AFLobby Beta 4.1 release and Official Glest Support

[AF]

http://www.darkstars.co.uk/2008/aflobby-beta-41-glest/

AFLobby beta 4.1 released! And now it supports glest too! You'll need Glest 3.1.1!

So this means there's nothing stopping glest users from starting glest battles on our server. They have a similar thread to this one over on their multi-player forums.

[SwiftSpear]

Cool!

[AF]

=O nobody told me word press foobarred the download link?!?!?!
(fixed)

[SwiftSpear]

Most anti climactic thread ever...

[overkill]

Indeed, the sad thing is the Glest community doesnt even notice/ use this .

[Gota]

Please make a simpler Readme saying in the first lines what is needed to do to make the lobby work.
When unzipped it should be unzipped into a folder of its own and a readme should be unzipped outside that folder to attract more attention.

Why must i specify some files for it?that is the first phail.
Its already not user friendly.
I personnaly dont have a problem with it but noobs will.
If your making a lobby make it more user friendly than the other lobbies not the other way around.
Isnt it obvious?
How are people suppose to know whats unitsync?
what single player and so on unless they used another lobby and played the game enough to get to know how spring is constructed?
If your making a lobby you must make it comfterble for a person who never used any other spring lobby or ever played spring.
Start from that point and move forward.

Ok now that i have specified all those files the lobby needs i joined the lobby server and main channel.
What do i see as a totaly new user? Walls of Text!!!!!tons of tabs with tons of possibilities.
wtf is this? this isnt a game!Its a nieghtmare for a gamer.
ok suggestion:first of all,make a simple mod to be default in which anything that isnt totaly needed to play a game is removed!!!You should get a message at start welocming you to AF lobby and in a few lines quickly teels you this is a multiplayer lobby through which you can play spring games with others to establish a communication with the new player and make him feel like he is in the right place.
Tht massage should also tell you your in the reccomanded basic mod and you can switch to an advanced mod in option bla bla bla..
You have to reconstruct the lobby.
tens of Tabs are not nice.
Nobody likes them and they dont look good.
I didnt see if there is a way to change it all cause it doesnt even matter ATM the default mod and lobby structure will scare people away instantly.
Remove as much text as possible and replace with icons,seriously.
Is there any way you can make it all look nicer like with a visual wrapper of some sort?
If you can and its not a gazzilion man hours please do so,that is amongs the most important features a lobby that wants to attract nobs should have.
Another thing; remove the cmd.
It should not be seen.

I wont even mention mod/map download integration,screenshots and videos to download of gameplay.
For starting users you must make the path from downloading the lobby to palying a game as short and simple as possiblle.. all the customizations and all other options should be in some menu somewhere only reachable when a user has grown to understand what spring is,meaning after he played and specced a few games.

[AF]

Please make a simpler Readme saying in the first lines what is needed to do to make the lobby work.
Affirmative
When unzipped it should be unzipped into a folder of its own and a readme should be unzipped outside that folder to attract more attention.
Theres an installer script that builds an installer so this is a moot point, I should really build the installer

Why must i specify some files for it?that is the first phail.
because I havent had time to write an autodetect thing
Its already not user friendly.
I personnaly dont have a problem with it but noobs will.
If your making a lobby make it more user friendly than the other lobbies not the other way around.
Isnt it obvious?
How are people suppose to know whats unitsync?
Because I havent written the wonderous auto do it all for you button yet, no time due to coursework!
what single player and so on unless they used another lobby and played the game enough to get to know how spring is constructed?
Again single player is a todo, but tasclient doesnt even have this so its not a standard feature
If your making a lobby you must make it comfterble for a person who never used any other spring lobby or ever played spring.
Start from that point and move forward.

