[Freeciv-Dev] Re: PATCH: tile markers

[Teemu Kurppa <tkurppa@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Petr Baudis wrote:
> 
> Dear diary, on Sat, Dec 15, 2001 at 10:53:25AM CET, I got a letter, where 
> Teemu
> Kurppa <tkurppa@xxxxxxxxxx> told me, that...
> > - Tile markers are not saved anywhere, so they are lost, if you get
> > temporarily disconnected. This a bit inconvenient, but I'm not sure is it 
> > the
> > worth of trouble to bring marker information to server.
> Certainly yes! You need to store them, save them into savegames, and it would
> be great if you would be able to share them thru shared vision.

You are absolutely right. Tile markers provide interesting means to
communicate between players, and thus should be introduced also on a
server side. However, one needs to think carefully, which kind of uses
tile markers have and provide good user interface to them. Otherwise we
just implement and lump together features that no-one ever uses. 

For example, in a private mail Ingo brought forward an idea that markers
could be numbered
and then allies could communicate like "you attack from the location
number 4 to west, while I start attacking from the location 1 and 2.". I
think this is a great idea, but we really need to think, how player can
instruct, which markers are shown to which players etc. 
 
I haven't lately played games,  where diplomacy and communication
between players plays a big role. I'd like to, but, you know, civserver
games are civserver games... 
So, I may not be the best person to think this further. 

I suggest that this patch is applied to CVS. If small modifications are
needed (like code placement), I'll take care of them. Then someone with
clearer idea can continue and  introduce markers to server side and
design and implement a good user interface for them.

Teemu Kurppa