What would you like to see in a server browser?

[directhex]

I've been loitering about on the XQF (Linux server browser) development mailing lists for a while, and had it drawn to my attention that people are a little peeved with the lack of work on All-Seeing Eye.

I've done some patches here and there for XQF, and while it's a perfectly functional program for Linux users, i'm wondering whether there would be a smarter way to do a lot of the things it does.

So, I started asking myself the question "how about an alternative?". A preliminary hour or so's messing about with my tools of choice have shown that it's not overly complex to produce something that works, especially when building on top of existing work by others. More specifically, the command-line "QStat" program provides a whole bunch of back-end voodoo for getting server statistics for a big pile of games, which means a lot of the hard work for a lot of the most popular titles is already out of the way.

So. Hypothetically speaking, what features would you like to see in an all-new cross-platform game server browser? Coherent replies only please - if you could knock together visual mockups, that'd be great too. Feel free to make fairly outlandish suggestions, since it's a from-scratch project.

For this project to hold any interest for me, the following rules apply:
* In order to be cross-platform (I run and develop on Linux), it would be a .NET appliation requiring the GTK# toolkit - this isn't negotiable, and no you don't need that extra 3MiB or so of RAM
* The project would be open-source, free and Free
* Adding game support ("filters" in ASE language) would probably be a little more complex than with ASE, but considerably more powerful. That said, I've not 100% decided how to implement this - perhaps a two-tier approach (simple config files for sorta-supported games, separate .dll files for advanced support)
* As an open-source project, contributions would be welcome (especially of art resources, which is one thing I can't do myself)
* If I decide to go ahead, then nothing will be ready for human consumption for a fair while - please don't badger me for early access.

Unless, of course, you're all happy as can be with XFire or Gamespy or whatever the cool kids use. In which case I shan't bother.

[kalniel]

Doesn't it kind of depend on what the game server returns by way of information?

The kind of information I'd want from a server browser is generally limited by what the servers themselves advertise.

[directhex]

Doesn't it kind of depend on what the game server returns by way of information?

The kind of information I'd want from a server browser is generally limited by what the servers themselves advertise.

you're right that it depends on what the server is offering - but modular program design should make it possible to get more information than might otherwise be there. (e.g. the design i'm planning means that for a given game, you could code in extra data gathering mechanisms such as getting extra info from the web)

for the programmers out there, the key is System.Reflection

[kempez]

Xfire and Gamespy suck. Go for it.

Browse by:

IP
Ping
Server Name
No. of players
Game (obviously)
Bots
Security
Type of match (Deathmatch, CTF etc)

Not necessarily in that order of importance though and I'm sure theres more

I can do some artwork in fireworks if you need a hand - skins banners etc

[directhex]

Xfire and Gamespy suck. Go for it.

Browse by:

IP
Ping
Server Name
No. of players
Game (obviously)
Bots
Security
Type of match (Deathmatch, CTF etc)

Not necessarily in that order of importance though and I'm sure theres more

I can do some artwork in fireworks if you need a hand - skins banners etc

how would you present he whole shebang to users? http://www.linuxgames.com/xqf/images/main3.png shows XQF, which is the last server browser i've really used in anger. what's right & wrong with the interface?

as for artwork, i've now decided on a name for the project - "Eris". Eris is the greek goddess of strife, and more typically, the discordian god of chaos. she receives frequent mentions in the Illuminatus trilogy (where the Illuminati's logo is the all-seeing eye in the pyramid). Eris is also vaguely similar to the Hindu goddess of, well, lots of stuff (from annihilation to the beginning of the universe)- Kali. I thought it was a neat name given the context

[Veles]

What I'd like to see is some nice search options. So say I could refine my server list so it only shows servers with a ping of say, <200, servers with a capacity of 24-40 people, and are apporximately 75% full.

It would probably help if you split the players column into connected players, and max capacity, something like that, so if I wanted to find a big server then I could sort by max capacity.

Favourite servers list is essential IMO, and also a recent servers list.
Being able to connect to a specific IP.

For the refinement search things I think it would be good if it could identify errr thingamagigs. So for refining the connected players bit, you could put say:
A specific number
A range, like 10-12 players connected
Less than/greater than greater than or equal to, etc. (e.g. <10, >=30)
Appoximate percentage (e.g. 75% gives you all the servers that are close to 75% full)
Obviously these would only apply to some search refinements, as you wouldn't need these for map or gametype searches, and the % refinement wouldn't be useful for ping and max server capacity.

That give you any ideas at all?

[directhex]

What I'd like to see is some nice search options. So say I could refine my server list so it only shows servers with a ping of say, <200, servers with a capacity of 24-40 people, and are apporximately 75% full.

