Re: [Freeciv-Dev] (no subject)

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On Thu, Jul 29, 1999 at 12:26:16PM +0400, Crazy Max wrote:
> How about creating Metaservers net all over the world?
> For examp. i have an unplayable game with some people.
> And i want to organize my own metaserver in Russia. I think  that
> if metaserver's perl script is not commercial you can give it to me!
> And other meta's can contact the main and give to it information
> about other availible freeciv servers.
> And then every player can choose playable server!

  Hello Max,

The only reason to have multiple metaservers is when the metaserver
itself becomes unreachable.  Having multiple metaservers, if they do
not synchronise automatically, is a disaster, because the available
civservers will be split among metasservers and you won't even know
where to find them.  It could only be useful if you have a local
community that doesn't want to connect to the Internet for games,
and doesn't want outsiders to join.  An intranet.

Besides, having multiple metaservers doesn't help to solve your
problem.  First, I don't think you want 'unplayable' servers to
disappear from the metaserver, you just want to know they're
unplayable.  The metaserver could measure its lag to servers and
display it.  Now having multiple metaservers could help if one is
very close to you.  The client would have to be aware of a list of
metaservers and automatically pick the closest one.  The metaservers
would have to synchronise.  Cumbersome.

The proper solution is to make the client itself report on the lag
to the server when you try to connect.  Just an extra 'Ping' button
in the connection dialog would already be helpful.

> CraZZZZy Max

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