Lobby Module

This module provides a lobby for a networked multi-player game. This displays a list of all the other players on the network and allows the user to choose an opponent. It then starts a network game with the chosen game device.

Initially, the input module of each game device sends it's player name to all the other devices. This allows each device to build a list of the other players on the network, which is displayed on the screen by sending PrintString messages to the graphics module. Now the user can click an opponent on the screen and a game will be started with the appropriate game device. All messages to other game devices are of the lobby_message type. The lobby module assigns a player number to each game device and sends this to the input module so that it can be passed to the game core.

The current lobby system has been designed with a 2 player game in mind. This means that other game devices on the network will be able to observe a game but not participate in it. It will need to be slightly redesigned to support games with more than 2 players as only 1 opponent can be selected at present.

For more information, please see the lobby page from last year's SLIP project.