It would probably help if you split the players column into connected players, and max capacity, something like that, so if I wanted to find a big server then I could sort by max capacity.

Favourite servers list is essential IMO, and also a recent servers list.
Being able to connect to a specific IP.

For the refinement search things I think it would be good if it could identify errr thingamagigs. So for refining the connected players bit, you could put say:
A specific number
A range, like 10-12 players connected
Less than/greater than greater than or equal to, etc. (e.g. <10, >=30)
Appoximate percentage (e.g. 75% gives you all the servers that are close to 75% full)
Obviously these would only apply to some search refinements, as you wouldn't need these for map or gametype searches, and the % refinement wouldn't be useful for ping and max server capacity.

That give you any ideas at all?

I'd already thought that powerful control of server capacity would be nice - and percentages is a smart way of handling it, as well as basic numbers. If you've used thunderbird mail filters before, perhaps something like that ("foo" "is/is less than/is greater than/is not" "value" "units" and any number of the above statements)

i've also been lending more thought to my plans for a plugin system. i'm convinced it's the right way to go, despite potentially being more work than something like ASE where you edit one text file - and that's because it gives so many options for *relative* ease for adding support for new games, due to the joys of object-oriented code.

with what i have in mind, for example, adding support for FEAR would involve about ten lines of code - most of which is the word "FEAR" - by inheriting all the features of a generic "gamespy v2" plugin, which inherits from the generic "qstat" plugin - which inherits all the features of a generic "skeleton" plugin. longer term, it'd be nice to have automatic installing and updating of plugins from a central web resource

edit: FEAR is gamespy v2

[Moby-Dick]

good luck with this hexxeh nice to see you doing some dev stuff again !!

[directhex]

oh, and before someone asks what qstat does, it does this:

directhex@mortos:~$ quakestat -a2s play.hexus.net:27025
ADDRESS           PLAYERS      MAP   RESPONSE TIME    NAME
play.hexus.net:27025   3/31 de_prodigy     59 / 0  cstrike HEXUS.net Public Server - #hexus.cs on quakenet IRC
directhex@mortos:~$ quakestat -ut2004s play.hexus.net:7777
ADDRESS           PLAYERS      MAP   RESPONSE TIME    NAME
play.hexus.net:7777    0/12 ONS-TORLAN     54 / 0  ONSOnslaughtGame HEXUS.net UT2004 Server
directhex@mortos:~$ quakestat -P -a2s play.hexus.net:27025
ADDRESS           PLAYERS      MAP   RESPONSE TIME    NAME
play.hexus.net:27025   3/31 de_prodigy     42 / 0  cstrike HEXUS.net Public Server - #hexus.cs on quakenet IRC
         12 frags       -1s HEXUS Tyler
          6 frags       -1s HEXUS Wayne
          0 frags       -1s HEXUS STV 83.142.52.28 : 27021

nice & easy abstraction for 73 types of server. anything not supported by qstat can be programmed manually into a plugin.

[directhex]

nobody's mentioned features like a messenger. does nobody actually care about that feature of things like steam/xfire?

[directhex]

ui mockup #1
ui mockup #2

comments?

[Dav0s]

allow filter by keyword of the server name

[kalniel]

nobody's mentioned features like a messenger. does nobody actually care about that feature of things like steam/xfire?

Coming at it from the RPG point of view, chat facilities are very useful if you're organising a session on an RPG server somewhere. Both common room type chats, private messaging and guild/group orientated chats are good. So is some kind of calender/scheduling service.

Ability to group servers by more than just game would be good - so again in RPGs you might have action servers, Roleplay servers, test servers etc. - being able to create your own categories and drag/drop server selections into them would be ace.

[directhex]

allow filter by keyword of the server name

whoops, that's an oversight

ui mockup #3

[directhex]

Coming at it from the RPG point of view, chat facilities are very useful if you're organising a session on an RPG server somewhere. Both common room type chats, private messaging and guild/group orientated chats are good. So is some kind of calender/scheduling service.

i've got some ideas on how to do stuff like this (integrating Jabber-Net and using Jabber for comms stuff), but to be brutally honest, there'd be a lot of work involved, and i'd rather get some other poor sod to take care of it.

Ability to group servers by more than just game would be good - so again in RPGs you might have action servers, Roleplay servers, test servers etc. - being able to create your own categories and drag/drop server selections into them would be ace.

I think I see how that could be done. I had always intended to allow you to view "all" servers (not just by game), and have filters which apply to "all" servers. i don't think assigning extra metadata would be too hard

[Dav0s]

whoops, that's an oversight

ui mockup #3

lol, glad to help

any chance it could be more of an intelligent search rather than a filter?

so you could input "DEATHMATCH OR GUNGAME". is that too complicated?