[Freeciv-Dev] (PR#1952) Metaserver disconnecting players

["Reinier Post via RT" <rt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[rfalke - Mon Oct 28 03:31:34 2002]:

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> Wed Oct 16 15:41:00 2002      pagnin  changed notes
> Wed Oct 16 15:41:01 2002      pagnin  moved from incoming to open
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> --- start notes ---
> chat frozen during nation selection is resolved. -davide
> 
> still open 'player removed during nation selection'.
> 
> What we should do? -Davide
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This is a major hurdle in setting up multiplayer games - especially to 
inexperienced players.  You'll be surprised at the percentage of games 
that fail to start properly because of this problem.  (I'll produce 
stats on request.)

There are in fact several related problems:

1. completely inexperienced players do not even understand
   what they are waiting for

2. once they understand they are waiting for everybody to pick
   a nation, they do not understand how to see which player(s)
   still have to pick

3. once they understand how to determine which players still have
   to pick, they do not understand how to make the game start
   anyway

Problem 1 can be addressed by simply displaying a message after /start:

  Game: Waiting for every human player to select a nation ...

Problem 2 can be addressed by making the Player dialog work before the 
game starts!  At this moment the only way to find out is by issuing 
the /list command and checking which players have names that are 
identical to their user name and do not start with a capital letter (!!)

Problem 3: players that fail to select a nation can either be /cut from 
the game, which will remove them, or /aitoggle-d, which will start them 
as AI.  Inexperienced players will never guess this.

One possible solution is to add this information to the message above:

  Game: waiting for all users to pick a player nation.
  Game: if players fail to pick you can /cut or /aitoggle them
        to force the game to start.

However, this is only possible if users really have that possibility
which depends on the cmdlevel settings.

Another possible solution is to add a new server variable: starttimeout.
If it is > 0, the server will cut all players that havent chosen a 
nation after that many seconds.  Like the turn timeout, it should have 
a minimum value of at least 10.
'
 + slightly less inexperienced players do not know that the /list 
command is the
   only 
 + more experienced players do not understand that there are two
   ways to get the game started: namely:
     - /cut a player