Re: [Freeciv-Dev] city plan patch

[Corin Anderson <corin@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I actually did some work on this feature yesterday as well.  Athough my
patch isn't quite ready yet.  8(

The feature I'm working on is per-city worklists.  The worklist can
include improvements/wonders as well as units.  The code to switch to the
next worklist task is server-side, so there shouldn't be any lost
production pips that I'd imagine a client-side implementation would
present.  The city worklists are saved in the game save file, so they
don't need to be regenerated each time a game is restarted.  There
will/may be also a feature to define one or more "generic" worklists that
can be copied to a city and used as a starting-point worklist. 

I'd guess that I'm about 80% of the way there now.  I've added a new
dialog to the Xaw client that allows worklists to be edited.  And I've
added the new fields in the 6(!) or so structures necessary for the
server, client, and packets.  I haven't done the save-file code yet, or
the actual "hard part" of getting the worklist to be honored by the
server, although I think they should both be straightforward. 

So why am I telling you all these things?  Well, a couple of questions: 

* Is anyone implementing this same feature?  The city plan feature comes
  closest, AFAICT, but I've only sifted through a small fraction of the
  freeciv-dev mailing list archive.  Are my efforts duplicating someone
  else's time?

* Are there pitfalls that I should watch out for?  Design rules that I
  must honor that may not be obvious?  Like, is it okay that I have a new
  packet type for updating a city's worklist (PACKET_CITY_WORKLIST)?

* I realize that there is interest in a general-purpose scripting feature
  for the client, and that worklists would be supplanted by such.  My goal
  with my feature is to have an _easy-to-use_ way of automating the task
  that I find most tedious:  making the cities build the Right things at
  the Right times.  But, would anyone else be interested in this feature?


Thanks,
Corey Anderson
corin@xxxxxxxxxx