Lobby Picker

[AF]

When the spring installer is ran, perhaps we could instead of adding springlobby or tasclient into the same start menu folder, instead what if we added a 'Multiplayer Lobby' entry, which when clicked would launch the lobby, with the individual options in a subfolder.

The first time it's ran, it would present the user with a choice and then it would launch the chosen lobby every time, and we could add a second short cut labelled 'Change Multiplayer Lobby'.

This would also provide a common target for scripts to launch the lobby from.

[very_bad_soldier]

The first time it's ran, it would present the user with a choice and then it would launch the chosen lobby every time

I believe that would cause more confusion than there is already. Newbies are clueless (regarding to Argh). They dont know about Tasclient, Springlobby, SD and whatnot. They cant give a qualified answer to the question "which is your preferred lobby?" because they never used any of these.

[AF]

Not if the dialog was designed correctly and explained

[Forboding Angel]

but how many newbies would actually read said dialog?

[AF]

Itd be better than what we currently have and functionally useful.

[Argh]

How's about just having one standard Lobby, with a newbie / advanced interface, and a shorter learning curve?

It is a problem that people cannot just pick up the game and immediately connect to other people online. The current system should, at the very least, be changed so that:

1. It asks users to set up a username / password for playing online, as part of the installation process, so that that step is already done and is pre-configured (since username / pass / autologin is already in text files, that should be trivial).

2. It says, "hey end-users, we are installing A, with XYZ options, and you may also use B, with EFG options, by changing that preference in the game configuration tool (i.e., build a flag in SpringSettings, which Spring would use to determine which Lobby to open up).

3. It says, "user manuals for the Lobbies can be found by clicking on the Manuals button and selecting the appropriate Lobby"- an option in the main Spring startup interface that would close Spring and open PDF manuals.

Other than the usual fights about which Lobby to make paramount, which frankly I'm totally neutral about, as I think both projects have their merits and problems, that would provide a much smoother initial experience for newbies, imo.

There are other issues inherent to this- it's pretty appalling how complicated the interfaces for the current Lobbies are, and they desperately need to work on having a simpler, newbie-proof interface that doesn't do all the extra stuff all the long-time people have asked for, but Just Works. But that's another issue, and just doing this part nicely would remove a lot of confusion and be a relatively minor addition to the current features of the Spring front end.

[AF]

Let's give a prime example

Zwzsg has his single player startup stuff, and one issue facing that is the multiplayer button, does it start spring lobby or tasclient? What if tasclient isn't installed? Or what if the player prefers tasclient when spring lobby is used? Which lobby is to be launched? What if a third lobby gets bundled? What if your a lobby developer wanting to test out your own codebases?

Simply picking an official lobby is not enough, and it's not something everybody would agree with


Asking for a username and password is going to make a nontrivial percentage of potential players quit and give up there and then, and another group unable to proceed for lack of Internet connection. It also tightly couples the implementation of both installer and lobbies together. What if you already have a username too?

[Argh]

It is much more important to the Spring Project that new users have a good experience than to give support to alternative Lobbies or to coders wanting to find an audience.

This is a major part of the Spring experience that should "just work", and it would almost certainly be a major improvement if we declared that we will only have one Lobby, and if you want to work on Lobbies, you need to contribute to that. Third-party projects should be just that- third-party, not supported as part of the Spring project. We don't have enough software engineers to spread around, let alone watching them waste their time trying to out-cool one another.

I have never bothered saying any of that before, because I didn't want to get involved in that issue, but that is what I think about this.

That said, I suspect that we're going to need to support both of the current favorites for now, and that is OK with me, but it would be best to have a clear set of goals for having a simpler, easier-to-use product that is built with newbies in mind, and to get everybody on the same page, if they're willing to quit being egotistical about stuff and agree to figure out a common plan and a reasonable division of labor.

The current Lobbies smack of expert-feature creep in the worst ways, competition between the projects has led to both the major Lobbies having all sorts of features that either don't work or aren't polished well, and both products are far more complex than their commercial counterparts, which makes adoption much more challenging.

[zwzsg]

[Argh]

Righto. But even that is too complicated, imo. Really they should just open up a Lobby through your startup interface via a Lua command, and end-users should only ever have to deal with one simple front-end, like a commercial game engine, and never see multiple pieces of software at all- it should all have a uniform visual style.

