Adding minigames to the lobby

[aegis]

i have a hangman bot, a trivia bot, a tictactoe bot......

[CarRepairer]

How about while you're waiting in the client for a battle to open up, you can push a button that opens up a window where you can play a fun RTS game, and other people who are also waiting around in the lobby can join in. You know it could be a game like Total Annihilation or something similar.

[aegis]

brilliant! let's add OTA support to the spring lobby!

[JimmyJ]

RTS? In MY Spring? It's more likely than you think.

[SwiftSpear]

I wonder what it would take to have lobby support other, non spring engine, open sourced multiplayer games... So like, all from the same interface you can find people playing Spring, or Freeciv, or Pioneers of Peru...

It'd be really cool to be able to do...

[el_matarife]

I wonder what it would take to have lobby support other, non spring engine, open sourced multiplayer games... So like, all from the same interface you can find people playing Spring, or Freeciv, or Pioneers of Peru...

It'd be really cool to be able to do...

This would be a pretty amazing killer app, BUT we'd probably have to get all these other communities to help out with it. Basic support wouldn't take any help from them, but the goal would be to package our lobby with their game and that takes help. Additionally, I can only imagine how laggy the server would get with more players since it already gets pretty bad at 300 or so. Imagine five hundred to several thousand players on at once. We'd need a distributed, IRC type lobby server for that to work and hosting help from other projects. A unified open source game lobby is an great idea though, and I can see it worth working towards.

[KDR_11k]

i have a hangman bot, a trivia bot, a tictactoe bot......

A decapitor bot?

[aegis]

I wonder what it would take to have lobby support other, non spring engine, open sourced multiplayer games... So like, all from the same interface you can find people playing Spring, or Freeciv, or Pioneers of Peru...

It'd be really cool to be able to do...

This would be a pretty amazing killer app, BUT we'd probably have to get all these other communities to help out with it. Basic support wouldn't take any help from them, but the goal would be to package our lobby with their game and that takes help. Additionally, I can only imagine how laggy the server would get with more players since it already gets pretty bad at 300 or so. Imagine five hundred to several thousand players on at once. We'd need a distributed, IRC type lobby server for that to work and hosting help from other projects. A unified open source game lobby is an great idea though, and I can see it worth working towards.

it doesn't just get really bad at 300
i tried connecting 600 users to a server on local loopback and only 286 of them made it

a more efficient server is being coded though

[SwiftSpear]

I wonder what it would take to have lobby support other, non spring engine, open sourced multiplayer games... So like, all from the same interface you can find people playing Spring, or Freeciv, or Pioneers of Peru...

It'd be really cool to be able to do...

This would be a pretty amazing killer app, BUT we'd probably have to get all these other communities to help out with it. Basic support wouldn't take any help from them, but the goal would be to package our lobby with their game and that takes help. Additionally, I can only imagine how laggy the server would get with more players since it already gets pretty bad at 300 or so. Imagine five hundred to several thousand players on at once. We'd need a distributed, IRC type lobby server for that to work and hosting help from other projects. A unified open source game lobby is an great idea though, and I can see it worth working towards.

Server lag is definitely something that would need to be dealt with... but realistically, if it could be pulled off this is something that would change the way open sourced gaming works on a fundamental level. Ya, we'd need help from other communities, but pretty much only in respect to the fact that we'd need download links to their content distribution centers that would be linked to when you tried to join a game for a title you didn't yet have.

It really just occurred to me, we basically have a small scale system here that does what steam does for valve... there are so many good things that could come out of the expansion of this system to other titles. In terms of the community management aspect I think we'd try to keep things as separate as possible for the most part, so every user for every game wouldn't be dumped into #main for example, but after that, it'd be SOOO nice to be able to just check up some whole other segment of open sourced gaming by just double clicking a download link and maby joining a lobby channel to chat with the hardcore players/devs for a bit. It would also give us an avenue for expanding and unifying the whole of open sourced gaming, and making it a force that really can't be ignored by the gaming industry any longer.

