[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Why client-side AI could be a Bad Thing

[Arkadiusz Danilecki <szopen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 28 Jan 2000, Falk Hueffner wrote:

> Arkadiusz Danilecki            <szopen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
[cut handicaps vs cheating - see previous post] 
> > 2) Performance. If they will be client-side and communicate via network,
> > it will cause some unnecessery overhead. If it will be separate process,
> > it will cause overhead too.
> 
> Well, I'm pretty sure this is irrelevant. You can shuffle megabytes
> per second around via a memory network, and the freeciv protocol
> acually doesn't need that much bandwidth. Surely not more than a few
> percent lost.

Well.. You never play via modem 28kb/s right? :)

On weak machines it could be problem. It will be only seconds, right, but,
as i say, i just hate wait few seconds for other players, and that will be
additional seconds...

> > 3)I have experience with newbies to freeciv and i see that they are
> > sometimes terrfied when they had to type civserver and manually create AI.
> > Half of them resign from game, saying it is too complicated, Imagine what
> > will happened if they had to create AIat client side? 
> 
> aifill could do it for them, just like now.
hm... :) i don;t know about that option :)

> > 4) Real-time AI. Hm. If u can make ai thinking in real time, it will be
> > cool, but i think it could be too difficult. Lets imagine AI is coutnig
> > which towns are safe. Situation has changedm it starts again. Situation
> > has changedm it starts again. Etc Etc. I am not sure if it will cause That
> > AI will be able to move only when all players finish move.
> 
> This is really a problem, but it doesn't have anything to do with
> whether you have client-side or server-side AI.

        OK.

> > 5) I don't know what about you, but i hate to wait for others players,
> > when i finished my turn. With client-side no-real time playing through
> > network AI it will last even longer. Timeouts for AIs? Bue..
> 
> It's possible to write AIs that take only a few seconds for each turn;
> they can do their work at the beginning of the turn, so no problem.

        If you say so. 

A.D.Danilecki "szopen"