[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Logport

[Mike Kaufman <kaufman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Oct 11, 2002 at 06:41:49PM +0200, Christian Knoke wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 11, 2002 at 04:45:55PM +0300, Veli Mankinen wrote:
> > 
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > 
> > PROBLEM:
> > 
> > I just started to play freeciv with my friends and we decided to use
> > 12h turns. This means that all the players will disconnect from the game
> > after each turn and then wait for his/hers next turn. 
> > 
> > The problem with this is that it could be that the turn changes after 10
> > minutes or 10 hours after the player disconnected and freeciv does not
> > seem to have a way to inform the outside world about this. The only way
> > to know if the turn has changed and to get information about who has not
> > yet done his turn seems to be that one connects to server with a client
> > and gets the turn-blocking mode lines.
> > 
> > I think the game could go on more fluently if one could see this
> > information from somewhere outside the game.

this is a fairly good idea. In my now-old client authentication patch,
people could connect to a running server as a non-player and check
information like the current turn/year, how much time is left, and who the
other players/connections are.

I might also suggest adding an option to the server that prohibits turns
from ending early. For example if game.timeout_exact = TRUE then the server
would not end the turn even if all the players hit end turn. It would wait
for the end of the timeout.

> 
> AFAIK the current year is sent to the metaserver. So you could set
> up your own metaserver and make it send a mail to the players, when
> the year changes, with a little script.

this would work too.

-mike