YO! What's up?

[100Gbps]

Just wondering what's goin on with Spring (and BA) these days ...

DSD still the Map?
Better UI/engine performance?
Path-finding/following is ok, right?
Balances?

[PicassoCT]

Advances be recent

Srly, though - new release is near

[100Gbps]

Which means old problems like lobby/mapdl are still here?

[PicassoCT]

Yes, we did never smooth the road. Too much ego for that, and not enough glory to the devs who do the real work. Should be in the credits of all the games. Or have a donation for one real huge fix up and streamlining of the whole setup.

[100Gbps]

At least it's something ...

... for 10 years

[AF]

For those active in the community, the problem of lobby/etc is:

- A non-issue
- Important, but we haven't got the skills to fix it
- Have you played NOTA? We're fixing this for our game, and it's awesome, you should play NOTA, the NOTA lobby kicks all other lobbies asses
- REACT REACT REACT web lobby REACT

None of the above have solved the problem in the generic case yet

[PicassoCT]

I had guys who know there stuff for a living, quit on spring-games - cause the "install was to complicated" and "frankly that just is not fun".

Just interfering with the usual "If you are a idiot, this game is not for you." defense before its launched.

[PepeAmpere]

None of the above have solved the problem in the generic case yet

The question is if its good to solve it in the generic case :). Im not sure. But we can try fundrasing for modular free open source notnotAlobby. Would you send some $ to support such effort?

[smoth]

I would not give you guys money to have you open source your lobby. If it is a matter of buying the source, that would be some pretty high coin

[PepeAmpere]

I would not give you guys money to have you open source your lobby. If it is a matter of buying the source, that would be some pretty high coin

Im not talking about openning new notAlobby source (because it is not general client for general purpose, it has too much project-related specifics), i was talking about new lobby/distribution system project which will be able to cover basic needs of any new game-project and provide advanced features as modules.

But maybe its not needed, as I said:

None of the above have solved the problem in the generic case yet

The question is if its good to solve it in the generic case :). Im not sure.

Maybe big project devs are not interested in general lobby/distribution and universal systems we had before were/are good enough just for "hacker players" and small games devs. Maybe every big project should make own interface for game setup to make game unique because thats how the world works :).

[smoth]

I'd rather see gajop's lualobby work continue. Having an out of game lobby is part of the disconnected mess that is spring.

[AF]

A ZKLobby or a NOTaLobby aren't the generic case. Weblobby doesn't do it at the moment, though the project aims for it, but my experiences of it suggest it will be a nicer, more technically competent version of what we already have, aimed towards multiplayer, rather than the well designed method of starting a game that we need. Similar things could be said of the lualobby efforts.

None of the projects takes a design or UX approach towards the interface, they're all centred around the various technologies used to build them, be it web + react, or lua inside the engine etc, those are their selling points, their reasons for being. Those that aren't are game centric.

Luckily, Weblobby being built in React it should be much easier to change the UI, and I'd have hoped the builders would have been more vocal about why they built it the way they did, and the design decisions that they based their UI on, so that new features don't become a hodge podge of trying to mash buttons into empty spaces etc

Lua Lobby would be great, but while it headed in the right direction from a technical standpoint, it's a disaster from a UI perspective. Hopefully more progress will be made soon as it's been a while since i saw updates.

NOTaLobby seems great for NOTA, congrats

ZKLobby RIP

[smoth]

Lua Lobby would be great, but while it headed in the right direction from a technical standpoint, it's a disaster from a UI perspective. Hopefully more progress will be made soon as it's been a while since i saw updates

LUA Lobby having an over-developed ui could be problematic for people who adopt it. I have said it before and I feel projects having their own lobby variants is a good idea. it isn't about a GIMMICK it is about offering a properly lobby. Most games do not come with a separate executable to start a multiplayer game. Even gamespy was really just putting your MP game into a shared listing. The way spring does things is as dated as DWANGO

[gajop]

Lua Lobby would be great, but while it headed in the right direction from a technical standpoint, it's a disaster from a UI perspective. Hopefully more progress will be made soon as it's been a while since i saw updates.

What's that about the UI being a disaster?
Minimal progress has been made engine/server-side (the lobby itself is on hold while I focus on Scened). Chililobby initiative is more than just an in-game lobby. It includes providing engine with rapid download functionality and implementing matchmaking server side.

[AF]

Anything that solves 'the problem' will need a design, and a consistent one, if only so it doesn't become a mess, but so that the difficulty curve for new users is as shallow as possible. Even AFLobby had a design paradigm ( albeit a wishywashy rubbish one about Wizards ), and having a basic structure to hang things off of makes building the UI significantly easier, rather than constantly having to find places to put buttons, and controls, new windows and panels, tabs, modals, etc etc so much faff, so much work

[smoth]

the lobby was never confusing, it was always just an issue of getting people content reliably. The biggest problem with the current lobbies IMO is that you are running a "game"(players perspective) that loads an IRC chat that DOWNLOADS the game you want to play to MAYBE find people.

What you see as a good design for the lobby might not work for all games I think you are looking to overengineer/design for your use. When in reality that is within the domain of each game creator af.

I don't want ladders or other similar bullshit to be key to my game, some designers DO.

[AF]

On the contrary, I believe our current lobbies do far too much and need stripping down, they're too complex and provide too many options and features. Nobody needs 3D map displays, rendered galaxies and planets, etc. The feature explosion itself is a design failure indicating a lack of design and thought to UI and user flow. I'd argue that the original lobby should never have gone past PM's and battles

Without a simple premise and framework to hang everything off you can't customize and ammend on a per game basis. You're faced with either what we have, or numerous totally customized lobbies all mutually exclusive

[gajop]

I don't see why you think I don't have a design going for chililobby (will get a proper name in the next release). I just haven't made it public as I'm pretty much the only dev (although there have been some contributors, however nothing major) and I don't feel like spending time on that.
That said, most of my ideas are taken from existing good lobbies. I don't think you need to be particularly revolutionary to create something good...

The general idea is as follows:
- Main interface (e.g. "Singleplayer" -> "Skirmish" -> "Config&Start", or "Multiplayer" -> "Quickmatch") is modeled primarily after BNet launcher/LoL in its left-to-right sequence of actions. So far the idea is to have everything on one screen always. No tabs/pages or similar if possible.
- Miscellaneous items such as settings, friend lists, login/logout, event notifications, download progress and similar are modeled after LoL/UT/systray and go in the top right part of the screen. Additional info can go in the top left or might be kept clean entirely (plugins maybe?).
- Chat is something I'm least decided about. It might be done via popups as in LoL, but I think instead I might have an always-open chat-system in the right side of the screen like it was done in dota for example. I don't want the player to be confused at start (the simpler the menu, the better) so these things might popup only after the player joins a channel/private chat/game/team.
- Matcthmaking is simple to do in the UI and will probably be modeled after dota or LoL.

[AF]

No design or schematic was presented until now, so it was assumed none was present. Lobbies here tend to have an idea about where the battle list should go and some sort of bar or panel across the top, after which all the UI design stops and new things are tacked on anywhere they'll fit as the primary cost of development shifts to technical debt and feature support