RetroArch
Discord RPC

This is a library for interfacing your game with a locally running Discord desktop client. It's known to work on Windows, macOS, and Linux. You can use the lib directly if you like, or use it as a guide to writing your own if it doesn't suit your game as is. PRs/feedback welcome if you have an improvement everyone might want, or can describe how this doesn't meet your needs.

Included here are some quick demos that implement the very minimal subset to show current status, and have callbacks for where a more complete game would do more things (joining, spectating, etc).

Documentation

The most up to date documentation for Rich Presence can always be found on our developer site! If you're interested in rolling your own native implementation of Rich Presence via IPC sockets instead of using our SDK—hey, you've got free time, right?—check out the https://github.com/discordapp/discord-rpc/blob/master/documentation/hard-mode.md ""Hard Mode" documentation".

Basic Usage

Zeroith, you should be set up to build things because you are a game developer, right?

First, head on over to the Discord developers site and make yourself an app. Keep track of Client ID – you'll need it here to pass to the init function.

From package

Download a release package for your platform(s) – they have subdirs with various prebuilt options, select the one you need add /include to your compile includes, /lib to your linker paths, and link with discord-rpc. For the dynamically linked builds, you'll need to ship the associated file along with your game.

From repo

First-eth, you'll want CMake. There's a few different ways to install it on your system, and you should refer to their website. Many package managers provide ways of installing CMake as well.

To make sure it's installed correctly, type cmake --version into your flavor of terminal/cmd. If you get a response with a version number, you're good to go!

There's a CMake file that should be able to generate the lib for you; Sometimes I use it like this:

cd <path to discord-rpc>
mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=<path to install discord-rpc to>
cmake --build . --config Release --target install

There is a wrapper build script build.py that runs cmake with a few different options.

Usually, I run build.py to get things started, then use the generated project files as I work on things. It does depend on click library, so do a quick pip install click to make sure you have it if you want to run build.py.

There are some CMake options you might care about:

flag default does
ENABLE_IO_THREAD ON When enabled, we start up a thread to do io processing, if disabled you should call Discord_UpdateConnection yourself.
USE_STATIC_CRT OFF (Windows) Enable to statically link the CRT, avoiding requiring users install the redistributable package. (The prebuilt binaries enable this option)
BUILD_SHARED_LIBS OFF Build library as a DLL
WARNINGS_AS_ERRORS OFF When enabled, compiles with -Werror (on *nix platforms).

Continuous Builds

Why do we have three of these? Three times the fun!

CI badge
TravisCI
Build status
AppVeyor
Build status
Buildkite (internal)

Sample: send-presence

This is a text adventure "game" that inits/deinits the connection to Discord, and sends a presence update on each command.

Sample: button-clicker

This is a sample Unity project that wraps a DLL version of the library, and sends presence updates when you click on a button. Run python build.py unity in the root directory to build the correct library files and place them in their respective folders.

Sample: unrealstatus

This is a sample Unreal project that wraps the DLL version of the library with an Unreal plugin, exposes a blueprint class for interacting with it, and uses that to make a very simple UI. Run python build.py unreal in the root directory to build the correct library files and place them in their respective folders.

Wrappers and Implementations

Below is a table of unofficial, community-developed wrappers for and implementations of Rich Presence in various languages. If you would like to have yours added, please make a pull request adding your repository to the table. The repository should include:

  • The code
  • A brief ReadMe of how to use it
  • A working example
Rich Presence Wrappers and Implementations
Name Language
DerelictDiscordRPC D
discord-rpc.jar Java
java-discord-rpc Java
Discord-IPC Java
Discord Rich Presence JavaScript
drpc4k Kotlin
lua-discordRPC LuaJIT (FFI)
pypresence Python
SwordRPC Swift