FobbahLobby 1.3

[fobbah]

Well, i havnt been concious for most of the week, so i kinda shelved this project for a little while hehe, but never fear, i'm going to get this lobby damn well finished sometime this week.

Theres a lot more in this new version than meets the eye. Greatly improved netcode in terms of speed and stability, and general improvements to the interface overall. Also added the ability to change colour schemes because it was easy and my lobby is beginning to look a bit plain compared to the rest


http://www.fileuniverse.com/?page=showimage&ID=733

I'd release it now, but it's late, and i have a headache, and there are a few more changes i'd like to make tomorrow, like displaying your current ally team, and shared comm teams. I WILL release a new version tomorrow, however.

Soon after the release, you can expect to see more eye candy, the possibility of a ladder/galaxy system the likes of which we've seen before, and a fully integrated automatic mod switcher.

I'm just psyched to finally get a really solid version happening, this thing has proven great for lanning

At this stage it would be extremely helpful if someone was prepared to run a permanent lobbyhost server. So if anyone's interested in demonstrating awesome god-like administrative power (well no, not really, but i gotta sell myself aye :D), please PM me. Ultimately, the thing is going to need a centralised server.

And if the SYs are interested in running anything more officially parallel/instead of the current lobby, you need only ask, hah.

You can get the latest version 1.3 here:
http://www.fileuniverse.com/?page=showitem&ID=1112

[[K.B.] Napalm Cobra]

Does it connect to the official spring server, pheonix works or one of its own?

[AF]

preferrably both the first 2, anything to make getting a game easier.

nice to see someone doing some dev.

[fobbah]

No, it does not connect to the official spring server. You must understand, the entire point in writing a new lobby is to avoid the problems that there are with the official server, so it really must be seperate... It's not really feasible to debug somebody else's half finished code. And i feel the PW implementation may be a little bit too much overhead when all we need is just a working lobby atm.

You can get the latest version 1.3 here:
http://www.fileuniverse.com/?page=showitem&ID=1112

[Kixxe]

Jesus, what are there, 3 lobbys now( plus the orginole)

It's a great looking lobby thou... Sigt.. i dont know which to download, if im gonna download any at all!

Ill think ill stick to the spring deafult.

[colorblind]

(...) the entire point in writing a new lobby is to avoid the problems that there are with the official server (...)

Is it not the lobby that is buggy as hell? I haven't looked at the server code, but it can't be all *that* bad. I'm pretty sure one of the SY, or perhaps someone else will be so nice to root out the bugs in the server.

And one other thing: your client looks neat and is perhaps the best around at the moment, but if it doesn't connect to the main server I'm not going to use it. I'd rather stick with the crappy client we have now (even though it annoys the hell out of me sometimes), because that's where all the other players are.
So please please please make your kick-ass client work with the SY server ...

Btw, great work on your part so far.

[el_muchacho]

This lobby is nice looking, but the new Spring interface will be black and white (in fact, smoked, see thread about GUI in General discussions), it would be nice if the Lobby had a similar look.

In fact, maybe the new GUI library of Spring could be used for the Lobby. Bus SJ has to release it, though.

[fobbah]

The colour scheme thing was a last minute addition, i can add any scheme easily on a whim, so i'll think about that smoked one. Some people dont like the green anyway heh . Make sure you guys PM/post any problems with the lobby you encounter, and try to give me a very detailed description of the problem, and what you were doing in the leadup to the problem, it helps to be able to reproduce a bug to figure out what causes it.

[Fnordia]

The new GUI code has been sitting idle in CVS for the last 6 months or so since Pius disappeared, just waiting for someone to breathe some life into it. Just uncomment the line in NewGuiDefine.h to see it in action.

As for us running more lobby servers, I don't really know what we will do about that.. We will most likely not support more than one official lobby client and server though to avoid fragmenting the users. So ideally every new lobby-developer would work on one project instead of five different ones..

[NMDANGE]

fobbah why do you keep thinking PW is introducing this nebulous "overhead"? The server is divided into different programs, and the primary server has nothing game-specific. Any overhead from game specific things is limited to the game specific server.

The server has been debugged and worked on for quite some time with IRC and the PW client, and the chat portion (the bit that isn't related to any game) has been working pretty well. Spring will use its own game server, and any "overhead" the TA Server might have will not affect it.

Edit: Also having worked with the code in the current Lobby, it's not really all that buggy to be honest. The only thing it really needs is detecting disconnects, which I will probably add to the PW version pretty soon.

[fobbah]

I think you misinterpreted what i meant by that.. Most people are asking for something along the lines of a ladder/galaxy system LIKE the one in PW right now, whereas the purpose of producing this lobby software was to create a properly working lobby, not to add things like a ladder/galaxy system, which i viewed as meaningless overhead (overhead - ie pretty dialogs that dont do anything useful yet) at the stage where 1) the lobby was not complete in the first place, and 2) spring is a little buggy atm to really support ladder play in the first place.

However, i was expecing no assistance whatsoever in interfacing with PW, and the generous offer has been made to assist with interfacing the two protocols of my lobby and PW, and i am very interested by this :).

I was just at that point thinking that i was going to be expected to have to stab at it in the dark, for a ladder system or whatnot, when it would probably be about as easy to write my own later.

[NMDANGE]

Ok, my apologies, we can continue this in PM.

[Ace07]

I think that the various lobbies should all embrace the various protocols. Our version of the lobby will be able to connect to the Spring server, and the PW server. I like the IRC idea, but only for chat. IRC is good for chat, but not really too good for the other functions in the lobby. If you could figure out how to get it to connect to the Spring master server, you would certainly get a lot more people onboard with your project.

Just my 2c.