Ideas for useful things a lobby could do to make life easier

Ideas for useful things a lobby could do to make life easier

Discuss development of lobby clients, server, autohosts and auto-download software.

Moderators: Moderators, Lobby Developers

Post Reply
User avatar
SinbadEV
Posts: 6475
Joined: 02 May 2005, 03:56

Ideas for useful things a lobby could do to make life easier

Post by SinbadEV »

Yes this is in response to the EvoRTS on Steam thing and no I don't want to make patches... this is one of those time when SinbadEV bahs in the hopes that someone more capable than I will see my insight as valuable and act on it.

First Up: "Meta Packages"... the pr-downloader stuff seems to be pretty awesome for getting stuff but only so long and you ask for the right things... if there could be some kind of package that included only dependencies like a specific engine version and specific game version and a specific set of maps and that this telling your lobby to download "_currentEvo" and this would download a list of things for pr-downloader to download... that would make it possible for people deploying "games" to ensure that everyone got what they needed.

Corollary would be for lobbies to be able to be launched with a command line parameter that would present a custom welcome screen and download or update one of these packages (with pretty progress bars) without requiring users to login.


Another idea would be to have these "Launchers" implement a bare bones lobby-server... if people are playing on LANs or over Hamachi or wish to connect directly to a Steam friend by IP address this would make it a lot easier for them to do so.

(Also... maybe we could stop calling them lobbies... because they are actually "Launchers" that include lobbies... their primary function is to generate, distribute and execute launch scripts... the chat, downloading and matchmaking stuff is mostly there to support the launching part)
User avatar
PepeAmpere
Posts: 589
Joined: 03 Jun 2010, 01:28

Re: Ideas for useful things a lobby could do to make life ea

Post by PepeAmpere »

There was pretty user friendly solution called notainstaller and notalobby, which was solving many user issues you and many others "invented" again now when crashed with reality called "mainstream user".

This is not some another flame war reaction or personal war, just statement pointing to fact, that noone from other lobbies/installers developers took any enlightenment from what was good on it. Except discussions about legality, it was very good lobby. Offering simplicity for total newbies by default (far better then ZKlobby, TAS, weblobby, which i respect, ever did) and still being comfortable for advanced users, allowing game development, offering own system of support singleplayer, skirmish, AI management, replay system with notaTV, friends, all portable, for all 3 supported OS.

You can hate notalobby, but if any "legal" lobby would apply at least 1/2 of user friendly features of notalobby/installer, you would save tons of time of new users and time of some of us, who try to lower level of confusion on forums and in battlerooms every day especially last days.

There is nothing that have to be invented, all is here, just look and copy.
User avatar
smoth
Posts: 22309
Joined: 13 Jan 2005, 00:46

Re: Ideas for useful things a lobby could do to make life ea

Post by smoth »

Get NOTALOBBY GPL COMPLIANT! I like the lobby but think you guys are being really stubborn about the violation thing.
User avatar
CarRepairer
Cursed Zero-K Developer
Posts: 3359
Joined: 07 Nov 2007, 21:48

Re: Ideas for useful things a lobby could do to make life ea

Post by CarRepairer »

PepeAmpere wrote:noone from other lobbies/installers developers took any enlightenment
PepeAmpere wrote:Offering simplicity for total newbies by default (far better then ZKlobby, TAS, weblobby, which i respect, ever did) and still being comfortable for advanced users, allowing game development, offering own system of support singleplayer, skirmish, AI management, replay system with notaTV, friends, all portable, for all 3 supported OS.
These things are all available in other clients (except nota-tv). So your claim that no one else is "enlightened" is wrong.
PepeAmpere wrote:You can hate notalobby, but if any "legal" lobby would apply at least 1/2 of user friendly features of notalobby/installer
Here's an idea. Instead of other people having to "apply friendly features" seen in the notalobby/installer, why can't the notalobby/installer be OSS so that people can benefit without having to make their own from scratch?

You guys benefit from OTA content, from the OSS Spring engine, the Spring server, most of these were made in the spirit of OSS but you don't want to pay it forward. I don't have the option to see how you made nota-tv, or any other cool thing you might have.
gajop
Moderator
Posts: 3051
Joined: 05 Aug 2009, 20:42

Re: Ideas for useful things a lobby could do to make life ea

Post by gajop »

PepeAmpere wrote:There was pretty user friendly solution called notainstaller and notalobby.

Except discussions about legality, it was very good lobby.
Don't know about the notainstaller, but I agree with the rest.
But, the lack of open source-ness doesn't just make it illegal, it also makes it impossible for anyone else to contribute or take over if the single developer gets hit by a bus or just loses interest.
User avatar
PicassoCT
Journeywar Developer & Mapper
Posts: 10450
Joined: 24 Jan 2006, 21:12

Re: Ideas for useful things a lobby could do to make life ea

Post by PicassoCT »

inb4 the worst legal construct ever

OpenSource makes peace with closedSource, on promise of donations once closedSourc succeeds and closedSource makes part of itself open again..


meeting halfway... never... those evil cow-wards (even though they got it UI-Designwise right)..

On the other hand, every day the stream of steamusers smirgles by weblobby, it gets more userfriendly, more polished, more tested.
Starts to feel like a missed oportunity.

Dilemas, dilemas..
User avatar
Silentwings
Posts: 3720
Joined: 25 Oct 2008, 00:23

Re: Ideas for useful things a lobby could do to make life ea

Post by Silentwings »

We don't need money. We do need code.
User avatar
PicassoCT
Journeywar Developer & Mapper
Posts: 10450
Joined: 24 Jan 2006, 21:12

Re: Ideas for useful things a lobby could do to make life ea

Post by PicassoCT »

We could force sinbad into learning lua.

I think he could do it.

He is lurking longer then me. And i was a mapper at the beginning.
So its possible.

Enough of this. Who is for Sinbad gearing it up? Code or ban.
Post Reply

Return to “Lobby Clients & Server”