Lobbies - how should they work?

[iminlikewithyou]

i'll change this post later to give the gist of what lobbies would be like.

what i'm wondering is how should they be implemented?

key ideas and problems:

the biggest problem with lobbies with this idea is that it means that there should be player characters and i dunno if we can do that and idk if it would really work together with what the entire website is like.

let me be clear: i REALLY don't want the website to be navigated like club penguin. you shouldn't have to walk around to get places, the homepage should be more of a main menu. but the lobby idea is really nice which is why i'm really hung up on me how to achieve this.

[DrDarkDay]

I don't know what all of our games would play like in the way of having players move around and exist. If that were to happen it could mean having player characters exist in lobbies. But, of course, not all games will have player characters that could move around in lobbies like for card games (although having models like in VR poker does exist but definitely involves far more coding).
My idea is to be able to create, expand, and customize an interactable lobby. For reference, look at Hearthstone boards. There are no players and the board exists for both players. But boards can be changed (I forget if it is randomly or player customizable) and it has interactables in the corners. You can click on a dragon and watch it breathe fire or spin around, click a crystal in a skull and watch it come to life, push a cart and watch it move and fall over, etc.

The focus of lobbies, like the rest of the games, can still be the chat. In these lobbies, people can also busy themselves with interactables or very simple minigames either with an A.I. or other players (it may just be simpler that everyone does not exist in the same lobby and is not spamming stuff and players these minigames).

Some examples of interactables in a house-based lobby can be turning on a TV and swapping between channels, turning on a radio which can have preset music or music the lobby host can select to be on the radio, moving curtains, knocking on a door, having pets that move around or are placed somewhere can be pet; played with; and given a treat, opening a fridge, clicking an instrument and playing a tune.

I don't know what the size or scale of lobbies should be. I am imagining an isometric view of a lobby in my prior example. Perhaps lobbies can have multiple rooms or areas that you can enter or move to by clicking an arrow or some type of indicator that leads to this next area. It is not completely separate but simply provides a better perspective as your isometric view is now moved to that new area. Players may also be able to swap their perspective in the lobby like from a top-right front-facing corner of a cube (isometric) to the top-left front-facing corner of a cube.

[DrDarkDay]

I do like the idea of having characters. I don't know what the lobby sizes will be or the number of characters that can be in a game. I think it would be fun to move around and be in a space with other characters so everyone can interact and see the designs and personalities of every player's character.

What could be an option is giving people what is essentially an emote wheel. They can use these emotes to make their character do things like wave or dance which could cause a character around them to respond/ join in or that person can choose to emote back. I like the idea of creating bennies in order to develop the character model and make these emotes.

[DrDarkDay]

Side note, the one problem I do see with this is that people may like these models a lot and want to use them outside of lobbies. kgpdx stated that you didn't want this to be like club penguin. I don't know if it might turn towards that. It's not like all these games use these character models and there isn't a plan for a main place where characters will be or houses to go to and customize (lobbies are already sort of that except only the person in charge of the lobby gets to show their lobby).

I still think the idea of hoping on, spending some time to make a character, and seeing them in a lobby as you wait for a game is cute and gives some personality to OMG. I just think it's a possibility down the line that people will want more to do with the character models.

[iminlikewithyou]

you can reference Snoos from reddit - everyone's "profile picture" on reddit is a Snoo and that's awesome and really cute and SIMPLE to make most importantly

i did think about people growing to like bennie as their character and not wanting it to be changed but it would be during an alpha build and not be released to the public

emotes are nice. if the whole lobby thing doesn't work then it could even be separated into its own project on a different website if it's good. but i think it might work on OMG.

[iminlikewithyou]

The Couch Idea Has Solved Everything.

[iminlikewithyou]

What would be even cooler is being able to buy more slots for your lobbies with currency then use them by adding more places to sit. Also purchasing more square footage for the room. So a new player's lobby would be small but eventually would be able to have lots of players.

Though I probably wouldn't start new users with under 8 slots.

[iminlikewithyou]

By the way, we were thinking that you'd be able to create multiple different rooms and they'd all upgrade separately between each new one you create. So it's like a fun form of progression where if you keep playing you can make more rooms and make more cool ones.

If you're the lobby host, you'd be able to just lock seats so that no more people can join, but if your room runs out of space you can also switch to one of your other rooms if it has more seats! Would be sick

Also I discussed having paintings as decor that you could paint yourself and you could share paintings on some sort of gallery page.

[iminlikewithyou]

side note: this is kinda like plug.dj where you'd level up your room - which was really awesome and totally what we should go for

[iminlikewithyou]

more inspiration for how they could look
we're thinking about making it so that you choose a "layout" - you don't build the floors or walls yourself, rather you'd buy a layout and add things to it

and a fallback idea if these kinds of 3D room-based lobbies don't work - we can make this a pet thing where you can build a cute room for a tomogatchi pet (idk if i mentioned this before)