[Freeciv] Re: automaticly restarting script

[Bernhard Kuemel <darsie@xxxxxx>]

Bernhard Kuemel wrote to freeciv-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx:
> 
> Hi!
> 
> freeciv is great and I think a lot more people would offer
> permanent servers, if they would automatically restart as the
> ones at civserver.freeciv.org do.
> 
> One thing that's missing is saving and restoring games. I thought
> of doing that with expect as well, but I guess there are better
> ways to do that.

Ok, I guess, I could resolve all of these issues and it would be
a good idea to put it into the FAQ (maybe after doing possible
corrections first):

How do I save and restore games?
--------------------------------

The best way is to run the civserver yourself. It's really very
easy. Whenever you want to play, run as normal user issue the
bare command 'civserver' - no other setup required (once you have
the game installed). This also gives you full control over the
server. You might want to use the -m option to have your game
announced at http://meta.freeciv.org/metaserver/ and you can
easily find others to play with you. Otherwise tell your friends
the host (and port if changed to some other value than 5555 with
the -p option).

To save use either saveturns or save. To restore a saved game
start the server like 'civserver -f civgame.sav'.

If you are already playing a game on one of the public servers
there's a way, too. If, after playing at least 25 turns, all
players leave the game (with 'set autotoggle 0', so the players
will not continue in AI mode) and noone rejoins the game (you can
only hope, everybody can rejoin, not only the original players)
within 60 s, the server will save the game and quit. You can then
download the saved game at

http://civserver.freeciv.org/viewgame.phtml?game=10298 as
http://civserver.freeciv.org/games/10298/civgame.sav.gz

You will have to replace 10298 with the number of your game. The
game number is automatically announced in the metainfo string
which is diplayed in the chat window when it is set and at
http://meta.freeciv.org/metaserver/. If you set the metainfo
string to some other value and don't find it any more in the
chat, maybe the people at freeciv.org will make the game number
availabel somewhere else, e.g. at the game info page when you
click at the server link in the first row of the table at
http://meta.freeciv.org/metaserver/.

After downloading the saved game you can restore it by running
your own server as described above.

Running your own server will however not give you the nice
statistics, animated game gif and player rankings as produces by
the scripts on civserver.freeciv.org. But maybe you can download
and install these, too.

---------------------------------- end FAQ
-------------------------------

Ok, I hope this resolves these IMO really frequent problems of
newbies, playing games at civserver.freeciv.org.

Love, Bernhard