloud​

If this is your first time deploying on Hathora Cloud, we recommend starting with our Deploying on Hathora Cloud guide.

There are 2 ways to deploy your server on Hathora Cloud:

  1. With command line or CI/CD pipeline
  2. Drag and drop upload via Hathora Console
hathora-cloud builds create --appId <your_app_id>
tip

Zero-downtime deployments: New deployments will not impact any existing games, your newly deployed version will only be used for subsequent games created after.

4. Creating rooms/processes​

There are 2 ways to create rooms on Hathora Cloud:

  1. Via API call
  2. Directly with Hathora Console (great for debugging)

A simple API call: RoomApi.CreateRoom(appId).

tip

To learn more about room creation and lifecycle, check out our Room Lifecycle docs

5. Connecting to a room​

Once you have created a room, it will take Hathora Cloud a few seconds to spin up your server instance and expose a port for your client to connect to.

We recommend polling RoomApi.GetConnectionInfo(appId, roomId) until status is "active" and ExposedPort is not null.

tip

With our Hathora Console, you can get connection info (host:port) directly, which is useful for testing and debugging.

6. Lobby Service and integration with matchmakers​

Check our Lobby Service for a lightweight way to build a lobby system for your game.

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