Best way to support multiple play modes?

[pyscho2day]

Aren or anyone else that has done this,

What is your opinion on the best way to support multiple play modes with a master server lobby?

Example 1:

1 master server for each play type.

1 Master Server for all Team Deathmatch matches.
1 Master Server for all DeathMatch matches.
1 Master Server for all Capture the Flag matches.

or

Example 2:

1 Master Server that has been modified to return the game play type when they get the server list.

TCPLobby return list has server, ipaddress, player count,... And Game Type.(Could possibly use the server name field to include the game type)



If there is another way that you think is better then either of those please let me know.

Thanks in advance.

[ArenMook]

Option 3: master server returns a list of everything, and you just sort it / filter it on the client side as you need it.

[pyscho2day]

Wouldn't that be the same as #2 as the MS will return all games and then the player would filter through the name that also has a game type in it?

If not could you please explain in a little more detail.

[ArenMook]

Your option 2 requires modification to the server. My option 3 does not.

You can embed all kinds of information in the server name itself. For example: "Game Name|Number of players|game type".

Also.. why do this anyway? You can have one game server running many simultaneous games, each in a separate channel. And each channel will be its own game, with the channel data set to what you need it to be in order to store the additional info.

[pyscho2day]

#2 was just that, embed other information in the name.

Why?

Think of the COD series.

1 game with multiple play styles that are each hosted on the client it self but register with the master server.

so when I select a play style I only want to find the servers that are currently running with the same play style.


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Reason for avoiding just using one server is that there is a very large potential for a huge delay in RFC communication and we are trying to avoid that.