[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Play By E-Mail - PBEM

[Christian Knoke <chrisk@xxxxxxxx>]

[Please answer to the list, the guys there know more than I do.]

On Sun, May 25, 2003 at 02:50:48PM +0400, Astarot wrote:
> 
> > > Online mode is too expensive, modem connection is, as I suppose, hard to
> > > support...
> > What do you mean with modem connection? If you use Linux, it is perfectly
> 
> I mean modem connection in Windows. I play FreeCiv in the institute - with
> my groupmates and over the internet - under FreeBSD. But I also really want
> to make a real battle with my friends, who study in other institutes and
> universities. And my HDD is too small to install both Windows & Linux...

Ah, don't know how to do with Windows; maybe you can get some software to
do this.

> Another idea: to use the same method of Atlantis and some other PBeM games.
> Server uses to send some information to the client. May be, there's some way
> to write it into the report file, which can be sent to the player? Then
> players write their orders, and send them back to server, and it generates
> the next turn.
> 
> Still, the idea is bad. If this method will be used, units won't be able to
> attack more than once a turn - because battles are calculated on the
> server...

Yes.

> Are there any ways of encrypting this information?
> Sometimes the GPL license makes problems - you are to show the encrypting
> part of code everybody...

Not a GPL problem - a good encryption can't be tampered by knowing the
algorithm. But you need to run a server, and the server needs to know the
key. So you know the key, too.

> > > In fact, sometimes we tried PBEM mode already - it works ;) I mean, we
> > > used
> > > to send savegames to each other. The problem is that we used to look,
> > > what
> > > is our opponent doing every turn - we loaded the nation of the opponent,
> > > examined it and only then loaded our own nations. The solution of the
> > > problem is to ask the player to enter the password of the nation before
> > > loading it.

> > You simply need enough character strength to *not* load an opponents
> > nation.
> > ;-)
> 
> Well, may be. But we can't be sure that our opponents has the same amount of
> character ;)))

If you don't trust them, don't play with them ...

Christian

-- 
Christian Knoke     * * *      http://www.enter.de/~c.knoke/
* * * * * * * * *  Ceterum censeo Microsoft esse dividendum.