[Freeciv-Dev] Re: client/server authentication (PR#1767)

["Per I. Mathisen" <per@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 27 Mar 2003, Mike Kaufman wrote:
> I don't understand the utter facination with a GUI for everything.

If you want to know my ideal for pregame, look at Starcraft. That is how
easy it should be.

> we have a chatline.

/list in chatline sucks - it is absolutely appalling for larger numbers of
players/teams/observers. Navigating the chatline isn't intuitive. Many
people have never used IRC.

> No that is not my assumption. My assumption is that the usual case is that
> there are X users and all X want to play. The number of players has nothing
> to do with it. Creating AI players or using aifill has no impact on this.
>
> Is this not warranted? I want a testimonial. remember that this only
> matters for pregame.

> You would have people /create and then /take/? (thus totally obliterating
> the use of the races dialog?)

Yes. Ideally, I think the nation selection should be in pregame, not
between pregame and ingame. This is mostly because in some modpacks which
nations users choose is a vital part of the whole game setup. If someone
picks the wrong nation (other than what was thought agreed upon),
everything is fucked and you'd have to restart. You avoid this if you pick
nations before /start.

(An insignificant side effect is that you avoid the game getting stuck in
nation select stage as some players fall asleep and never pick their
nation.)

Note that you need to /take anyway when you log in to a savegame or a
game in progress.

> The problem is that at pregame
> game.nplayers = 0. game.players[] exists because it was initialized on game
> init. Now in the current schemewhen someone logs on, he is automatically
> attached to a player slot (pconn->player = &game.players[game.nplayers];
> game.nplayers++). Attributes of those players are changes in the races
> dialog after the game starts. Now you could alter the function of/create
> such that it would pop of the races dialog. so that a player could change
> attributes. But here instead of the 'usual' case where you only need to
> /start, a user would have to /create X human, /take X, and then change
> X's name, etc. then /start. Who's making the game more complex?

See why I want a GUI now? :)

  - Per