GSoC Ingame lobby

GSoC idea: Basic ingame lobby

Why

External lobby programs are powerful but confusing. There's a need for a simple lobby client that works in-game and to launch spring.

Background

All existing Spring interfaces (lobbies) are either difficult to customize for game developers or have a different look 'n feel from the game itself and require focus switch from the game itself to operate.

A new, Lua scriptable, lobby should be implemented with customization and control in mind, possibly integrated with spring codebase and/or running as a separate process overlaying the game's UI.

Optionally, the engine's start screen should be replaced and integrated with it.

Required skills

• Knowledge of C++
• Knowledge of Lua
• Knowledge of Lua API/C bindings
• Knowledge of basic OpenGL programming

Difficulty

Estimated: hard

• ensure Spring can clean up properly
• ensure Spring can change mod during program runtime (requires that some singletons be converted to Spring's *handler pattern)
• The lobby API should reuse/be identical to spring's LuaUI where possible ( GL calls, access to game infos )
• to prevent Spring <-> lobby crash propagations they should run as separate processes, with lobby overlaying on top of Spring's UI
• create a new Lua context or initalize current context earlier in the code during Spring init and script start interface using Lua.

Possible Mentor(s)

FORUMLINK

Google_Summer_of_Code_2010