The Save-EE Lobby is an online multiplayer lobby for Empire Earth and the Art of Conquest Expansion.
Empire Earth is a real-time strategy PC game that was developed by Stainless Steel Studios and published by Sierra Entertainment in 2001. Since its release, Sierra and its parent company have been bought by Activision. In late 2008, Activision announced that it was shutting down the multiplayer servers that were dedicated to many of Sierra's old games, including Empire Earth.
The Save-EE Lobby is a very basic client-server application programmed in Visual Basic .NET using the .NET 2.0 Framework. It consists of a client application that is available for download from the website, and a server application that is hosted on a virtual private server (VPS). The clients and the server communicate via "encrypted" socket programming.
The client application consists solely of an executable file and was designed to maintain the familiar look of Empire Earth's multiplayer lobby. It includes nearly every feature of the old lobby and then some. It features automatic updating and a system that detects the game version and updates it so that all players are using the same version. There is a full-featured chat lobby and friends list. The lobby also uses some low-level packet sniffing to obtain a list of games from connected clients that are hosting (via the game's connect-by-IP feature) and it also detects players that join the games.
The server application uses a listener to accept incoming connections and then adds them to a list of sessions. Each session then handles each client connection and can broadcast to other appropriate sessions as needed. The server features a full log system and an intricate user-banning system, which can be controlled by administrators via the client application.
Since its inception in October of 2008, the Save-EE project has grown into a central community for online Empire Earth players. Save-EE runs solely on donations from the community and the free time of the staff members. All donations are put toward the hosting costs of the VPS and website.
- Richard Lange (up to client version 2.5.0)
- Matt DeTullio (client versions after 2.5.0)