Some ideas

[bobbens]

Just some ideas dropped here:

1. Store all the servers accessed in a list (you can just use mission vars with deterministic naming) so that you can quickly access recent servers
2. Have the address contain the port so you do stuff like 192.168.0.1:6789 to access.
3. Maybe instead of the info menu, have it automatically open a menu when you load a game where you choose to host or join a server (or maybe even play offline normally)

[ThrosturX]

1 and 2 are very easy updates, I would probably just use mem.servers in the multiplayer event itself.
As for 3, I actually thought that I'd try to get VN into this eventually, because it's such a nice and powerful feature (and more fun and interactive too). That's what the character image displayed in the readme is for, but I haven't really figured out a good way to plug it in. My thoughts about it are that t can get really annoying to be asked every time "Do you want to play multiplayer?" so maybe it makes sense to have one info button that starts a VN that presents options like:

• Connect
• Host (Start Server)

Where Connect would present the user with a list of favorites and "Add new..." and Host would just do the same thing as the Start MP Server button, but maybe with a short instructional message about keeping the simulation running.

So my idea still uses 1 info button, but your idea has the potential to annoy players a bit (some players might have a rapid-load playstyle, maybe they die a lot during some specific mission and reloading to answer the multiplayer question isn't ideal). I can think of hacky ways to patch this but I think the real solution is a better design idea.

[bobbens]

I think that as long as you make it so the player can mash enter to automatically join their last joined server it shouldn't be a problem no? Another option would be to allow plugins to add buttons to the main menu. Then you could just add a multiplayer option and let that be it. It would make it so you can't mash enter and would need quite a bit of engine support so not entirely sure that's a better solution though.

[ThrosturX]

A slight problem with (2) and the reason why you are asked for both... tk.input doesn't allow characters like the colon and the question mark... I can use a space instead, but it might get confusing.

[bobbens]

It should be easy to add that (just need to expose some C API to Lua). Probably an even better idea to just implement luatk.msgInput instead though.

[ThrosturX]

Probably an even better idea to just implement luatk.msgInput instead though.

If you go down this route, can you make it non-blocking? You know where I'm going with this :)

[bobbens]

Probably an even better idea to just implement luatk.msgInput instead though.

If you go down this route, can you make it non-blocking? You know where I'm going with this :)

local luatk = require "luatk"
local wdw = luatk.msgInput( "Test", "Just a test", 50, function( str )
   print( str )
end )
wdw:setUpdate( function ()
   naev.unpause()
   wdw:setUpdate( nil )
end )
luatk.run()
naev.pause()

The above should work. Might make things catch on fire and burn, we shall see :)