Idea: Open Gaming Portal / Lobby-System

Sven Pfaller kalterregen at gmx.net
Fri Apr 3 13:34:54 PDT 2009


Christoph Egger wrote:
> Hi Sven!

Hi Christoph!

> [...]
> This list started as an point for games packagers in different
> Linux/Unix distributions, however I believe such an broader focus is
> definitely an good idea

I just thought packagers of games for Linux distributions are interested
in a) games and b) open source software. Seemed like the perfect list to
go :) . Also I was pointed to this list in #debian-games.

If you or anybody else know another mailinglist with people (and
developers) interested in a project like this, please tell me and I'll
forward the discussion to them.

> [...]
> I have thought about such an project myself once or twice however I
> never started spending more thoughts on it let alone implement anything.
> If you get this going, please drop me a note ;)

Cool. In the end of this discussion it will hopefully be clear if this
project "gets going" :)

> [...]
> There is quite a lot of different package managers around. Maybe the
> installing component could be implemented as an plugin-system so new
> package managers can be added easily and the most appropriate selected
> based on the system the user is running?

Definitely. Plugins for the installation of games would be necessary not
only for the different distros, but also for different OSs like Windows
or MacOs.

> [...]
> I'm not an expert but I fear this global thing may get too much for an
> single server. As it is an great Idea however maybe keeping scaling in
> mind while designing this peace is an good idea?

The OGP server will definitely have to be written with scalability in
mind. The "global" server is one of the most challenging parts of this
project, but I think it could be feasible because
a) there is time. Use of the "global" community will start slowly I
guess, because the games need some time to implement the communication
with the OGP server. Performance issues could be fixed in parallel.
b) one OGP server could be spanned over multiple physical servers. Maybe
someone with more experience in distributed systems will be interested
in the project and step up to help :)

> [...]
> Games may have quite different licenses. So I believe an liberal
> License (BSD, zlib, X11) would be really good here.

You're right. Something like the BSD license would be appropriate.

> Maybe SWIG in place to ease generation of wrappers?

I guess there will be maintainers for the different language bindings
and they are free to choose whatever they want to generate the bindings.
SWIG for example :)

> [...]
> While this really is rather an topic for the «global community», there
> are quite differences in what is open in open source games. Whould you
> limit that strictly? One may also consider placing *no* restrictions at
> all on this. Would it be bad if you could start e.g. Civilization or CS
> from OGP?

Not at all. I just wanted to focus on open games, but I personally would
put no restrictions and let any game use OGP (yeah, because it's open ;)
). In the long run I would really enjoy a full-fledged commercial game
to use an open standard protocol / API for its lobby-system.

> [...]
> Regards
> 
> 	Christoph

Thanks for your input!

Best regards
- Sven

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