Suggestion of new community built Online MP lobby

[Shrike_UK]

Am toying with building a new MP matching lobby with the community. (i suppose comparable but better in many ways to the competition of Hyperlobby, UBI lobby, ASE etc.) but built for IL2 only with features purely used for IL2, such as Squadron chat, room chat prior to launch, Tournament rooms, as much info from servers as possible being made available.
Aiming to be the place where everyone goes because they like it, rather than have a divided community.

I was thinking of using C#.NET 3.5 Winforms GUI.

Budgeting for server rental to host it hasnt been thought about. I have no idea what game matching interface may be included in IL2:CoD. Only thing i can think of re funding would be paypal donations.

Anyone have any thoughts? or interested in joining in with theyre expertise, or have suggestions?

This is just something i have the technical experience to do for the most part, however, it depends if its welcomed as to whether i bother. I for one though would appreciate a better game matching interface to go with our great new Il2.

Cant help feeling im opening a rather large can of worms by posting this, im putting the feelers out, not committing yet.

I guess there's no use for such program, because we have to use Steam and it's matchmaking stuff.

[Shrike_UK]

Everyone will use steam even if you dont buy the steam version?

[Feuerfalke]

Originally Posted by Shrike_UK

Everyone will use steam even if you dont buy the steam version?

Yes. Everybody will have to use STEAM for playing online.

So server-management, browser, anti-cheat, chat and lobby is provided by STEAM.
Steam also supports starting and maintaining groups (e.g. for Squadrons) and there is also an official group for CoD on STEAM to inform the community about news, patches, events, player-stats, etc.

For online play, you need Steam, because it uses the SteamWorks for Matchmaking. But it seems that you don't need Steam for Offline play.

"Can we play this game online without the Steam software?"

Quote Oleg:

"No"

[Shrike_UK]

well that will save me the bother then, looking at the steam MP server list you'd hardly notice its got anything other than freind chat and a server list. but if it suits then well at least we are all in he same place as everyone will have it

[The Kraken]

I'd still wait to see how the final Steam integration looks like as there is still no clear information available. Last info from Oleg was that 3rd party multiplayer lobbies would be possible. That was a few months ago though.