[Freeciv-Dev] Re: freeciv server

[jesdynf <jesdynf@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 13 Dec 1999, Paul Zastoupil wrote:

> Well that is something that we would like to do.  But we are going to
> need some more things programmed into freeciv first.  One thing would be
> a client identification.
> 
> Another problem would be to figure out how to give out the points for
> ranking.

Looks like it's time for the all-important Victory Point system.

Figure out the One True Scoring Method for a game, first of all --
several "one winner and seven losers" events does not a tournament make.

Maybe give out victory points at checkpoints and for events -- at, say,
the thousand year marks, give VPs for biggest civ, for the highest tech,
for... Give fractional VPs for the taking of major enemy cities (longer
they're held, the older they are), give VPs for genocide... At the end of
the game, the "winner" is the one with the most VPs -- but this sets up
for tournaments, too, as players can just accrue VPs through several
games.

I've given some thought to tournaments and ranking systems -- how long
does, say, a six person game last? Hours? Days? Any kind of tournament
would have to be either a long and massive affair, or just several games
in parallel. Doesn't seem right...

But figure out the scoring system first -- for a tournament of multiplayer
games, it's gotta be VPs.

Client authentication actually sounds pretty easy, actually. Just allow
player accounts on arbitrary metaservers -- the main server announces
where its metaserver is, and the individual clients log onto it and verify
that they -are- playing on the server that's logged in. Then at game's
end, just send the final scoring data to the metaserver.

Individual metaservers would then keep a running total of wins, losses,
ties, and relative scores.

At that point, you just dub one the Official Sanctioned Tournament
Metaserver and tah-dah, you're running your matches. (:

Hmm. You might implement optional password protected server accounts on
the metaserver -- that'd make it so that only servers who know the
password can log onto the tournament server. Keeping things simple...

Asher Densmore-Lynn <jesdynf@xxxxxxxxxxxx>