Custom Rooms

A room supports up to 16 members and four independent versus tables. A member can play or watch one table at a time, or remain idle after joining. Each table can hold two fighters and up to 14 spectators. Everyone must use the same Ember release.

Open a room

1. Start the game through the launcher, wait for networking to become ready, and assign your gameplay controller.
2. At the main menu, open Online play > Create room, choose the room name, capacity, and default battle rules, then select Create room again.
3. Use Copy invitation to share the private invitation with your players.

Note

Coming soon (PR #102)

3. Use Invite > Copy invitation to share the private invitation with your players.

4. Guests open Online play > Join room, select Paste invitation, then Join room. Joining a room leaves them idle until they explicitly choose a table and take a seat, queue or watch.

While the room opens, the row reads Stop creating or Stop joining. If it has not opened after about 30 seconds, Ember says so; check your connection, or stop and try again. A room that is still opening is not in recovery and offers no Replace room.

The host manages the room independently of the P1 seat. The host may stay idle, play at any table, or watch.

Play and rematch

Select a table's card. With no seat or queue place yet, it opens a seat chooser: Play as P1 or Play as P2 while that seat is open and nobody is queued ahead (an empty table offers both seats), otherwise Join queue; then Watch; and Table options. Open seats fill in queue order. If you already hold a seat or queue place at another table, the card opens that table's Table options instead, and joining there waits until you leave your current place. Seated fighters choose their characters and both select Ready up (A on your own card) before each game. Before preparation begins, a fighter can withdraw readiness with Unready / unlock fighter.

Note

Coming soon (PR #102)

Select a table's card. With no seat or queue place yet, it opens a seat chooser: Play as P1 or Play as P2 while that seat is open and nobody is queued ahead (an empty table offers both seats), otherwise Join queue; then Watch; and Table actions. Open seats fill in queue order. If you already hold a seat or queue place at another table, the card opens that table's Table actions instead, and joining there waits until you leave your current place. Seated fighters choose their characters and both select Ready up (Confirm on your own card opens Actions; Confirm again selects Ready) before each game. Before preparation begins, a fighter can withdraw readiness with Unready / unlock fighter.

Battle setup, opened from Table options (Y on an Xbox pad, T on the keyboard), starts with Ready, then your Change fighter and Ultra Combo (Left and Right step the Ultra in place), then Input delay. Its value is your own delay, and its detail names the recommended delay and the match delay. A new profile is on Auto: the connection check runs by itself for each new opponent, and a Ready pressed meanwhile waits for it to end, for about twelve seconds at most. A check that fails is tried once more. You ready with its recommendation held between one and three frames, or with two frames if it produced none. A rematch, or a change of fighter, keeps the measurement, and after each game Auto follows the ping that game reported, up or down, by the same bands as below, when the game gave at least ten seconds of it; spectators and the queue are never checked or held. Check connection runs the same five-second measurement by hand. Left and Right choose a delay of your own instead, from zero to five, with Auto one step below zero. Zero adds no delay and needs a steady, low ping; Auto and the recommendation never choose it. A chosen delay is saved, Select applies a valid recommendation to it, and you can Ready without a usable probe. Ready locks your own delay for that game; Unready unlocks it. A route change or a new recommendation never changes delay during a fight. The table's rules follow on the same page: the host changes Rounds, Round time and Edition Select in place and presses Apply rules, which appears once something changed; everyone else sees them on one line.

Note

Coming soon (PR #102)

Your table's Actions contains Ready, fighter selection, Leave seat and More. More opens the complete table-action list, including unresolved-game recovery. Y on an Xbox pad or T on the keyboard opens the expanded table actions. Settings is the room's single settings entry. Settings > Match & connection contains stage, Input delay and Check connection. The delay value is your own, and its detail names the recommended delay and the match delay. A new profile is on Auto: the connection check runs by itself for each new opponent, and a Ready pressed meanwhile waits for it to end, for about twelve seconds at most. A check that fails is tried once more. You ready with its recommendation held between one and three frames, or with two frames if it produced none. A rematch, or a change of fighter, keeps the measurement, and after each game Auto follows the ping that game reported, up or down, by the same bands as below, when the game gave at least ten seconds of it; spectators and the queue are never checked or held. Check connection runs the same five-second measurement by hand. Left and Right choose a delay of your own instead, from zero to five, with Auto one step below zero. Zero adds no delay and needs a steady, low ping; Auto and the recommendation never choose it. A chosen delay is saved, Select applies a valid recommendation to it, and you can Ready without a usable probe. Ready locks your own delay for that game; Unready unlocks it. A route change or a new recommendation never changes delay during a fight. Settings > Table rules contains the shared rules: the host changes Rounds, Round time and Edition Select in place and presses Apply rules, which appears once something changed; everyone else sees them on one line.

