win32 spring 102.0 installer won't contain springlobby!

[abma]

i'm at the point of removing springlobby from the spring installer:

1. there is an installer for springlobby (since springlobby 0.241)
2. engine download by lobby / pr-downloader / other lobbies is "stable"
3. spring has integrated content download support / basicly allows a menu with content download support
4. the springlobby version bundled with the engine mostly wasn't up to date

this makes some pressure on improving the download page / improving the springlobby installer, but imo this is the next logical step of the "enginefication".

is there a reason of not doing this now?

this would mean the win32 installer of spring 102.0 won't include a lobby.

[raaar]

The download page should have more info about lobbies, like a brief description of springlobby and maybe have links to information about other lobbies.

Spring should have an official lobby client that's compatible with the official server. Springlobby fills that role nicely.

If the end goal is to discontinue springlobby as an "official" lobby, then I think it's a bad thing. That'll probably mean more people will be spread out between different lobby clients instead of using the "official" one, which will make it harder to to help players troubleshoot issues.

[gajop]

I agree with this decision, as I don't think any lobby should be bundled with the engine.

However I also think that:
a) Players shouldn't be installing the engine, they should be installing concrete games OR lobbies
b) SpringLobby should be capable enough to download all content (engines, maps, games) even if there is no Spring installation available. (This could already be true for all I know, but might not be the default use case)

[smoth]

I am cool with that, are we going to let them choose lobby between zklobby, spring lobby and this?

On one hand if someone WANTS to make a lobby, they can and they will not feel as if sl has a monopoly.

I wonder what happened with weblobby...

[gajop]

Essentially only SL and SWL are true Spring lobbies as they support more games and work with the official protocol.
NL and ZKL are single game lobbies and in the case of ZKL it's not even compatible with the Spring protocol.

The rest aren't usable.

[Beherith]

I dont know if I missed some key background information here, but I think this is a very bad idea on such short notice.

Springlobby is fully featured and works extrenely well with all the current infrastructure in place.

[hokomoko]

2. engine download by lobby / pr-downloader / other lobbies is "stable"

I don't know if it's stable enough, many people had issues with this yesterday's test games.

[Silentwings]

I think is a good idea in general, but my impression is that the automatic engine download in SL is not yet reliable enough for it.

Many people seem to need to restart SL after the new engine downloads (they are not given any visual indication that this is needed/intended, if it is). I think there are also a small number of people who can't make it work for them - although if this was solved recently I would not know.

SWL is not currently viable as a universal downloader because of https://github.com/springweblobby/swl-website/issues/52.

[abma]

If the end goal is to discontinue springlobby as an "official" lobby

as long as there is no alternative: definitly no.

Many people seem to need to restart SL after the new engine downloads (they are not given any visual indication that this is needed/intended, if it is). I think there are also a small number of people who can't make it work for them - although if this was solved recently I would not know.

without knowing details i can only say it worked for me and several others with the current release of springlobby (0.244). also there is no open bug report wrt. download problems.

[abma]

ok, removed it + updated topic.

https://github.com/spring/spring/commit ... ccf08cf7aa