I tried my best to be accommodating also, with P.U.R.E., where it all launches from Pxtl's AppLauncher and I included both Lobbies to be totally fair about it, but I really feel like that's a poor cousin to doing it properly.

[Satirik]

It is much more important to the Spring Project that new users have a good experience than to give support to alternative Lobbies or to coders wanting to find an audience.

This is a major part of the Spring experience that should "just work", and it would almost certainly be a major improvement if we declared that we will only have one Lobby, and if you want to work on Lobbies, you need to contribute to that. Third-party projects should be just that- third-party, not supported as part of the Spring project. We don't have enough software engineers to spread around, let alone watching them waste their time trying to out-cool one another.

I have never bothered saying any of that before, because I didn't want to get involved in that issue, but that is what I think about this.

That said, I suspect that we're going to need to support both of the current favorites for now, and that is OK with me, but it would be best to have a clear set of goals for having a simpler, easier-to-use product that is built with newbies in mind, and to get everybody on the same page, if they're willing to quit being egotistical about stuff and agree to figure out a common plan and a reasonable division of labor.

The current Lobbies smack of expert-feature creep in the worst ways, competition between the projects has led to both the major Lobbies having all sorts of features that either don't work or aren't polished well, and both products are far more complex than their commercial counterparts, which makes adoption much more challenging.

i guess you're talking about springlobby and springdownloader ... because tasclient isn't in the installer anymore, it's a pure third party optional tool only available through the "alternative lobby" of the spring download page ...

[Argh]

Actually, no, I am totally neutral about this issue. SpringLobby has problems, and so does your own project, and it really sucks that you guys can't even share source and thus have a way to continue to compete that benefits everybody.

And yes, I know, you and they and AF's never-really-finished stuff all have a long and somewhat-silly history and rivalry and various lolz.

I figure that you (Satirik) and the SpringLobby people could probably bury your hatchets, but there's that issue of having incompatible codebases and a lack of a way to work together at a practical level. Such is the result of our Balkanized approach to many issues.

So I'm not holding my breath.

But ideally, that's what we need- a common Lobby with a better focus on the first hour of the customer's experience, instead of so much work being done for stuff that only matters after you've been playing online for a couple of weeks.

[zwzsg]

Zwzsg has his single player startup stuff, and one issue facing that is the multiplayer button

My single player startup stuff doesn't have a multiplayer button.

[Argh]

Yeah, well, P.U.R.E. does, since I use a third-party launcher, but it's not entirely satisfactory- Pxtl built it over a weekend, pretty much, with some bugfixes along the way, and while it works, I honestly think that your model of the ingame seamless interface is a superior way to handle the issue from a customer's perspective.

Ideally, the Lobby would be a DLL, and it would operate in Spring via a Lua-driven interface, so that it would all be 100% seamless to the end-user.

Having Spring quit and go to a third-party application and then restart, etc. is not how it's done in anything commercial that I can think of- at the very least, it's hidden by middleware that looks exactly the same as everything else.

[Satirik]

Actually, no, I am totally neutral about this issue. SpringLobby has problems, and so does your own project, and it really sucks that you guys can't even share source and thus have a way to continue to compete that benefits everybody.

And yes, I know, you and they and AF's never-really-finished stuff all have a long and somewhat-silly history and rivalry and various lolz.

I figure that you (Satirik) and the SpringLobby people could probably bury your hatchets, but there's that issue of having incompatible codebases and a lack of a way to work together at a practical level. Such is the result of our Balkanized approach to many issues.

So I'm not holding my breath.

But ideally, that's what we need- a common Lobby with a better focus on the first hour of the customer's experience, instead of so much work being done for stuff that only matters after you've been playing online for a couple of weeks.

launch springlobby for the first time, i can't see anything hard to understand ... unless you're targeting retarded players ... you have a big "single player" tab, a battles/chat tab ... when you open it, it pops a login/register dialog (you just have to fill the box and click go and it's done) then you can see the battles and join them (it will auto download maps and mods) or host ... what the fuck is hard there ?

[Argh]

Compare it to the same process for Warcraft III. If you haven't got it, go find a copy, you really do want to see what Blizzard does here, because practically everybody else copies them and it works.

Lastly, "targetting retards" is never a bad idea. Most normal gamers are, by Spring standards, "retards". Trust me on this, spending some time outside this box has given me a lot more understanding of how important that issue is. We do ourselves a massive disservice by not emulating what the commercial people are doing.