Both fighters play each game at the higher of their two Ready delays. A fighter's delay decides how much rollback the other fighter sees, so separate values favored the fighter who chose less. Input delay's detail shows the match delay in use; before your opponent readies it shows "At least" your own choice. Each fighter's own delay is kept for the next game.

The room can choose otherwise when it is created. Room input delay on Create (private or public) is Same for both to begin with, as above. With Each player's own every fighter plays at the delay they readied with, and the other side's rollback makes up the difference; Input delay's detail then reads "Your delay" instead of the match delay. The choice is kept with the room defaults, is fixed for as long as the room is open, and shows as "Own delay" in the room's rules and on its table cards and, for a public room, in the list.

Advice requires at least 80 valid replies out of 100 probes from the current connection and path. It follows the median round-trip time, the ping the check shows: up to 80 ms is one frame, 81 to 150 ms two, 151 to 220 ms three, 221 to 290 ms four, and 291 ms and up five, the most it recommends. If the 95th percentile round trip lands more than one step worse than the median's, the recommendation rises to one step below it. These are tuning assumptions, not a guarantee about frame timing or network quality.

Each table has a Set length and, once it has one, an After a set rule. The host sets both with the other table rules. With no set length the same two fighters keep playing until one of them leaves, and results count their wins against each other. With a set length of first to 1 through 10, the set ends when a fighter reaches that many wins and the seats rotate:

• Winner stays (king of the hill): the winner keeps the seat and the loser goes to the back of the queue.
• Loser stays: the loser keeps the seat and the winner goes to the back.
• Both rotate: both go to the back of the queue, winner first, and the next two sit down.

Only members who chose Join queue are ever given a seat. Watching a table never puts anyone in its queue, and a fighter rotated out can leave the queue at any time to just watch. When nobody is waiting, the same two start a new set. A fighter who wins two or more sets in a row at the table has the streak shown under their name. Changing the set length or rotation starts a new set; the other rules apply from the next game and keep the score.

The running count, such as 2 - 1, replaces "VS" on the table card and "vs" on the match HUD, and the HUD keeps the final count on the screen of the game that ended the set. Both fighters must ready again after returning to the room. When a fighter leaves their seat, the next queued member takes that seat and the new pair starts with fresh win counts. B on your own table card, or Leave seat in the table options, leaves your seat at once. It asks first only when the pair has wins on the board or a queued member would take the seat; the question starts on staying. A game in progress or an unresolved result holds the seat, and B says why. While a start is held for a locked-in spectator, B cancels the start by taking Ready back. An unresolved game does not award a win or erase earlier wins for the same pair.

Note

Coming soon (PR #102)

The running count, such as 2 - 1, replaces "VS" on the table card and "vs" on the match HUD, and the HUD keeps the final count on the screen of the game that ended the set. Both fighters must ready again after returning to the room. When a fighter leaves their seat, the next queued member takes that seat and the new pair starts with fresh win counts. Leave seat on your table's Actions or the expanded table actions leaves your seat at once. It asks first only when the pair has wins on the board or a queued member would take the seat; the question starts on staying. A game in progress or an unresolved result holds the seat, and the disabled button says why. While a start is held for a locked-in spectator, Cancel the start cancels the start by taking Ready back. An unresolved game does not award a win or erase earlier wins for the same pair.

Queued members automatically watch each game while retaining their queue positions. B on your queue card, or Leave queue, leaves the queue at once. Leaving the queue during a game lets you finish watching it; the place ends with that game unless you press Watch next game. Between games, leaving the queue returns you to the room. A queued member has no Watch or Stop watching action of its own; during a game, Start or F10 opens Ember over it, where Leave this game stops watching that game and keeps the queue place.

Note

Coming soon (PR #102)

Queued members automatically watch each game while retaining their queue positions. Leave queue on your table's Actions or the expanded table actions leaves the queue at once. Leaving the queue during a game lets you finish watching it; the place ends with that game unless you press Watch next game. Between games, leaving the queue returns you to the room. A queued member has no Watch or Stop watching action of its own; during a game, Start or F10 opens Ember over it, where Leave this game stops watching that game and keeps the queue place.

Watch

Watch next game (Watch in the seat chooser) reserves a spectator place without joining the queue. A game already in progress cannot be joined halfway through. Stop watching returns the spectator to the room; the fighters continue playing. During a game, Start or F10 opens Ember over it on the room board at Stop watching; Queue, Watch, Leave queue and Leave room there say what happens to the view. Your view runs a little behind the room, so the room may have finished the game while you still watch it: Stop watching then only ends the rest of the view, and your place at the table stays as it is.

