Re: Online games

[Pierre Phaneuf <pphaneuf@sx.nec.com>]

Gareth Noyce wrote:

> You mention chat etc for players to meet and greet. Something similar
> (albeit simpler) to LICQ would be good in that regard -- as it covers all
> those functionality areas. Also a way of seeing how many players (and who)
> are currently on a server/game -- this ties in with the ping to allow a
> player to estimate the speed they'll get on a game - on a given server, or
> to allow them to meet old 'foes'?! ;-)
> 
> Remote viewing of active games is definitely a nice addition aswell...
> 
> Whilst a game is active, quick messaging would be needed to throw taunts
> etc...

Hehehe! Might I suggest that you take a look at Quadra?

We have a meta-server (implemented as a CGI script) which keeps a list
of servers, with informations, current players and statistics for each
of them. A client gets the list, displays it to the player, who chooses
a server.

Once connected to a server, you can chat with other players (a single
key to start typing a message, many people send messages while playing),
check out your ping time to the server and spectate the game. Of course,
you can also join the game!

The only things which might be considered missing would be the ability
to ping a server without connecting to it, but this is hard for Quadra,
since the protocol is TCP-based, and it wouldn't be very useful, because
our protocol is not affected much by lag. Also a meta-server chatting
system would be nice, but the architecture of the meta-server (a CGI
script on a web server) makes that pretty difficult. It's not impossible
though.

-- 
Pierre Phaneuf
Systems Exorcist

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