This is a very simple idea

It consist of a C command-line program, that uses p2p protocols to collect a running list of nearby games of many different types.

When you start a server, this program will connect to the p2p network and broadcast your list of games you can serve. In exchange you are required to host a list of game servers that others broadcast to you.

When you look for a game, you hook to the closest[geographically speaking] random last known node that stayed up the longest, and ask for their list of game servers that are recently up.

By making this a simple C console program, it means more games can hook up to it. It is also easier to interface, and thus more listing nodes will be up.

The reason you want this network, is that it means you will not have to maintain a lobby server, or at least you can provide an alternative lobby shall your game company shutdown their lobby server(It happens you know?).
-- mofosyne, Jul 10 2009

Anybody up for the challenge?
-- mofosyne, Jul 16 2009


mmm, iirc p2p thingies still have a set "index server"(?)

//you hook to the closest random last node....// how does your machine know what the ... is ?
-- FlyingToaster, Jul 16 2009


It has a list of servers that are known to generally be up most of the time to hook up to, if not... you can potentially have the C program search Google for a text file where a game server(which is also a node index) is still online.

If it evens find one server, it can then download a list of other servers that tends to stay online often. And hence once you install and connect to one server, you are connected to all nodes.

Since this is a separate program bundled to many games, if one game cannot absolutely connect to any p2p node list. Then just install another more recent game, that has a 'good' nodelist.
-- mofosyne, Jul 21 2009



random, halfbakery