![[nl]](/mwf/flags/nl.png "Netherlands")
I got recently a PN from Gio (known Clonk Rage player) sharing some ideas about the lobby with me.
He stated that basically the lobby as it is now encourages the players to always host the same scenarios. It's like you don't know how many players are online, and you just host some popular scenario. This behavior has been in Clonk since basically 2007 or earlier than the lobby emerged.
-One thing is: You don't know who is only, you can't plan. (players like me and Sven constantly check clonk.de - Zapper even wrote his own tool programm, cause he found the lobby so unhandy)
-You can't see which games get hosted once you joined a lobby
-But you must join a lobby, since there is no global chat. Communication doesn't work and #clonken never fulfilled it's goal.
-Another trend is: Experienced players will only join games, if already some friends opened or joined a game. With just a random opened game, mostly newbies will join - and that's not there aim. So here the solution as well is to host a popular level (with league), to get a higher chance of a good opponent.
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So basically he made a few suggestions:
-Global player list (who is online?)
-a global Chat, with only players online - not #clonken where 50 idle persons are.
-A handy way to update the game list inside the lobby and outside clonk.
I personally think a lobby could be a sort of "tab", and you can easily switch back to the chat and the global games list (perhaps even with a sort of "highlite" if your friends host a game.
-Create a host list for scenarios. Like (Etagenkampf, Cofut, Kleines Handgemenge) - they are hosted after another, and the players are be automatically moved to the new lobby.
-public servers with preferences (like CServ), next scenario, /votekick and stuff like this.
-Working LZB
-Mark players which are loading a scenario, or don't have a object pack.
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So in general, I think there is some truth in this. Coordination works horrible, we often have to join other lobbies and tell the players there, that the chat is in "this lobby". So a really big amount of player join a game, and just chat for eternity. Delaying the gaming often. A lot of players are also annoyed by this.
So I'm not the biggest gamer out there, and I wondered. How do other games do this? We chatted briefly in IRC and someone stated that Team Fortress does it better and Steam has a good system? What do you think?
He stated that basically the lobby as it is now encourages the players to always host the same scenarios. It's like you don't know how many players are online, and you just host some popular scenario. This behavior has been in Clonk since basically 2007 or earlier than the lobby emerged.
-One thing is: You don't know who is only, you can't plan. (players like me and Sven constantly check clonk.de - Zapper even wrote his own tool programm, cause he found the lobby so unhandy)
-You can't see which games get hosted once you joined a lobby
-But you must join a lobby, since there is no global chat. Communication doesn't work and #clonken never fulfilled it's goal.
-Another trend is: Experienced players will only join games, if already some friends opened or joined a game. With just a random opened game, mostly newbies will join - and that's not there aim. So here the solution as well is to host a popular level (with league), to get a higher chance of a good opponent.
---------------
So basically he made a few suggestions:
-Global player list (who is online?)
-a global Chat, with only players online - not #clonken where 50 idle persons are.
-A handy way to update the game list inside the lobby and outside clonk.
I personally think a lobby could be a sort of "tab", and you can easily switch back to the chat and the global games list (perhaps even with a sort of "highlite" if your friends host a game.
-Create a host list for scenarios. Like (Etagenkampf, Cofut, Kleines Handgemenge) - they are hosted after another, and the players are be automatically moved to the new lobby.
-public servers with preferences (like CServ), next scenario, /votekick and stuff like this.
-Working LZB
-Mark players which are loading a scenario, or don't have a object pack.
---------------
So in general, I think there is some truth in this. Coordination works horrible, we often have to join other lobbies and tell the players there, that the chat is in "this lobby". So a really big amount of player join a game, and just chat for eternity. Delaying the gaming often. A lot of players are also annoyed by this.
So I'm not the biggest gamer out there, and I wondered. How do other games do this? We chatted briefly in IRC and someone stated that Team Fortress does it better and Steam has a good system? What do you think?
![[de]](/mwf/flags/de.png "Germany")
1. why not use a channel like #clonken, enable autojoin by default and have a bot posting there when a new scen opens so irc-idlers can "see" hosted scens?1.1 you could even create a new dynamic chatroom every time a scen is opened, where all the players are in it, so someone that's only in irc can join that room and say "hey wait for me, oc is starting up"
2. for friends, something like steam is nice, does desura have a similar system?
> why not use a channel like #clonken, enable autojoin by default and have a bot posting there when a new scen opens so irc-idlers can "see" hosted scens?
That's actually pretty good. You could set keywords like in other IRC Clients to get highlighted when a certain word falls. And when that keyword is the title of your favourite scenario you get highlighted when someone opens it.
![[gb]](/mwf/flags/gb.png "United Kingdom")
Well, that's sort of my standard answer to all this... We probably don't want to ditch #clonken, but make it better it some way. It probably wouldn't be too hard to abuse the "away" mechanism to mark players that are currently in a game, for example.
But on the other hand every chat where everybody joins has to live with the fact that everybody joins, no matter whether he's just idling or actively looking for a game. How do we tell those apart in the first place? Marking yourself doesn't sound like it would scale. If we had the "away" mechanism we could sort the list by when people played their last game or something.
But on the other hand every chat where everybody joins has to live with the fact that everybody joins, no matter whether he's just idling or actively looking for a game. How do we tell those apart in the first place? Marking yourself doesn't sound like it would scale. If we had the "away" mechanism we could sort the list by when people played their last game or something.
Why not support Steam (there is this GreenLight thing)Features would be:
- simply join games your friends host.
- i guess more but i haven't looked in their API yet.
b/c oc is in no state to be playable by the masses?and i believe desura is already supported, they probably have the same thing
and b/c i like xmpp ;)
>oc is in no state to be playable by the masses?
Why? Because it lags?
A fluent clonk should be quite a mass player game.
Of course there is always room for more content to come.
But: more players -> more content. More content -> even more players. Even more players -> even more content.
>Zapper even wrote his own tool programm, cause he found the lobby so unhandy)
Screenshot. Mainly it's cleaner and faster to check than starting Clonk.
In OpenClonk you have the windowed mode, though. So having Clonk run in the background should be a lot more comfortable.
>and someone stated that Team Fortress does it better and Steam has a good system? What do you think?
Well, Steam obviously has a great friend system with the Steam plattform running in the background. For the Source games, the ingame view is ususally rather simple: You have a list of games that you can filter and sort.
You can always access that list (even when ingame), though.
how about an xmpp chatroom?oc could simply add a feature called "openclonk" to the featurelist that can be requested from any user or server
this would even allow for a user to be in the chatroom with both openclonk and a regular xmpp client, but everybody else can see it's the same user due to the same jid.
only downside is, for users that do not add their own xmpp credentials in oc, a server + automatic registration would need to be offered.
also people could simply add other people like in steam/live/whatnot
i'm sure there are many more possibilities related to oc chat stuff that xmpp can offer
friend list?obvious difference between players and xmpp users
the "openclonk" in the featurelist doesn't have to be for show only, you can actually extend the "Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol"… duh :D (e.g. a new online state that says "in a game, here's the additional data")
it would be nice then, if there is a special channel, where only the mods of #openclonk are in, and all other clients that not come in with the openclonk client get kicked out.so there would be a channel wich is only filled with ppl that have actually openclonk open, and want to play.
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