Lobbies

[ In this and future list posts along the "Whee, look at what I just 
made up" lines, I will post both a link to the Wiki page (for there 
will always be a Wiki page, oh yes) and the initial text of the same 
page, with the intention that discussion go on here, and resolution 
occur there. But anyone should still feel free to edit the Wiki page in 
question whenever they see fit to do so. ]

My holiday rampage through long-overdue parts of the 1.0 protocol (huh? 
wuzzat?) continues. Lobbies are actually sort of a side-effect of the 
game browser, which I'm still drafting, but I think they're important.

http://www.volity.org/wiki/index.cgi?Lobby

A lobby is a multi-user chat dedicated to discussion of a specific 
ruleset, allowing players interested in that game to find one another 
and socialize outside of formal tables.

  There is nothing technologically special about a lobby; it's just an 
ordinary MUC. However, the bookkeeper knows about its location, and 
well-behaved client applications can easily guide players to a 
ruleset's lobby, with the bookkeeper's help.

  Discovering lobbies

Any client that can use service discovery (which is to say, any 
self-respecting client) can easily discover a lobby's JabberID. It need 
only send a disco items request to the bookkeeper, with a node 
comprising the ruleset's URI followed by the string |lobby. (That's a 
"pipe" character, then the word "lobby".)

  This will return a disco pointer to that lobby's MUC. The client can, 
if it wishes, send further disco info queries to the lobby's newly 
discovered JID learn still more information about it. (These subsequent 
queries would be handled by whatever Jabber conference server held the 
lobby, not the Volity bookkeeper.)

  For example, to find the Rock, Paper, Scissors lobby, a client would 
send a disco items request to bookkeeper <at> volity.org, node 
http://volity.org/games/rps|lobby.

  Recommended Use

Clients should make it easy for users to find and enter lobbies. 
Whenever a the user is in scope of a single ruleset, as when exploring 
one through the game browser, the client should present a "one-click" 
method to enter that ruleset's lobby.

  At this time, it's expected that any ruleset will have only one lobby, 
and it will probably exist in with a rather predictable naming scheme 
on volity.org's own Jabber servers. However, in the interest of future 
expansion and protocol changes, clients should query the bookkeeper to 
get lobbies' JIDs, rather than jump to conclusions.

--
   Jason McIntosh             jmac <at> jmac.org
Somerville, MA, USA       http://www.jmac.org

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