Proposed feature set

[chirstius]

I finally got around to registering on here.  I thought a good first step would be to work out exactly what functionality that LaunchPad is intended to offer and open it up for discussion.  I know various things were mentioned like chat, patch management, voice, ability to locate other servers/players, etc.  I'll brainstorm a bit about this and probably post back later with a more complete list.  Until then, any thoughts are welcome.

[darkfrog]

I think one of the nicest features of this will be the ability to browse/search for other games that are registered with LaunchPad and install them from within the system.  This way you can find and install Java games without having to search around on the internet for them.

Potentially a feature to rate and review games would also be good to allow better feedback to the developers.

[chirstius]

Some clarification on that.  I know it was mentioned that each developer should/could be responsible for hosting their own games (unless some kind soul is willing to donate server space and bandwidth) so this means there will be 'satellite' servers or game repositories that will need to be contacted or report into a centralized location.

Or do you see it as something where people can post a URL to their LaunchPad server and the interface would allow users to add repositories as they found them - I'm almost envisioning a 'torrent-like' link that when clicked opens LaunchPad, adds the appropriate repository info and then allows them to browse straightaway.  I'm guessing this would be some kind of XML document that could be generated and linked to quite easily.

This would allow the game repositories themselves to be decentralized but would allow 'torrent-like' search repositories to be created that just aggregated known URLs and could even rank them, etc.  This allows there to still be a centralized 'directory' mechanism, but it would require very little space and bandwidth to run as it just points you to the real servers for the heavy lifting.  This would be important as pretty much any base tier web hosting package could support the space and bandwidth of the aggregator sites, so the barrier to hosting one would be low.

You could even have an RSS like mechanism for the aggregator sites to subscribe to for automatic updates from the satellite servers, and then in turn let the aggregators publish RSS for end users right INTO LaunchPad.

Thinking about it, having the aggregator sites might even lead to a potential revenue stream - assuming there will be free games, and not-so-free games available on LaunchPad, it might be possible to allow tracking of referrals where if a certain aggregator site pointed a user to a game, and the user later purchased that game, the referring site could get a small payment from the game creator.  This would further drive the incentive for people to host aggregator sites and (hopefully) increase the usage and popularity of LanchPad.

Then again, most of what I just said is probably crazy talk.

Did any of that make sense?

[darkfrog]

Well, my vision for LaunchPad would use the same concept I developed into JGN of a RegistryServer that would contain information about servers and connection information.  The registry server would be the centralized servers and servers that wish to host games would send their information to the central server periodically (so the central server knows they are still online) and then clients connecting to the central server could request a list of those servers.  As for registering games on the system you could log into the LaunchPad system and you can "Add a Game" and it would provide a wizard to get information about your game and links to dependency jars necessary for the game, etc.

I like the idea of a potential revenue generation from this long-term, but I think that should be a later consideration based on the successfulness of the program.

[chirstius]

Ok, so you do see this as a centralized server with satellites checking in with a heartbeat.  So any sort of ranking and tracking would be housed on that server in a database.

I certainly wasn't suggesting that the revenue stream was the primary focus, just that the model of distribution here lends itself to being capable of supporting it.

I suppose I should look at JGN a bit more since that's your vision of the basis for this before I go shooting my mouth off again 

[darkfrog]

hehe, not a problem.  I highly recommend looking at JGN though as it really enables us to do most of what LaunchPad will do.