App development - Lobby functionality optimisation

[manmohan419]

I'm currently working on enhancing the user experience for the <snipped> app, and I've run into a bit of a roadblock. I'm trying to optimize the game lobby to ensure smooth navigation and quick loading times, especially as our user base continues to grow. However, I'm finding that even with various optimizations in place, there's still a noticeable delay when fetching and displaying the available game rooms, particularly during peak usage hours. I've tried implementing caching strategies and minimizing network requests, but the issue persists. Does anyone have suggestions or best practices for optimizing the lobby functionality in real-time multiplayer games like ours, particularly in terms of reducing latency and improving overall performance?

[Salem]

I suppose the first thing to answer would be whether the bottleneck is client or server side.

[Dani]

Better caching strategies?

I don't have any experience with app development, but for web development, I use Redis for these kinds of things.

[toneewa]

What I like to do is write code, even if it's not working or even correct syntax. This will help illustrate what the idea or thought is. Please paint us some sort of pseudo code of your design.

Not optimized:

class App {
    function start() {
        showLoadingScreen()
        loadLobbyDataFromServer() // This might take some time
        hideLoadingScreen()
        showLobbyScreen()
    }
}

Optimized:

class App {
    function start() {
        showLoadingScreen()
        asyncLoadLobbyDataFromServer() // This now happens in the background
        showLobbyScreen() // The user can now interact with the app
    }

    function asyncLoadLobbyDataFromServer() {
        loadLobbyDataFromServer()
        hideLoadingScreen()
    }
}

[jonathannweyer]

Since you’ve already tried caching and reducing network calls, you might want to look into pagination or lazy loading to avoid loading all rooms at once. WebSockets can also help by pushing updates instead of polling. Make sure your backend queries are indexed efficiently, especially for filters like player count. If the lag happens mostly during peak times, load balancing across servers could also make a difference. Hope that helps.