Re: [freeciv-dev] metaserver timestamps

[Peter Dam Mains <lancelot@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> On Fri, May 21, 1999 at 03:25:38AM -0500, Bobby D. Bryant was heard to say:
> > Wouldn't it be desirable to convert the metaserver to give all the
> > timestamps in universal time?  Right now it shows last turns of
> > everywhere between 00:02 and 10:26.  That's no problem if I recognize
> > the country extension on the domain name and have some clue about what
> > time zone that country is in.  But if you don't know that information
> > there isn't any easy way of interpreting the time (though I don't
> > suppose a geography lesson would hurt anyone).  Also, domains ending in
> > .net and the like don't seem to provide any useful information at all.
> > 
> > Bobby Bryant
> > Austin, Texas
> 
>   Even better would be for the client to calculate local time
> from the information the metaserver has (which is trivial, or should be, once
> the upstream time is in GMT :-)--at least, unless I'm mistaken, there's a libc
> routine to do GMT -> local time conversions)
> 

Sorry for being a bit late on this, but here is an answer.
The "last turn" field is not WHEN the last turn was, but how many minutes and
seconds since the server progressed a turn. So if you see 10:26, it means
that it's 10 minutes and 26 seconds since someone pressed Turn done, or
since the server made a timeout, and it started next turn. This is useful
for spotting idle servers, and in my opinion better than giving the time
when the server last recorded a move, as you can directly see how active a
server is.

/Peter Dam Mains