OCTGN

I’m going to post the full concept in here, even the parts that are not entirely OCTGN-related. My goal is that both jods and Kelly Elton will read this.

My idea for the “perfect” lobby integration into OCTGN is as follows. On the OCTGN side of development, we would have an invisible “server” host mode that players can connect to. The significance of this is that instead of having the typical host/join pairing in matchups, both players (assuming a 2-person game) both “join” the server (the technical host). In the pre-game screen, all the players will be listed but the server host will not be part of it, and as such would not be part of the A/B 2-sided table options.

On the Lobby-end, players logged in to it will be able to create games like they did before. Creating such a game signals the server to host a game in OCTGN, and returns an IP address for the players to connect to. The Lobby would bring back the IRC lobby bot, which pings the “brine is hosting a Magic: the Gathering game at 193.346.201.945”. Then both players would go into OCTGN and connect to that IP address.

Back to the OCTGN-end again, an incredibly useful feature would be for the integrated chatroom to have clickable IP addresses that auto-joins for the player. Even if the players are swapping IPs the old-fashioned way, clicking the IP would let the joining player skip the copy/paste and go straight to the pre-game screen.