I cleaned up the lobby UX for my game, The Last Republic. The goal was to make the lobby feel more alive and useful by showing who is currently online and by giving players a simple view of recent lobby activity.

When a player connects, I activate a SignalR connection and add them to the online player list. The lobby now shows the number of players online, along with each player’s username and ELO. In the current view, I can see myself listed as “Piggy” with an ELO of 1600.

I also added a main lobby chat history panel. Right now, the chat mostly contains system-generated game messages, such as when players log in. Even though the messages are simple, this gives the lobby a sense of activity and creates a foundation for richer communication later.

The chat history is stored in a Cosmos DB table. In the UI, I group messages by date inside the chat panel and show only the time for each individual message. This keeps the history readable while still preserving the order and context of events.

Overall, this cleanup makes the lobby clearer and more functional. Players can immediately see who is online, confirm their own connection status, and review recent lobby activity without the interface feeling cluttered.