Connecting

How to connect to a game server, manually or through the lobby.

The menu (the normal way)

1. Open the dev server (npm run dev).
2. The first time a browser reaches the lobby it is asked who you are. The name you pick is your account's; leaving it empty keeps the Player_<number> the lobby gave you. You already have a key at that point — it is what opens the same account in another browser, and the Profile key at the foot of the menu is where you copy or save it.
3. Pick a mode on the Play stage — Duel, Amphi, FFA or S&D — and take the one big action under it to find a room. Private beside it makes a room that appears in no list; the only way in is the invite link it gives you.
4. In the room you vote for a map, pick a side, add bots, chat with the people in it, and mark yourself ready.
5. When everyone is ready, the lobby spawns a dedicated game server for that match alone and hands your client its address and a ticket for your seat.
6. The connecting screen takes over and becomes the loading screen where it stands: its third step, MAP LOAD, lights up, the stage names the map over its levelshot, and a bar fills as the map loads. When the game has set itself up, the screen fades and you spawn.
7. When the match ends, Back to the lobby brings you back to the same room, ready for a rematch.

Rooms you can join are listed down the left rail. The Leaderboard shows your rank in every mode in its rail, and Profile shows your ranked record beside your key.

Joining a match under way

A match that has started still takes players while it has room. Its key in the rail reads join, and pressing it puts you straight into the match, on the smaller side in a team mode. A full match reads watch: you spectate, and pressing J (or Join in the match menu) asks for a place. When one has freed up you are in at once, on the connection you are watching from. When the match is still full, the chat says so. In a Duel whose two sides are taken — including a side held for a player who dropped — you are put in the challengers queue and brought in when it frees. In a round mode you join dead and play from the next round.

In the Ready Room

Action	How it resolves
Vote map	Three maps are drawn from the gametype's pool; most votes wins
Switch side	Immediate, no vote — it affects only you and it is reversible
Vote shuffle	Randomises the teams; needs a majority (ceil(players / 2))
Add bot	Private rooms only. Fills a seat using a standard preset near your private rating; new players fall back to medium. The protocol also supports explicit easy, medium, hard and insane presets
Ready	Toggles your ready state

On a team gametype you are auto-assigned to the smaller side on join. Switching sides needs no vote because it affects one player and is reversible — and without it there would be no way to choose a side at all, which makes testing the attacking half of a round mode impossible.

Bots count as automatic yes votes on a shuffle, but only once a human has voted. A bot has no opinion about team balance, and without this a lobby of one human plus any number of bots could never reach the majority and so could never shuffle at all.

The side you end up on is carried through to the game server, so what you chose in the ready room is what you play.

Console (the developer way)

connect ws://localhost:7777    # Connect to a running dedicated server
disconnect                     # Leave the current server
cl_netgraph 2                  # Show live connection diagnostics

The connect command lives in src/games/fps/console/commands/ConnectCommand.ts (registered at boot by registerFpsCommands).

If a map <name> [gametype] command was used to dev-spawn a server, the lobby spawn + the network connect happen automatically. You don't need connect after map.

A server reached with connect shows the join screen once the map is in: join the match, or spectate first.

What Happens on Connect

1. Browser WebSocket handshake with the game server.
2. The client presents the ticket the lobby gave it. The server admits the seat that ticket belongs to — the name a client sends identifies nobody. A seat survives a dropped socket, so a reload before the match starts reclaims the same one.
3. Server replies with serverInfo containing the active map name + gametype + tick rate.
4. Client renders the BSP via the engine's loadClientMap() helper (no local simulation — the server is authoritative).
5. Client subscribes to snapshot stream and starts sending input commands.
6. Server adds the player to the simulation; first authoritative snapshot arrives with the spawn position.

Disconnect Behaviour

disconnect cleanly closes the WebSocket and tears down:

• The active NetworkGameHost
• The input loop
• The snapshot buffer
• The client-side projectile / weapon-view state

If you drop mid-match, your seat is held for 20 seconds and the server hands your client a resume token, so coming back inside that window puts you back in the same seat rather than a new one. Miss it and the seat is released and your name leaves the scoreboard.

Reading the NetGraph

cl_netgraph 1 shows ping, snapshot rate, estimated snapshot gaps, interpolation delay and command rate as text; cl_netgraph 2 adds a rolling graph of the same numbers. See HUD → NetGraph.

• Ping is measured from the server's acknowledgement of your commands, and is the number the scoreboard shows.
• Hit registration is lag-compensated. When you shoot, the server rewinds other players to the tick your client was showing you, so what you saw under your crosshair is what is tested for weapons that use it.

Ticketed and ticketless connections

A match started through the lobby is ticketed, as above. A connect typed at the console carries no ticket: the server lets it watch, but a playing seat belongs to a ticket, so it cannot take one. Watching from the lobby's rail is different: there, Join asks the lobby for a seat.

Further reading

The engine's Networking Guide (docs/manual/guides/networking.md in the engine repo) covers the underlying mechanics, and its Lobby Server guide (docs/manual/guides/lobby-server.md) covers accounts, rooms and results. This manual's Lobby, Rooms and Accounts page covers them from the player's side.