Metaserver for Gathering Players and Advertising Games.

What this game and this community desperately need is somewhere to gather, chat, advertise hosted games, and automatically connect to a host's ip addresses just by clicking on a game.

And no, a forum where someone posts they will be available hosting next Thursday is really not enough.  You will never get enough games going. It needs to be simpler and smoother.

I strongly suggest you take a look at the Alephone project (source.bungie.org), an opensource engine for an old game called Marathon, available for Windows, OSX and Linux, and their server:

http://metaserver.lhowon.org/

it is open source, written in python, and is accessible from within game.
https://github.com/Hopper262/metaserver

Such a system could easily ensure the longevity of this project and build a stronger community.

That would be nice. How long would it take to make that happen though? I rather they continue focusing on what they current have going on and after the next release, with all those new maps and mods, a proper in-game matchmaking system would be put to use. Is that what you're suggesting they do? let you find strangers to fight in-game?

Yup that's exactly it.  And naturally. I'm just suggest that they add it to the end of their pipeline.   I bet it would be a lot of work.  That server is designed specifically for alephone.  Lord knows if it can be modified.  But perhaps the concept can be copied. Anoter open souce project that does the same way is 0ad, a free age of empires style RTS.

The reason I suggest it as oppose to a whole application is the alephone team is incredibly small, with little resources. If they can do it you might be able.

I wonder if that's even possible with gamemaker

Does game maker not allow plugins to the UI?

darklord42 wrote:

Does game maker not allow plugins to the UI?

It's possible to call external DLL's or other plugins in the game. It's also possible to install "extensions" in Game Maker to do some interesting things. I'm not really sure how to hook python into that framework, but then again I am a bit rusty on Game Maker and haven't ever looked into using external python plugins.

Well that particular server is written in python. (If it can be modified) The element that communicates to it doesn't have to be.

I wish this would happen, can't find a single person to play with.

Also another thing to keep in mind that standing up a server like this does require hardware, and unless we want to just use an ugly IP address for connecting (which is actually an option by the way), possibly a domain name. A domain name would be better in the long run in case we need to switch out the server from underneath without breaking the game. What I am getting at is that it wouldn't be free to do something like this, and SSBC has been totally focused on spending and making 0 dollars in development of this game - keeping things money-neutral I guess. We could however, create a server to do these functions and release it so that individual players could have their own metaservers. If the overhead of running the server is low enough, it might be feasible for players to run the server in the background while playing. Anyway, just spit-balling, but there are a lot of challenges with this type of service - mainly keeping a server running at all times and maintaining it.

Did someone say, hosting a server?

Doqtor Kirby wrote:

Did someone say, hosting a server?

I'm pretty sure we didn't, but we would need to.

You wouldn't need a domain name to connect.  The user clicks on the "Join Internet Game" button from in-game and the game connects for you in the background.  Though I do understand so one can switch the server underneath without breaking the game.  Anyway the point of the metaserver is to list available games to the clients, relay ip addresses, and relay chat.  Ideally a proper metaserver could also relay the host connection too so hosts wouldn't need to port forward, but I never have seen that done yet.  Yes someone would need hardware.  but there are other ways too.

If you want to get games going for a small community, it is the best way to do it.  It does take a heck of a lot of work though.  No one is denying that.  And some infrastructure... But if people like it, I'm sure they can donate the chump change to keep it running.

darklord42 wrote:

You wouldn't need a domain name to connect.  The user clicks on the "Join Internet Game" button from in-game and the game connects for you in the background.  Though I do understand so one can switch the server underneath without breaking the game.  Anyway the point of the metaserver is to list available games to the clients, relay ip addresses, and relay chat.  Ideally a proper metaserver could also relay the host connection too so hosts wouldn't need to port forward, but I never have seen that done yet.  Yes someone would need hardware.  but there are other ways too.

If you want to get games going for a small community, it is the best way to do it.  It does take a heck of a lot of work though.  No one is denying that.  And some infrastructure...  But if people like it, I'm sure they can donate the chump change to keep it running.

Yeah, we would want some kind of VIP to front traffic instead of just using a straight IP address.
It really would be a great addition to the online community of SSBC. However, I think something like first-class, in-game support for setting up virtual networks would be just as good. To me it seems like there are challenges getting the network set up, which we would be very well served in addressing.

Falcon8r wrote:

However, I think something like first-class, in-game support for setting up virtual networks would be just as good.

Maybe, some sort of builtin hamachi style client that will automatically setup the connection. I've never seen game that did it before though. Such a game would need serious UAC rights. Seems ugly.

Just a thought (this wasn't the case when I first posted) But there really isn't a lot of power required for this task, (its just forwarding IP addresses and a little bit of text). A simple 35$ raspberry pi 3 could do the job nicely.

However this is done matters not. As long as dedicated servers are accomplished.

Ease of access to set up online matches is a MUST for Crusade and I think the developers know this. Patiently waiting for an online mode update.

Also I see many suggestions for hosting and servers and such, but my main question is would any of these options improve gameplay speed? I played online a few times and the input delay was incredibly bad as well as the FPS. (I have the "Blast" speed offered by Comcast so my web is far from slow or throttled.)

One problem with a VPN solution is the high barrier of entry.  The  set up, and basically the nature of what it is.  It is great for 20-30 dedicated people to always be connected to each other.  (Though from a security standpoint, I may think twice before connecting my local network with 20-30 odd networks I have no control over. Not to mention it would be foolish to trust you guys THAT much).  But really there is no room for expansion.  The whole goal is to target the random guy who picks us SSBC and want him to see a vibrant online community so that he might want to stay.