[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Leader names

[Jason Dorje Short <jdorje@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Per Inge Mathisen wrote:
> On Sat, 11 Jun 2005, Jason Dorje Short wrote:
> 
>>>I think it is high time we stopped using leader names for humans and
>>>reserved them for AI use. We discussed this when we went over this GUI
>>>design, and there was, IIRC, general agreement on this point.
>>
>>I do not particularly agree.
> 
> That is not a particularly helpful answer.

Well, I didn't realize we were ready for a full-time argument.

1.  Unless you call guests "Guest 5" and AI players "AI 3", you still
need leader names for guest or AI players.  Thus you end up with jdorje
against Genghis Khan.  A bit jarring.

2.  Also because of #1, we can't actually get rid of the leaders code.
We just add special cases for when it is and isn't used.

3.  Unlike Starcraft (for instance), the player doesn't create a profile
with his own name.  The default username is taken from the account
information, and on some platforms may be absent entirely.  Thus the
username is in many cases not a name the player would want to use
in-game, and in the worst cases may be entirely garbage.

4.  Because of /take, the user who finishes a game may not be the same
as the one who started it.  So even if you have leader == user at the
start of the game, you can't get rid of the separate leader name and
username variables.  The leader name doesn't change throughout the game,
while the username might.

>>And this doesn't help with any GUI issue since the username can be just
>>as long (MAX_LEN_NAME).
> 
> Usernames tend to be shorter, and we can limit them more, while leader
> names more often are long. We can more easily accomodate one dynamic
> string (username), than two (username + leader name).

It really doesn't help with any GUI issue, since AI or guest players
must still use leader names.

-jason