I would go with the idea of creating a task bar applet (or equivalent for
the target OS.)  You would configure this to say which kinds of games you
were interested and potentially which servers you were interested in as well
(in case you specifically want to use only a subset of the ones listed on
the metaserver.)  This information would be communicated to the metaserver
at the time a metaserver refresh is made by the applet.  The metaserver, in
turn, would broadcast the number of players waiting for games matching each
server to those who are listening (other applets, the metaserver
application, etc.)  When the applet sees that enough players were available
to start tmode for a particular server, it would pop up a notification
informing the user of such, which if clicked would launch the Netrek client.

This would require the following code:

1. A Windows taskbar applet (or equivalent for other OSes) allowing the user
to:
	a. See the current status of servers, just like the metaserver
window.
	b. Allow the player to signal they want to play and specify:
		1. Game type (Bronco, Sturgeon, etc.)
 		2. Specific server
		3. Other fields as desired
	c. Broadcast the desire to the metaserver once per minute.
	d. Re-read the metaserver status every few seconds (15, 30?)
	d. When a particular server has enough players, pop a notification
indicating
		1. Server and game type
		2. Number of interested players along with number of players
in the game
		3. Allowing the user to click the notification to start the
client and connect to the game.

2. Modification to the Metaserver as follows:
	a. Maintain a list of players desired games
	b. Add a 'waiting' count to each server line indicating the number
of players waiting for a game on that server
	c. Remove a player from the list if a refresh has not been received
in the past 2 minutes.

-----Original Message-----
From: netrek-dev-bounces at us.netrek.org
[mailto:netrek-dev-bounces at us.netrek.org] On Behalf Of Zach
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 11:47 PM
To: Netrek Development Mailing List
Subject: Re: [netrek-dev] netrek ideas

> I have thought about this one as well. Even better, it could act as a
> counter of how many people are ready to play their selection default
> game type. So, for example, it might alert if 10 people who've
> selected Bronco all have the meta window open. These 10 people might
> not otherwise play since they might not want to wait for a game, but
> if you alert them all at once a game may be likely to happen.

Perhaps if a certain predefined threshold of players with metaservers
open is reached they could all be emailed or even sent a message
directly to their desktop. Setup a central zephyr server and let each
metaserver come with a preconfigured zephyr client subscribed to
instance "netrek-t" and we could have other instances for clue games
and what not. :-P

Zach

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