I've never heard of a product that was too easy to use or too uncomplicated.

[Satirik]

Compare it to the same process for Warcraft III.

you open it ... click multiplayer ... it asks you a login or to register, then you pick a game and play ... so fuckin different you're right !

[Argh]

Yup, that part is pretty much the same.

But look at how much simpler it is from there.

You've picked a game to play, and now the Lobby just shows games of that kind. You don't have a billion chat options and IRC channels and all the rest of our messy mess, and some of the smartest stuff that's been done lately involves setting up matches automatically using ELO ratings, where the newbie doesn't have to do anything but hit "go" unless they *want* to mess with the interface more. SpringLobby's made a lot of strides in that direction, don't get me wrong, I just don't think it's simple enough yet.

If nothing else, playing Modern Warfare II convinced me that the process of finding and joining a MP game does not *have* to be a process or even slightly a hassle. Hell, *that* just used my Steam ID, so I didn't have to do anything at all, in terms of setting up a username or password. My only complaint with that end of things is that it didn't like my firewall, but that's all right.

No, "gee, I just downloaded X, how do I sort by game, if a game isn't open, how do I set one up", etc., etc.- setting up MP games is about as easy as setting up SP bot matches, and the smartest systems take care of waiting for other people to join, etc. for the end-user, so that there isn't all the fussiness involved with setting up Spring. TBH, after seeing how it's done commercially, I'm of the opinion that allowing for things like manual start positions is one of the worst things Spring did, because it encourages a kind of super-geek play style that is nothing like as straightforward as other games, and has a very high factor of "NUB, DO NOT GO THERE KTHX" interactions that lead to people dropping the game in a real hurry.

Basically, yes, I think we need a lot more "retards", and we can't make it too easy for them. My experience outside this place is that projects that attract lots of "retards" are the ones that are successful and healthy- what do we have to show for ourselves and our "smart people only" system except for fairly flat online membership numbers and a stagnating main project?

[Satirik]

Yup, that part is pretty much the same.

But look at how much simpler it is from there.

You've picked a game to play, and now the Lobby just shows games of that kind. You don't have a billion chat options and IRC channels and all the rest of our messy mess, and some of the smartest stuff that's been done lately involves setting up matches automatically using ELO ratings, where the newbie doesn't have to do anything but hit "go" unless they *want* to mess with the interface more. SpringLobby's made a lot of strides in that direction, don't get me wrong, I just don't think it's simple enough yet. If nothing else, playing Modern Warfare II convinced me that the process of finding and joining a MP game does not *have* to be a process or even slightly a hassle.

No, "gee, I just downloaded X, how do I sort by game, if a game isn't open, how do I set one up", etc., etc.- setting up MP games is about as easy as setting up SP bot matches, and the smartest systems take care of waiting for other people to join, etc. for the end-user, so that there isn't all the fussiness involved with setting up Spring. TBH, after seeing how it's done commercially, I'm of the opinion that allowing for things like manual start positions is one of the worst things Spring did, because it encourages a kind of super-geek play style that is nothing like as straightforward as other games, and has a very high factor of "NUB, DO NOT GO THERE KTHX" interactions that lead to people dropping the game in a real hurry.

that's SD's purpose ..., and the choose in game option is just awesome ! and i don't want spring to become a xbox360/ps3 game !

[Argh]

Hey, don't get me wrong, that's a great feature.

And I'm not here to flame everybody working on the Lobbies or whatever. I just want to see a more seamless product that feels like a part of Spring, not a third-party application, and is oriented primarily towards making sure that newbies have the easiest experience possible.

None of those goals are incompatible with SD or with SpringLobby overall, and they aren't meant to be some massive attack on anybody- like I said, I'm neutral on this, and I've seen how much work has gone into these things.

I just want to see the Lobby folks and the Engine folks see that basically the end-user experience is a whole, not just two disconnected parts with different areas of responsibility.

Maybe it would be useful to do a click-study and contrast current SpringLobby with the Warcraft III interface, see how much of a difference, if any, there is in terms of complexity, and how much of it is just my perception because it looks a lot cleaner... which still matters.

I know that P.U.R.E. users can play a SP game with exactly two clicks of their mouse, though, and there's nothing like that level of simplicity in the Lobbies atm. That gets into various engineering issues, though, since different games demand different conditions, etc.