I mean, right now the pinnacle of achievement for an OS game is inclusion in a lunix release, and a mention on slashdot or something equivalent. With the right lobby software base, there's no reason why a good open sourced game shouldn't sweep popularity throughout the whole of internet culture, simply by reputation on a solid and powerful universal game lobby. It would make what we do here nearly a thing as, if not more powerful, than the whole of commercial gaming.

[AF]

AFLobby already has multiple engine support.

The only reason TA3D and OTA aren't supported is that I don't know how OTA would be started, and TA3D have yet to finish implementing multiplayer.

If anyone wishes to try and compile glest with the command line parameter support aflobby needs, say so and I'll point you to the guy who wrote the modifications and the svn repository I gave him.

[zwzsg]

I don't know how OTA would be started

http://taguide.tauniverse.com/pages/commandline.htm

I think people like Cire or [MS]NMDANGE know more, so ask them!

[rcdraco]

Yea, a little racing game, maybe a lobby channel for sauerbraten, sounds good, but I don't want to get blamed for taking bandwidth from the other pcs in my house as much as steam supposedly does.

[zwzsg]

Yea, a little racing game

Spring Racers v9! (K, very crappy graphics, and totally unadapted netcode, but stilll!)

How about while you're waiting in the client for a battle to open up, you can push a button that opens up a window where you can play a fun RTS game, and other people who are also waiting around in the lobby can join in.

Was about to say Kernel Panic, however it is not customary to respond honestly to lulz irony.

[CarRepairer]

How about while you're waiting in the client for a battle to open up, you can push a button that opens up a window where you can play a fun RTS game, and other people who are also waiting around in the lobby can join in.

Was about to say Kernel Panic, however it is not customary to respond honestly to lulz irony.

It's almost as if you're the only one so far who recognized the intent.

[Gota]

WE WILL TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!!!!

Muahahaha

[pharoph]

you should really add some minigames that everyone wants to play. not just chess catogorys can include ,eg: fps rts puzzle racing. and also you could have a ladder for the mini games that you could submit your score a challenge other players

[el_matarife]

realistically, if it could be pulled off this is something that would change the way open sourced gaming works on a fundamental level. Ya, we'd need help from other communities, but pretty much only in respect to the fact that we'd need download links to their content distribution centers that would be linked to when you tried to join a game for a title you didn't yet have.

It really just occurred to me, we basically have a small scale system here that does what steam does for valve... there are so many good things that could come out of the expansion of this system to other titles.
It would also give us an avenue for expanding and unifying the whole of open sourced gaming, and making it a force that really can't be ignored by the gaming industry any longer.

I mean, right now the pinnacle of achievement for an OS game is inclusion in a lunix release, and a mention on slashdot or something equivalent. With the right lobby software base, there's no reason why a good open sourced game shouldn't sweep popularity throughout the whole of internet culture, simply by reputation on a solid and powerful universal game lobby. It would make what we do here nearly a thing as, if not more powerful, than the whole of commercial gaming.

This is exactly the sort of ideas that I wrote up today in a draft of a proposal for an open source community lobby spanning all open source games on the net. Right now it is just a draft of some ideas along those lines YokoZar and I batted around last night, but I'm hoping to polish it up and release it as an open letter to the community. If I come up with a decent project name I'll also buy a domain for it and see if I can get some folks to help me throw together a basic website and forum.

[SwiftSpear]

AFLobby already has multiple engine support.

The only reason TA3D and OTA aren't supported is that I don't know how OTA would be started, and TA3D have yet to finish implementing multiplayer.

If anyone wishes to try and compile glest with the command line parameter support aflobby needs, say so and I'll point you to the guy who wrote the modifications and the svn repository I gave him.

Wouldn't the lobby server require signifigant modification as well though?

I mean things like teams, start boxes, unit lists, everything pretty much, would have to be swapped out for totally different systems, and most likely the definitions for said systems would have to be contained in our server so that multiple lobbies could still be written and available open sourced.

[AF]

On the contrary, its perfectly possible with what we have, especially since I have a monopoly on multiple engine support.

I have a coursework due friday, and I have a prior engagement on saturday, I'll look into OTA support on sunday, most of the needed changes where made for the glest support anyway.

[Boirunner]

Seeing the words AFLobby and monopoly in a sentence amuses me.