Re: [Freeciv-Dev] is there anyway to play freeciv via email?

[Daniel Burrows <Daniel_Burrows@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Apr 10, 1999 at 11:48:00PM +0200, Andreas Romeyke was heard to say:
> Hello,
> 
> is there anyway to play freeciv via email?

  I tried to do this and came to the conclusion (in about 5 seconds! :-) ) that
it's basically impossible.  But don't give up hope!  There are second-best
solutions.  (see below)

> (Background: I search free "play by email"-Games for BBSes. Sometimes ago
> I released with a friend a civ-clone called simplanets under PowerBasic as
> a stand-alone version. Earlier I used DOS-PbM-Games, but my BBS is now
> running under Linux, and there is nothing in this relation. My first Idea
> was to translate this simplanet to C or Tcl and build an email-Version,
> but it was too complex for a complete rewrite...)
> 
> My idea was originally to develop an email-server/client based on openciv,
> because there was a good point to handle it (Python and Tk)...
> 
> Now, I want to do this with freeciv (is the openciv-project a zombie
> now?), but I need any informations/changes to do this.

  Play-by-email is nearly unimplementable in Freeciv because of the basic
client-server model Freeciv uses; almost all functionality is in the server.

  Here's how Freeciv works (for example):

  (a) Player moves unit.
  (b) Client tells server, "hey, the player tried to move a unit!"
  (c) Server says, "ok, move the unit"
  (d) Client moves unit.

  Almost anything that happens client-side requires that the client ask the
server to do something (or the UI won't update!).  In addition, Freeciv is
a weird combination of "turn-based" and "realtime" (does vgaplanets do this
as well?) in that more than one player can be moving at a time even though play
takes place in turns.  The only way I can think of to get play-by-email to
work reliably would be to wrap packets in email messages (maybe using a
proxy server)--the round trip time would probably not be very impressive
though.

  However, another thing you could do would be to alter the server (and
possibly client) to gracefully allow for drawn-out games.  I took a stab at
this a couple of months ago and made a big patch that added features like
daemonizing the server, allowing players to transparently reconnect, not
'skipping' disconnected players when the turn ended, etc.  Letting new players
join in the middle of a game is a good idea, if I start working on
the patch again I'll see what I can do with that.  Since civil war is
implemented now I suppose it must be possible. :-)  I don't know if this is
an option for you... if it is I can send you the relevant patch (it's against
an old version of Freeciv and I don't know whether or not it works with
1.8.0)

  Daniel

-- 
Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual
way.  This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of
complaining.
                -- Jeff Raskin