[interface] Custom players labels in multiplayer lobby

[Sandman]

Hello everybody!

I came up with an idea that would make resuming online multiplayer games easier.

Wesnoth lacks any (at least I don't know of any) form of communicating between players, other then chat in lobby and games. This makes hard to gather back a group of players to continue a game. Of course there are ways to communicate outside wesnoth, but some of us (I think even a lot) don't want to share their emails or other such informations to newly met people.

So, I'm proposing a custom lobby label interface expansion. It would consist of three parts:
-custom labels for players
-usernames tagging in labels
-players by labels filtering option

Typical scenario of usage would look like this:
-player A wants to play with player B.
-A sets up a label: "Hey \B, don't start a fresh game, I'm afk for 10mins, but willing to continue our campaign"
-B joins multiplayer server and have label filter on. Player A appears right under B's friends in the lobby with special icon, with meaning "you were tagged here"
-B reads message in label
-B decides to play with A and they are winning World Conquest at nightmare at last;)

To the devs: If you like this idea, and think that it would fit nicely in official release, I would be happy to help implementing it.

Sandman

[iceiceice]

It sounds like you just want an irc channel bot in the mp lobby. You could probably write one in any language that can open sockets... or adapt existing implementation. Read the server wml wiki page to learn abt how to talk to the server.

[Sandman]

I don't want irc channel bot. I agree, that such bot might be used for purpose I described, but it is not what I meant, and there are many differences between both approaches.

[iceiceice]

I found link here: http://wiki.wesnoth.org/MultiplayerserverWML

This describes handshake, login, chat commands.

The issue you raise is you cant pm offline players. This chat bot idea is by far the simplest solution, otherwise you will be rewriting the chat interface in C++. Also, implenting new special chat features on server-side. Currently one of the design criteria is that the server does as little work as possible, because operating it costs money. Maybe the devs will like your idea but I would bet against it. I would be willing to help implement a chat bot, I doubt it would take more than a day or two.

Edit: Keep in mind, this idea may sound very simple, but if you change the client server contract you will have to rigorously test the new server which is a huge job. Right now the server is extremely stable; this feature is definitely not worth it if it means even a few days of server down time from an unexpected bug in implementation which caused games or chats to be dropped etc. The server is already pretty complex and pretty old. There's no risk of any of that with a chat bot.

[Sandman]

Thank you for your feedback iceiceice.

Such bot surely would be easy to implement, but I was looking for solution accesible for every player, directly from the game interface. I know that implementing it would invlove working with C++, but that don't scare me, as I'm doing this for living. Also I don't think, that it would load server noticabely.

But if devs won't like it so be it. I understand that they have some vision for this game and it is more then likely different than mine. If so, I would maybe write myself a bot then;)

[iceiceice]

I mean we'll see what they say, I certainly dont speak for them. If you are a c++ programmer then probly what I said is not news.