[Freeciv-Dev] Re: the contents of savegames (was: Preparations for other AIs and humans)

["Bobby D. Bryant" <bdbryant@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

iquin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> Anyway, I think a compromise for those "not so good" AIs
> would be server sending out a savegame ID whenever it
> saves/restores a game. Those AI clients can have their
> private savegames and look for a match on server reload.

A very good suggestion, IMO.

Notice that the ID will need to have more than just the game date, to
ensure that you don't accidentally reload an AI's savegame from the
wrong game.  Also, since you might run more than one client AI in the
same game on a given system, some thought needs to be given to how you
would restart multiple AIs and make them each load a different AI
savegame.  (Have the server save all the IDs it sent out, and pass them
as arguments to new AIs when they connect?  But how do you know the
re-connecting AI is on the same system where the AI savegame with a
particular ID was stored?)

Also, since people all over the world are running their own civservers
all the time, it does not seem possible to ensure a unique ID for every
game saved.  (Your server could hit up a master server, but that would
be a problem for people playing off-line.)  One solution would be
generate a random number with a very large number of bits, which would
hopefully prevent redundant IDs.

Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas