move core selection to game settings instead of server setup

Bunnywabbit · Post by **Bunnywabbit** » Fri Feb 25, 2011 1:33 pm

With all the different cores out there, it's a shame you have to get everyone to join a different server for a game on a specific core.

Also, having to mount support to move servers "Everyone, go to 'THE REAL MAIN' for CoolnameCore", inspires a lot of rhetoric and divisive bs that we can do without. ('we need to go play CoolNameCore, because SexyNameCore sucks ass and its devs are all idiots!')

If possible, put core selection in Game settings so it's way easier to switch whenever GC changes (rather than having to mount an entire political campaign).

This way
- we lower the stakes for a potential core war.
- different cores will get more playtime
- coredevs get more and better data from being able to compare cores
- less bull@#(!.
- win.

Heyoka · Post by **Heyoka** » Fri Feb 25, 2011 1:43 pm

At first I wanted to say $#@! you.

But I actually like the idea.

SpacePenguin · Post by **SpacePenguin** » Fri Feb 25, 2011 1:49 pm

I like this idea too. Make it so, number 1!

(Actually, I don't know how difficult/time consuming it would be to implement. But I do agree it would facilitate increased play time of other cores)

Spunkmeyer · Post by **Spunkmeyer** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 1:39 am

This is on my "to inspect" list and is exactly what's needed to revive core development.

The reason it's not been done is basically you have to reset the whole game while everyone is connected.. so it's not straightforward. One possible hack is to simply instruct all clients to reconnect and then recreate the game dropping everyone.

Bunnywabbit · Post by **Bunnywabbit** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 10:06 am

disclaimer: writing this while being utterly clueless as to how the server code works.

if everybody drops and rejoins everytime you change a setting in GC, some jerk will abuse that and spend an hour dropping everyone before people have time to change servers or bans his ass.

Ideally what you'd see in the lobby would be just a game configuration screen, with factions and stuff loaded from the core files. You'd have to grab the data you need for game and team settings from all the cores that are installed on a particular server. Changing cores at this stages would not materially change anything yet. Only at game launch would the core be definitively set.

Spunkmeyer · Post by **Spunkmeyer** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 3:00 pm

To prevent abuse, you'd absolutely need a check - for example the core can be changed only once in every x minutes, except to change back to the original core. Even if it's transparent, yeah, people wouldn't like the game going unresponsive for several seconds every single time and there'd definitely be occasional clients that fail to reconnect.

It's really a matter of how to actually get it done instead of sitting on a ticket for a year or two

Bunnywabbit · Post by **Bunnywabbit** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 3:14 pm

Spunkmeyer wrote:QUOTE (Spunkmeyer @ Mar 1 2011, 04:00 PM) It's really a matter of how to actually get it done instead of sitting on a ticket for a year or two

but... that's what we do best!

DrBeginner · Post by **DrBeginner** » Thu Mar 24, 2011 7:45 pm

how about NOT loading the core data into client memory until the person presses the play button in the server lobby. Then it will be easier to do this and you don't have to disconnect/reconnect everyone due to ancient game code.

TurkeyXIII · Post by **TurkeyXIII** » Thu Mar 24, 2011 11:26 pm

Then how will you know what factions to pick?

Bunnywabbit · Post by **Bunnywabbit** » Thu Mar 24, 2011 11:36 pm

Have the server code extract the data it needs for the gui from the core files. Should be trivial.