Note

Coming soon (PR #100)

Watch next game (Watch in the seat chooser) reserves a spectator place without joining the queue. A game already in progress cannot be joined halfway through. Stop watching returns the spectator to the room; the fighters continue playing. During a game, Start or F10 opens Ember over it on the room board at Stop watching; Queue, Watch, Leave queue and Leave room there say what happens to the view. Press Start or F10 again to hide the board and return to an unobstructed view of the match. Hiding the board keeps you watching and preserves your queue place; the match continues underneath.

A spectator by choice can also use Lock in to watch in Table options (Release lock-in undoes it). If both fighters ready while a locked-in spectator is still leaving the last game, the start waits for them for up to 10 seconds, then goes ahead regardless. The table reads "Waiting for spectators", and its card names who the start waits for and counts down ("Waiting for Alex to return. Starts in 7 s."); the spectator it waits for is told the game is waiting for them. Either fighter can take Ready back during the wait with Unready or Cancel the start, and then the game does not start. Without lock-in the fighters do not wait: a spectator still closing out the previous game joins the game after that. Lock-in ends when you stop watching, move to another table or seat, or your view of a game fails, so it cannot hold up the fighters again; a short notice says which. Only your own Release lock-in, while you keep watching the same table, ends it without one.

A spectator whose connection is still being set up when the fighters are ready (after a short grace period) misses that game and watches the next one. A spectator that was away from the main menu when the game started is told so and watches the next one. A spectator whose connection leaves about half a second of network frames unacknowledged, sustained for about a second, is dropped from that game, keeps its place and watches the next game at the table; it is told so. Slow playback alone does not drop anyone: the spectator plays extra frames to catch up and can trail by up to 1024 frames (about 17 seconds).

Manage the room

The host can rename the room, lock admission, change its capacity, edit a waiting table's battle rules, and kick members. Capacity cannot be reduced below current membership. A kicked peer cannot rejoin the same room under another name.

Room chat retains the latest 100 messages, with a limit of 256 UTF-8 bytes per message. The room removes a member's messages when they leave, but your own Chat screen keeps the messages it has already received (the latest 200 lines, with the room's join, leave, host and result lines among them) under the name the member had. Mute member hides that member's messages on your screen only.

Both fighters report the game's native outcome. A win is counted only when the reports agree. Conflicting reports, or missing reports after the result deadline, leave the game unresolved. The host can Cancel unresolved game to allow the fighters to ready again without awarding a win or removing previously counted wins. This keeps a disagreement from becoming an automatic result.

The member menu offers Transfer host to the current host. Normal host departure transfers moderation to the oldest eligible remaining member. The room's technical coordination leader is separate from that moderation role.

Recover room control

Room mutations pause immediately when coordination becomes unavailable. A healthy game can continue on its existing gameplay connection while room control reconnects. Native results wait for committed matching fighter reports; the result deadline pauses while room control is recovering.

After 15 seconds, Replace room is offered. It remains unavailable while local gameplay owns its sockets. If preparation is incomplete, selecting it explicitly cancels preparation and waits for its local connections to close. It then opens a fresh room with new invitations and authority. Saved preferences and local records remain. The confirmation defaults to Cancel, and recovery of the old room continues while you decide.

A two-member room needs both voters. Unexpected loss of either member cannot recover the old quorum; use the replacement action after gameplay has retired. Larger rooms can recover when their existing voter majority is available. The minority never recreates the old room.

New room invitations use sf4e3: and Discord invitations use compact emd2: secrets. Copy a fresh invitation after an authority change; old authority references and expired invitations are rejected.

Validation status

See CUSTOM_ROOMS_STATUS.md for the exact build and test evidence. Local component and synthetic helper tests do not establish native gameplay, multi-machine acceptance, or installation acceptance.

Note

Coming soon (PR #102)

Room menu navigation

Back returns to the previous screen without giving up your seat or queue place. The board keeps Settings, Chat history, Members, Invite, Training and Leave room together. Leave seat / Leave queue is on your table, and seated fighters use its Fighter choice. Fighter select appears under chat only before taking a seat. Select your own table to choose Ready, Fighter or Leave without accidentally readying. Settings groups Player & controller, Match & connection, Table rules and Room settings; Invite groups room links. Directions and Confirm reach every action, including with a controller that has no shortcut buttons.

Delete remains an optional keyboard shortcut on your own table card. Leaving a seat with a score or a waiting player still asks for confirmation.