Show correct player count for lobbies

[ThomasHiatt]

I suggest that the client should actually show the number of people in a lobby instead of saying there are more than there really are. It is pretty annoying to have your lobby appear full or over-full just because someone was kicked or disconnected and it didn't affect the player count.

[Wesmania]

Unfortunately the client doesn't have a say in this, it just shows what the server tells us. That's a bug for server people to hunt down and squash

[Brutus5000]

That's a general design issue in the client-server-protocol. The server does not send single game updates, but all game infos in a list. If the server would send the game list more often, it will cause server performance issues eventually.

Changing to an event-based communication is a huge refactoring both client and server side. We could tackle this with the a completely new protocol. Maybe based on websockets as is under development in the java server. But with all respect due, the python client is still not showing any visible progress regarding the backend improvements of the last 12 month (i.e. new map, mod and replay vault). So I don't think this is happening any time soon.

[Wesmania]

The issue in question is not about player counts being outdated, but about the server sometimes sending game info with the ingame player number higher than the max player number. Is this something that's affected by batching game updates? I don't see why it would.

[Brutus5000]

Not sure what is meant here then.

Are we talking about a case where the game list shows 11 / 10 players? Or are we talking about a case where 6/8 players is shown, but the tooltip lists a different amount of players? Or what exactly is the problem? A screenshot would be helpful.

[ThomasHiatt]

Say there is a lobby that was just hosted with 1/6 players. If someone joins this lobby it will immediately show 2/6 on the play tab in the client. Then 4 more people join and it says 6/6. If the host kicks 2 people who are AFK it will still show 6/6 on the play tab in the client, I believe it says that until the players who were kicked click the ok button in the dialog box saying they were kicked. Now the lobby looks like it is full, or over-filled, when in reality you are still needing players to join it.

[Brutus5000]

If the host kicks 2 people who are AFK it will still show 6/6 on the play tab in the client, I believe it says that until the players who were kicked click the ok button in the dialog box saying they were kicked.

That makes sense. Since everything in the lobby is peer-to-peer the server doesn't know about the kick until the kicked player's game closes the connection to the server. This probably happens once the player clicks the ok button. No chance for the server to know it earlier than that, without changing the game protocol and opening the gates for all sorts of mischievous activities.