[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Play By E-Mail - PBEM

[Christian Knoke <chrisk@xxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, May 25, 2003 at 09:31:26AM +0400, Astarot wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> I have a mad idea about the subject of the letter. Not everybody can play
> over the internet - here, in Russia, internet is quite expensive, and people
> are not very rich. Still, FreeCiv is very popular here, because many people
> have old computers, where Civ-3 (which has miltiplayer option) can't run.
> So, there is a FreeCiv almost in every local network.

Cool.

> Online mode is too expensive, modem connection is, as I suppose, hard to
> support... 

What do you mean with modem connection? If you use Linux, it is perfectly
possible, to make a phone connection to another Linux box, and play on your
private Internet (Intranet?). I have done this myself. It is also possible
to make a network (supposed you have 2 phone lines), and it is possible to
link that network to the internet. That's way only one player needs a real
internet connection, still all can play on pubserver. Keywords to look at
are pppd and mgetty.

> What about PBEM mode? That seems to be quite easy, only one
> option is to be added - a password on each nation in savegames.

Yes, well, this have been often discussed, and I'd also like to see it, but
it won't work. Savegames are cleartext, and with a bit of imagination ;) you
can even look at and see what is going on, without a client. And you can edit
it and delete the passwords. Or you take a small script I've written
shortly (http://www.cknoke.de/freeciv/), enhence it and it tells you what
you want to know.

> In fact, sometimes we tried PBEM mode already - it works ;) I mean, we used
> to send savegames to each other. The problem is that we used to look, what
> is our opponent doing every turn - we loaded the nation of the opponent,
> examined it and only then loaded our own nations. The solution of the
> problem is to ask the player to enter the password of the nation before
> loading it.

You simply need enough character strength to *not* load an opponents nation.
;-)

> Astarot.

Christian

-- 
Christian Knoke     * * *      http://www.enter.de/~c.knoke/
* * * * * * * * *  Ceterum censeo Microsoft esse dividendum.