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The Glou (Game LOUnge) Project is an open, cross-platform game lounge system, used to play online with people from around the world, browsing through and easily joining multiplayer games. The Glou Project consists of:

• a set of open standard protocols describing the communication between a game lounge server, a game server, a game browser client, and the game itself
• an open API for games implementing these protocols
• a reference implementation of a game lounge server including community features (user database, statistics, chatting, etc.)
• a reference implementation of a game browser client. This is where you'll be able to see your friends, pick a game to play, and then start playing.

Major design principles

• Organizing a game to play should be easy, even if you don't know what it is yet.
• The computer should help you play with your friends as well as it helps you talk to them.

These principles should influence every aspect of the project. See more on our [Design] page.

What Glou means for you

If you're a gamer

It should be very easy for you to tell the computer that you're ready to play a game. Something as simple as opening a game lounge program, or even changing your status in your instant messenger program. Once you've done that, the computer should work for you to help you play a game - it should know which of your friends want to play a game, what games they have, what games you have that would work on their computers if they installed them, and, of course, what games everyone wants to play. The game itself should then know that you are friends, if you'd like to be on the same team, and how to handle your communication while you're playing.

If you're an open source game developer

Our intention is to minimize duplication of work. It should be very easy to integrate the Glou server backend with your program, such that you don't have to write your own code for matchmaking, hosting, or game browsing. By using an open standard, your game will have access to a much larger player base, and users could easily download and start playing your game with their friends by simply clicking yes on an invitation.

If you're a proprietary game developer

In principle, there's nothing preventing an open source game lounge from launching a proprietary game. Users may be more likely to purchase and play your game when they see their friends are playing in the same familiar game lounge. All that's needed from your game is to deliver game browsing and presence information using the same protocol that the open source games do. By using elements of Glou in your project you can avoid having to design and code such things from scratch, allowing you to focus more developer effort on the game itself.

Project status

Currently, we're in the design phase. You can see some of the current design at the [Project_Overview]. We are aware that 90% of sourceforge projects die in the design phase, however we're filling a real need here if we get this right, and we've already got a lot of people from projects who need this willing to help. We are also going to learn the lessons from the [Similar_/_previous_projects] that have failed in the past. You can also see our work in progress [Roadmap].

The main goal of Glou is to make the creation of an open community for games and gamers eventually possible.

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