[Freeciv-Dev] Re: [Freeciv] Re: Nations + Feeling

[Andy Black <blackaw@xxxxxxx>]

At 9:56 PM -0300 11/7/01, Miguel Farah F. wrote:
>  Jason Dorje Short [07/11/2001 18:53] dijo/said:
> > Tony Stuckey wrote:
> > [...]
> > >          (The Right Way(tm) is the Civ II way: the Select Nation dialog box
> > >  has a SHORT list of nations, and a button labelled "Custom".)
> > What did the custom nation selection let you do?  Did you pick from a
> > longer list of nations, or did you have (get?) to enter everything about
> > the nation?
> The latter way is pretty much it. The worst part is having to name the
> cities manually one by one.
What if the client used the nation ruleset files to provide the city 
names for the nation?  The client could ask the user to locate a 
nation ruleset file to use.  This would allow users to load whatever 
nation they wanted.  This idea has a few problems, but it might be 
worth considering.
Problems:
	translation of names.  If one or more users are playing in a 
language other than English, some method would be needed to provide 
the translated names of any custom countries.  Translated names might 
be storable in the ruleset file, and could be requested by the server 
if a remote user doesn't have a translation.
	AI takeover.  If a player is set to be an AI, it'll need some 
of the data from the ruleset.  City names would be needed if nothing 
else.
	flags.  How do you transfer a custom flag to the other 
players?  especially if the other players are using different tile 
sets.  Could be solved with generic flags or player color.
	save/load.  hashing the country name was suggested in a 
different post.  Also, what if a joining player doesn't have the 
ruleset?  Could be solved by transmitting the ruleset on start and 
join, requires including the ruleset in the save file, (could load 
rulesets if need on save game load)
Advantages:
	Custom naming order.  Could juggle default name order to 
confuse opponents.
	no arbitrary limit on nations.  Could divide rulesets by 
era/region/type in file tree.
Andy Black