Ok now that i have specified all those files the lobby needs i joined the lobby server and main channel.
What do i see as a totaly new user? Walls of Text!!!!!tons of tabs with tons of possibilities.
Indeed, I hate the starting screen too and Ive been told about this but most importantly nobody suggested a replacement., I have tried improving it by removing buttons and re-arranging things so its nicer, if you think its bad beta 4.1 you should see earlier versions where there were more tabs and more buttons. As for tabs, NOBODY has suggested a fix, you dont want tabs, then what do you want?. I cannot dump everything on to the one initial screen or nobody will be able to see anything because itll be all tiny and cramped.
wtf is this? this isnt a game!Its a nieghtmare for a gamer.
ok suggestion:first of all,make a simple mod to be default in which anything that isnt totaly needed to play a game is removed!!!You should get a message at start welocming you to AF lobby and in a few lines quickly teels you this is a multiplayer lobby through which you can play spring games with others to establish a communication with the new player and make him feel like he is in the right place.
A picture design would be very helpful
Tht massage should also tell you your in the reccomanded basic mod and you can switch to an advanced mod in option bla bla bla..
Sort of like an express and an advanced version? Sounds like a good idea
You have to reconstruct the lobby.
tens of Tabs are not nice.
Again, nobody ahs suggested how to fix the tab dillemma
Nobody likes them and they dont look good.
I didnt see if there is a way to change it all cause it doesnt even matter ATM the default mod and lobby structure will scare people away instantly.
Remove as much text as possible and replace with icons,seriously.
Give icons and Icons will miraculously appear in the GUI. I do want to add a tonne of icons but I had time constraints and released 4.1 as is, e.g.
Is there any way you can make it all look nicer like with a visual wrapper of some sort?
Like fancy buttons and themes and skins? I have a library called substance in there that i added to aflobby a few months ago and it was the default looknfeel but people complained so I changed it, but its still there in settings.
If you can and its not a gazzilion man hours please do so,that is amongs the most important features a lobby that wants to attract nobs should have.
Another thing; remove the cmd.
It should not be seen.
What do you mean by the cmd?

I wont even mention mod/map download integration,screenshots and videos to download of gameplay.
Todo
For starting users you must make the path from downloading the lobby to palying a game as short and simple as possiblle.. all the customizations and all other options should be in some menu somewhere only reachable when a user has grown to understand what spring is,meaning after he played and specced a few games.

As for glest, there community at the moment is tiny in comparison to ours. Even if they all used AFLobby I very much doubt they would be noticed.

Gota, most people throw out a handful of complaints without really explaining anything, or they try aflobby say its amazing then go back to tasclient or springlobby which means they're nto giving you the whole story. Feedback is generally poor or not particularly helpful and it drives me mad, thank you for your monologue, it has some useful points and its the first that actually hints at what to do with the starting tab.

Plans for beta 5 are going to change a lot of thigns and I've had them on the table for a while but I currently have a major coursework due in next Thursday that's preventing me from actually doing much of anything. Beta 4.1 was released because the glest engine added support for the command line parameters, rather than because I had a wonderous lobby to share, I fixed any errors I could find made a few tweaks in the build and released, hence why the GUI changes from beta 4 -> 4.1 aren't anywhere near as large as I wanted.

In the beginning I said I was making most of my GUI as a placeholder and at some point in the future it would mostly be torn out and replaced with uber sexy GUIs, and I've been asking what people want. Sadly the spring community is somewhat mentally impaired when it comes to suggesting new GUI and things they want and they seem to be confined to what I call 'tasclient tweaks', changes that make tiny modifications to the existing GUIs rather than overhauling them with a vastly superior alternative. Please flood me with fancy ideas and UIs, draggable things animated things, pie charts, weighing scales, accordion drawer controls, tree controls, sliders, Office xp ribbons, spinning minimaps, etc......

[ZellSF]

He's talking about the Windows command prompt, probably.

[Gota]

Yes.I dont pay attention to details ^_^.
I can make a scatch of a lobby structure this weekand if you like and maybe youll like some things..Iv givven it a bit of thought already.

By the way,does the spring installer still works?the one where u can choose what mods you want and what map packs and than install what you have chosen?or did it all go down the drain whem UF died?cause its very important whats in there...that way you know what a noob has when he starts the lobby...

About the buttons and pretty skin for the lobby.Why not take stuff that are free in the internetz?like buttons and things..

No point in making stuff fom the begining if you can just use existing cool stuff.

[Google_Frog]

I downloaded AF lobby and tried to run it and when I try to log in there is a unitsync error. I have pointed it to unitsync.dll, spring.exe and settings.exe what more does it want?