Spread the good word

[BrainDamage]

1. springlobby has a pretty clear roadmap, changing protocol isn't just an option, it will be mandatory to allow the development of some of the planned features (3+ milestone), and it already fully supports unicode (tested & worked just fine), and has a singleplayer skirmish functionality

2. it's been almost 2 months (yeah, before even those mass promotions threads) that the springlobby devs were discussing with cuppeh about lobby<-> UF integration, cuppeh said that (obviously) the new UF has to come first, so you might have to wait few more weeks; i'm aware that a distributed system would be better, but it will do the job atm & the code of UF will always be re-usable & integrated in the distributed content tracker

3. springlobby unlike the other projects, has already got many 3rd party patches & contributings from people & has more devs itself than the other lobbies togheter (no offence intended, just some self-ads ), even tho lot of people helped or are helping, there is still lot to do; in particular it needs

- C++ coders
- translators (after the first release will be ready to translate)
- (only in minor part) artists for the icons/grafics
- testers

springlobby is developed & tested mostly in linux, we need windows & macosx testers, there are automatic builds for windows to make the task easier

so please at least, install, try & add a suggestion/bug report (before suggesting 10000 times more, there will be an option to have the battle listed below the chat panel )

[AF]

Felix we have 2 lobbies that are perfectly capable of replacing tasclient entirely.

AFLobby and Spring Lobby support unicode at the moment with no modifications. TASServer is also able to support unicode natively hwoever betalord forces the "latin" locale which undoes that. This is to prevent an exploit in TASClient and TASClient does not support unicode. TASServer development has always assumed that only tasclient exists and only tasclient is worthy of consdieration.

As for design and concept, I've developed AFLobby from the start primarily to address these issues. And yes I have done away with the insistence on the # syntax /j channel /j #channel /j channel1,2,3,4, etc...

As for using C++ to encourage cross development between engine, I think thats a point but its not big enough to justify it above any other language. Although we can all agree using delphi was a huge mistake.

If you ahve a sugegstion post it in my thread. I regularly procrastinate from doing things and use implementing AFLobby stuff as an excuse, small things I can do in those few mintues before a TV program starts or before I goto sleep. I'd say my integration of meltrax's ladder is already at 80% completion, and although I may not have a dev team like springlobby, I've been here working on the lobby for a lot longer, and I've seen omni and unitylobby and orakios client pass by. That and I tend to spend a lot more time than most others are willing to.


As it currently stands I'd say Springlobby is around 70%-80% towards completing tasclients featureset and is usable for day to day lobby games already.

AFLobby stands at somewhere between 98% and 100%.

Both lobbies have a truckload of features added on top of that. Some of which you'll notice were copied by satirik such as resizable movable starting rectangles, or translucent rectangles. Others you wont find in tasclients forks such as AFLobbys animated text smileys or Springlobbies table based playerlists.

And ontop of that the 2 lobbies inherit a truckload of things from their GUI libraries. For example AFLobby respects the OS text DPI APIs without any effort, whereas tasclient messes up.


As for UF integration.

The main obstacle behind that has been advertising. Its a lot fo bandwidth being gobbled up for free, and cuppy in the past ahsnt had th revenue to pay for it, but as UF expands and the focus on spring gets smaller this has started to change. I have a lot of the codebase required for this implemented already in aflobby and IIRC springlobby people had something similar inline.

Another issue has been the confusion caused by the p2p MTR. Despite being much harder, much more cpu intensive, and needing much more time to develop, with questionable benefits, people have tried to push forth the request derailing any genuine effort to solve the problem, and causing any other ideas to suddenly be dismissed out of hand.


And as for 1 lobby to rule them all...

Us lobby developers have different styles and tastes and opinions about what is good and bad design, which features should be prioritized, etc. Its just like AIs.

I also believe that a 1 lobby system is not good. We've seen what a TASClient centric view of lobby development has done and its slowed down development of other lobbies and programs. Bitfields, inconsistent protocol syntax, cryptic commenting and undocumented commands, and a refusal to change because TASClient doesnt need it.

And because of this competition has been stifled and progress has been crippled, and as a result the lobby has stayed the same. No UI improvements, no design changes, just inconsistent incremental feature bloat trickling voer a long time period.

[clericvash]

I only ever use AF's lobby and it is getting to be really, really awesome.

AF is right, having only 1 lobby would be bad, after all competition fuels development (unless your Microsoft you just try to crush everyone so you don't have to get better).

[AF]

A healthy lobby system would have a protocol ratified and improved based on discussion by all users of the protocol and experienced people.

There would be more than 1 lobby in use, preferably at least 2, all in a rather equal distribution.

[Hul]

i've been playing everyday for 6 months and i still would play if someone would unban me

this game is so cool i told everyone i know about it i would pay £10 a month to play it.

also i think that when newbies start this game none of them know what to do, getting maps and mods is hard enough and they get kicked from battles for being being a noob and nobody likes noobs in their games or on their team. so its not really suprising we dont get many new people

[RavingManiac]

agreed