new in 97: spring:// URLs

[jK]

With 97 Spring will support & link its own custom URL scheme. People from UT99 will likely know that and IRC & Mumble uses it, too.
It allows you to place your own spring:// link on your website and ppl can click it to e.g. spectate the running match.
Or you can even add username + password to join as regular player and use such links in your weblobby.

The full syntax of the URL scheme is: spring://username:password@hostname:port
And it works exactly the same as you expect from http URLs (everything except hostname is optional).

In future I hope it replaces script.txt in lobby protocol as a whole, so only the host creates the script.txt but sends each user/clients its specific spring:// url with their username & password. This way the client doesn't need any script.txt that needs to be saved to filesystem, the client can purely started by cmdline arguments then.

Also sync testing under linux becomes much easier:
`spring script.txt & spring spring://localhost`
will start a host & a client.

[Forboding Angel]

FUCK YES!!!! Thanks JK!

[Silentwings]

Great idea.

[gajop]

custom URL types are nice, gj on standardizing it :)

[knorke]

Interessting.
How does it work though?
After clicking a click how does "it" know which version of engine to start? Or is that something lobbies have to implent?

[SinbadEV]

Based on my cursory inspection of the source and my vague understanding of URI schemes... a single specific spring executable will be registered with the OS to handle the "links"... so unless you make some kind of intermediary parser it's not going support multiple engine versions.

[Anarchid]

Note that ZKL and SWL already use spring:// so there might be conflicts?

Or is that taken care of?