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

[Greg Wooledge <greg@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Christian Knoke (chrisk@xxxxxxxx) wrote:

> On Sun, May 25, 2003 at 02:50:48PM +0400, Astarot wrote:

> > 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 ...

A similar issue arises in commercial PBEM set-ups.  I've played both
Civ:CTP and SMAC(X) in PBEM mode.  Each of them has shortcomings:

 * In Civ:CTP there are no passwords.  At the end of the turn, the
   game creates a file that player P sends to player ((P+1) mod N).
   Nothing at all prevents player P from loading that game to see
   what player ((P+1) mod N) has.

   - In fact, sometimes player P *has* to load that game.  We call
     this "nexting" because player P has to load player ((P+1) mod N)'s
     game, try not to look at the top part of the screen, and just
     press the "next turn" button to generate player ((P+2) mod N)'s
     game.  This is done whenever player ((P+1) mod N) can't play
     for some reason and a substitute isn't available.

 * In SMAC, the games have per-player passwords, so you can't load
   another player's game.  This means that any serious SMAC PBEM
   game has to have a moderator, who holds all the passwords.  (This
   is usually the person who set up the game, also.)  However, the
   in-game diplomacy messages sent by each player are in the
   save game file in clear text.  So we have to trust the other players
   not to read them.

But I'd imagine that the real problem for a PBEM Freeciv is the
fact that Freeciv isn't turn-based.  Each player gives orders
asynchronously during the turn, and the units all move "at the same
time".  Turning that into a turn-based PBEM is likely to create
some serious problems.

-- 
Greg Wooledge                  |   "Truth belongs to everybody."
greg@xxxxxxxxxxxx              |    - The Red Hot Chili Peppers
http://wooledge.org/~greg/     |

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