[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Chat Functionality with Jabber

[Reinier Post <rp@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Jun 13, 2002 at 05:00:40AM -0400, Adam Theo wrote:

> > Freeciv is real-time.  In online games several moves are transferred
> > per second.  The amount of info going the other way is bigger.
> > A lag of over 300ms kills the game.
> 
> This is true with FreeCiv? I understand that real-time games like 
> EverQuest and similar games transfer alot of data at an instant, but 
> FreeCiv doesn't seem to have as heavy requirements as EQ.

Freeciv has concurrent movement (between humans).  This is important
during battle.  The amount of data sent is small, but it must be
transmited fast enough.

> Sending a 
> single Jabber message once a second (when there is activity, nothing 
> when there isn't) with all the game data for that second seems quite 
> adequate.  for From my playing with FreeCiv in the past, I don't see any 
> problems with the amount of data needing to be transferred, as long as 
> you don't expect Jabber to behave like a real-time binary protocol used 
> by EverQuest and other 3D adventure games. Besides, we are talking about 
> the human chatting right now, unless you want to jump into using Jabber 
> as the data transport as well (hey, I'm all for it, I think Jabber can 
> do it just as well as the current protocol, and bring in some side 
> benefits to boot).

Once a second isn't fast enough for Freeciv gameplaying, but it is
for chatting.  I just wanted to make the point that Jabber would be
great for the latter, but probably not fast enough for the former.

> > There are practically no Freeciv developers, so the overhead imposed
> > by Jabberization must be zero, except to the person doing it.
> 
> No permanent developers that work on the project regularly, you mean? 
> Everyone is pretty much a freelance contributor handing over patches 
> here and there?

The maintainers have been doing a lot of work lately, but over the years
there haven't always been maintainers this active.

> That is fine, once the change to Jabber is made, there 
> will be no overhead. As said above, what is coded now will still work 
> fine even in the greater Jabber world 2+ years from now. Jabber was made 
> to be simple and future-proof.

Not just the protocol, but also the library must be stable.

> Also, another idea I had was presence. FreeCiv could let Jabber handle 
> its status and presence as well. Specifying and keeping track of 
> availability, away/busy status, etc... There are many opportunities for 
> presence in a real-time strategy game like FreeCiv.

Taking care of the presence of players iwould be great.  Freeciv really
lacks that now.
 
> Now then, who is availble/willing to code Jabber into FreeCiv's client 
> and server? If no-one here, then I might be able to pull some people 
> from the Jabber project to help out here  :-)

I have seen no other responses here ...

-- 
Reinier