[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#11805) Store chat and notify messages for later retrieval

["Jason Short" <jdorje@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=11805 >

Ed Overton wrote:
> <URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=11805 >
> 
> In a long turn game where players are disconnected most of the time,
> messages (both chat and notifications) are not seen.  It would be nice
> if chat and notifications were stored for each player, and the player
> could retrieve those that were missed when the player reconnects.

Absolutely.  I made a ticket for this a long time ago but have never 
done any coding on it.

My design would be this: when an event is generated it is saved 
(probably in an event specvec).  When the game is saved these arrays are 
saved; when they're loaded they are loaded.  The array is cleared at the 
end of every turn.  When a player connects they are sent all events in 
the array.  There is no need for the client to request these events I 
think - it certainly shouldn't come via a chatline request but should be 
a separate packet if it is done.

One possible new packet is sent server->client to tell the client when 
to clear its events array at the end of the turn.  Currently the client 
does this automatically but I think the timing is wrong so some 
end-of-turn messages are dropped immediately.

Now, for the server design.  We have grand plans for events (see 
http://www.freeciv.org/index.php/Events) and any changes here should be 
done with that in mind.  Currently there is a set of functions 
notify_player and friends.  These are "dumb" functions that just send 
data about the event to the client.  I suggest a new set of functions 
that sit on top of those and are called instead: perhaps named 
create_event() or some such.  These functions not only call 
notify_player() but also save the event for later retrieval.

-jason