Discord Rich Presence for Godot

Discord Rich Presence for Godot 4.4+ in pure GDScript. No GDExtension, no DLLs, no Game SDK. One script. (v1.0 runs on 4.3, Windows only.)

I made this for my game Ekonia Online because I ship a single binary file, and every existing Godot addon for Rich Presence wraps the Discord Game SDK: several MB of native libraries to put next to your game executable, for a feature that is in fact some JSON on a local pipe. Also, Discord deprecated most of the Game SDK.

Quick start

1. Copy addons/discord_rich_presence/ into your project. Nothing to enable, it is a plain script class.
2. Create an application on the Discord Developer Portal and copy its Application ID.
3. Use it:

var presence := DiscordRichPresence.new()
presence.app_id = "1234567890123456789"
add_child(presence)

presence.set_activity({
    "details": "In the Fungus Cave",
    "state": "Level 12",
    "timestamps": {"start": int(Time.get_unix_time_from_system())},
    "assets": {"large_image": "your_art_asset_key"},
})

Image keys come from your application page, under Rich Presence > Art Assets. The key is the uploaded file name and cannot be renamed after.

How it works

The Discord desktop client listens on a local IPC channel: a named pipe on Windows, a unix socket on macOS and Linux. The protocol is simple:

• one frame = [opcode u32 LE][length u32 LE][JSON body]
• op 0: handshake {"v": 1, "client_id": "<app id>"}, Discord answers READY
• op 1: SET_ACTIVITY when your presence changes
• op 3/4: ping/pong, op 2: close

On Windows, Godot opens the pipe directly with FileAccess. GDScript cannot open unix sockets, so on macOS and Linux the addon spawns the system netcat (nc -U) with OS.execute_with_pipe() and talks to the socket through it. Still no shipped binary: netcat is part of the OS.

The client connects when it can, retries every 20s while Discord is closed, and sends the last activity again after a reconnect. Discord being absent is never an error.

Godot pitfalls to know

I hit all of these while writing this. They are handled by the addon, but if you write your own client they will save you a day:

1. Godot only opens Windows named pipes with the \\?\pipe\name path form. The usual \\.\pipe\name form fails with ERR_FILE_NOT_FOUND.
2. FileAccess reads are buffered. The first get_32() reads everything the pipe holds into an internal buffer, and get_length() only sees the OS pipe. So read a frame's header and body in the same pass: a second get_length() check after the header will report 0 while your bytes are in the buffer.
3. OS.execute_with_pipe() gives blocking pipes by default: the first read with no data freezes your game. Pass blocking = false, which exists since Godot 4.4. This is why the addon needs 4.4 outside Windows.
4. FileAccess.file_exists() returns false for a unix socket. To find one, list its directory with DirAccess.get_files_at() instead.

Platform support

You do not need any platform check on your side.

API

• app_id: String: your Discord application id. Set it before add_child, or call connect_now() after changing it.
• set_activity(activity: Dictionary): the SET_ACTIVITY activity object (details, state, timestamps, assets, party, ...). Remembered across reconnects, safe to call while Discord is closed.
• clear_activity(): remove the presence, keep the connection.
• signal presence_connected(user: Dictionary): handshake done, user is the Discord user object.
• signal presence_disconnected: connection dropped, the client retries alone.

License

Source code under the MIT License. The Godot logo in the icon is by Andrea Calabró, CC-BY 4.0.