Chobby Alpha Release 2 (Testers wanted)

The time has come for our second Chobby alpha release. The multiplayer aspect of the lobby is close to feature-complete and it is as usable as any of the current lobbies. The important thing now is to get users and testers. Licho is on board with replacing ZKL so I want to get enough testing to justify Chobby as the default. Testing among forum people is the first step, once it appears to work for the communicative people we can move on to apply Chobby for everyone.

Perhaps the biggest change since the last test release is the integration of the lobby and the game. The main menu is, in a sense, an overlay of the game. This allows for features such as displaying your matchmaker progress while spectating a game and having the "Game Found" popup occur over the game. This is a little more restrictive for power users but that is far outweighed by the simplicity and professionalism that a single program provides. I have tried to make it flexible wherever possible and the lobby can still be reduced to IRC window size when the game is not running.

Download Chobby here: http://zero-k.info/lobby/chobby.exe There are a few ways to use this download.

The most reliable way to run Chobby is to put chobby.exe in an empty, writable, folder and run it. It will download chobby and the required engine. Chobby itself will then download maps and games as required. The downside of this method is that you'll have to download all the maps and your settings will not be there. This can be mitigated by copying your maps and luaUI folder from 'My Games/Spring' to whichever folder you put chobby.exe in.

The other way to run chobby is to put chobby.exe directly in 'My Games/Spring' (or wherever your lobby sits). This will maintain all your settings and maps but these settings might clash with chobby.

Some of the new screens:


Here is the previous release thread: http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/22781

I decided to put chobby into my games/spring.
Settings were not entirely kept (most notably, setting for local widgets and UI layout)
Maps were not all detected properly, icy longrun v2 beta3 was considered 'not available'. When I joined the running game directly through the 'watch' tab, there was no issue joining.

The battle still reports the minimap as missing:

http://imgur.com/a/umJ5Q

Also, if you use the printscreen button in the menu while spectating a game, it produces a picture of the game, not of the menu.

If possible I would like a way to easily access my profile, and that of other players (For example if I want to steal someone's commander layout).

Edit:

I just tried to exit the lobby on autopilot, and logged out instead.

seems really nice and works fine for me already

the download tab made a nice first look,
qeue seems not editable yet to not download unwanted already changed maps

subjective to design i can the secondary right tabs seem same size as the main tab in the middle, could be a little bit smaller (as well as font size maybe) to keep it secondary (chat takes as much attraction as simple "i just want to play" relevant content ...,tabs,buttons,captions), also a matching chili skin could be a thing.
edit: just saw the other panel mode i like =)

Works fine for me. After game engine + map download is complete, I had to quit and restart chobby in order to have the green check instead of the red cross.

Works great ! (tested now on 3 linux distros) I experience less crashes after downloading and it's running really smooth now.
Still i think this two major options are missing :
-A better map viewer, with options to swap and change start positions ( + metal & height map ?)
-A way to remove teams. One can add teams, but not remove 'em.

For now, i can't launch a singleplayer 'chickens' map because start positions are swapped. I end up starting in chicken territory.
Any way to fix this ingame ?

Thanks for the feedback.

lamer your crash is now fixed.

Skasi you should try it before commenting. My guess is that few people even know what Anti Aliasing means, let alone what x2 or x4 means.

Blackdutchie what do you mean when you say icy longrun v2 beta3 was not available? Did you need to redownload it before you could play? There is a bid difference between whether a map has been downloaded and whether its minimap is available. Currently the minimaps for the featured maps are staticly included in chobby because unpacking files to find minimaps is low priority and may receive better engine support in the future. Besides, this problem has a few different Alexandrian solutions.

The print screen problem is just that weirdness which sometimes causes programs to not update the data they send to printscreen. I find switching focus a few times causes print screen to work correctly on Spring.

Vermind I don't understand any of what you mean. Nobody playing or waiting seems like a problem independent of chobby.

Blackdutchie I've added a user page link to the dropdown menu that appears when you click on a player.

grfwoot I have fixed your team number problem. The teams you set up in the Skirmish menu will correspond to the boxes ingame. Thankfully, for the chickens maps I tested, Team 1 is the player team and Team 2 is for the chickens.

will try when I have time

Slaab I may have fixed your error. s36 it turns out I forget to send modoptions to the skirmish launcher, it was easy to fix.

I tested it. Very nice - a lot better than ZKL. Great job!