[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Leader names

[Per Inge Mathisen <per@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 11 Jun 2005, Jason Dorje Short wrote:
> 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.

'Guest' is an anomaly that should be infrequent, and, I hope, eventually
abolished. So this is not a strong argument.

> 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.

No, what we need it for is the AIs.

> 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.

Wrong. The player selects his username in the connection dialog before he
logs in. This is pretty much identical to how Starcraft does it, except
they don't suggest a default from OS usernames (which is a feature I do
not particularly like, myself - it is more often than not wrong,
especially now that we have user accounts on pubserver).

> 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'tget rid of the separate leader name and
> username variables.The leader name doesn't change throughout the game,
> while the username might.

What you mean is that we cannot get rid of pplayer->name, which should
exist in addition to pconn->name, which is correct. This is a code detail,
however. The player name can stay 'jdorje' even though you have logged out
and I continue the game in your name. After all, it is you who will gain
the win if I do so (I presume), so it is only fair/correct/accurate.

> > 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 orguest players
> must still use leader names.

We can put the AI leader name into the 'name' column, where the difficulty
is now put (why?). Then we'd need a column for difficulty, but this column
would be shorter and fixed length.

  - Per