Creating a Custom Start Lobby

[mcgrawjt]

New to UDK development. First post here. (be gentle)

Am looking to create a custom "lobby" that will launch prior to joining a multi-player match. The lobby will help "organize" the game and perform actions like: Server selection, match-making, teams, klan affiliation, player profiles, gather stats etc.

The intention would be to distribute this as a mod for the UT3 server include.

Questions:

1) Can you create a custom 'lobby' with unrealscript functions or do I need to join the partner program to get access to the source-code? If unrealscript, anyone know the relevant .uc files that are called prior to launching an on-line game?

2) What is considered proper 'etiquette' when it comes to lobby systems? I know some gamers hate them and others love em. What makes a good/bad lobby in your opinion?

3) As a player, do you like the MS Live Lobby?

Your comments appreciated,

Tyler

[mcgrawjt]

A little more info. Guess in UE3 they call the lobby the Master Control Program. (see this article (http://news.bigdownload.com/2009/03/25/gdc-2009-epic-games-shows-off-new-unreal-engine-3-features/).



Borrowing a phrase from TRON, another new feature for UE3 is the MCP, or Master Control Program, which is an innovative online service architecture supporting announcements, settings management, online population tracking, and data collection for hardware, profile, and game stats. Epic has been using MCP to track every fathomable aspect of Gears of War 2 online gameplay. Over 7 million hours of gameplay data has been collected so far, which runs the gamut from which weapons are used to kill the most people to which are the most popular guns to pick up on the battlefield. Sweeney said any type of in-game event can be tracked with this technology, which can be employed both during development as well as once a game has been released "into the wild."

UE3 developers can use the MCP for broadcasting community news and information to players. The technology allows for live update of game features, without requiring a full title update. It also makes it easy to create a party system for any game, enabling players to form groups in a networked lobby, and transition from match to match together.

What I am after is the ability to mod the MCP (master control program) via unrealscript. Can that be done or do I need to be a partner to get access to MCP?

Thanks in advance,

Tyler

[immortius]

If you're talking about the master server/update news/stats recording/etc system, that's really external to UE3 itself - UT3/GOW merely connect to it and use it. Obviously it is a fair bit of infrastructure that epic have on a server(s) somewhere and it is doubtful you can make use of it.

If you're talking about the interfaces in UDK to do with connecting to that infrastructure, it is likely that you could make some use of it.

Regardless of whether you can make use of the existing interface, you can make your own lobby/etc server and connect to it from the UDK via a TCPLink.

[mcgrawjt]

Kind of.

I understand the need for the external servers that are required to do this sort of thing. (I've got those in place) What I am after is how to implement those features in a way that doesn't annoy the game players and is considered a best practice.

These are the commands inside UE3 I am looking to take advantage of: Look here for the MCP libs. (http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/Category:Classes_in_UDK_package_IpDrv)

I can call these from within unrealscript, I just want to make sure I do it the right way so as not to cause problems for game players. Anyone have experience with these?

Tyler