BAR Lobby

BAR Lobby is a new WIP lobby for the RTS game Beyond All Reason. It hopes to boldly go where no Spring client has gone before, providing a more streamlined experience, with good visuals and UX being high priority. The ultimate goal of BAR Lobby is to replace all other lobbies when it comes to playing BAR. If a significant amount of people don't wish to use it because of reasons such as functionality or speed, then this project is going very wrong.

Functionality and Goals

• Provide functionality for everything related to BAR. Campaigns, Missions, Multiplayer, Replays etc
• Simple and intutive codebase, lots of documenation for contributing
• Steam integration, automatic account creation and login
• Smooth, seemless, fully integrated downloads. Content should be preloaded when sensible
• Communicate entirely via Teiserver's new protocol, Tachyon. No support for the legacy SpringLobbyProtocol
• TLS only, no unencypted comms

Development

Primary Tech Stack

• Electron
• Vue 3
• TypeScript
• SCSS
• PrimeVue Components

Recommended Environment

It is highly recommended to use VSCode for development, as it provides full, built-in TypeScript support, as well as useful extensions such as ESLint and Vue - Official (previously Volar).

Requirements

• Node.js 20.18.0

Local Development

npm install
npm start

Project Structure

.
├──buildResources   # used by electron-builder
├──src
│  ├──main
│  │  ├──main.ts
│  │  └──...
│  ├──preload
│  │  ├──preload.ts
│  │  └──...
│  └──renderer      # with vue
│     ├──public     # (optional) publicDir for renderer
│     ├──index.ts
│     ├──index.html
│     └──...
├──electron-builder.config.ts
├──electron.vite.config.ts
├──package.json
└──...

• Main process
  • Runs in a Node.js environment and has access to Node.js APIs
  • Anything requiring access to the operating system or Node.js APIs needs to live here
• Preload script
  • Runs in a Node.js environment
  • Defines global objects that can be used in the renderer
  • Handles communication between the main and renderer processes
    • Uses Electron's ipcMain and ipcRenderer modules for inter-process communication (IPC).
• Renderer process
  • Runs in a web environment and has no direct access to Node.js APIs

Build & Publish:

• electron-forge
  • Builds the app with a pre-configured Vite setup for Electron apps
  • This intentionally does not include electron or any other node_modules dependencies in the build
    • Dependencies get added to the package by electron-builder with ASAR
    • Note: apps that only have CJS exports need to be included in the build, e.g. glob-promise
• electron-builder
  • Packages Electron app for distribution
    • Configured for Windows NSIS installer and Linux AppImage
  • Handles publishing updates
    • Auto-updates TBD

Commands

• npm start
  • Runs electron-forge in development mode
  • renderer runs with Hot Module Replacement (HMR)
  • main and preload are directly bundled to .vite/build
• npm run package
  • Runs electron-forge in production mode
  • renderer us bundled to .vite/renderer
  • main and preload are bundled to .vite/build
• npm run preview
  • Runs electron-forge in production mode, and runs electron
  • main, preload, and renderer are bundled to .vite/build
  • This is useful for validating the production build without packaging the app
• npm run build:win
  • Runs npm run build and electron-builder, building for Windows
  • Outputs NSIS installer in dist
• npm run build:linux
  • Runs npm run build and electron-builder, building for Linux
  • Outputs AppImage executable in dist
• npm run build:unpack
  • Runs npm run build and electron-builder, building an unpackaged directory
  • Outputs the unpacked contents in dist
  • Useful for testing
• npm run dev-cert (optional and only for Windows development)
  • Runs electron-builder to create a self-signed cert for Windows apps.
  • After selecting "None" in the pop-up, a cert file should be created called BAR Team.pfx
  • Then run npm run build:win:dev-cert to build a signed Windows installer