[Freeciv] Re: rndCiv script

[banjo <banjo@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 2003-10-07 at 09:16, Reinier Post wrote:
> I know this is too much to ask, but do you think you can do a Perl script
> that takes a ruleset and produces a HTML representation for display
> on pubserver.freeciv.org?  That's most of what we need to put it in
> operation there.  Because players surely would like to have a means of
> *seeing* the tech tree before decide to participate.  Or is the idea
> to let this be a surprise?

yep, the script currently creates a ruleset.summary file, which can be 
turned into html easily enough.

I'll think about the general case, of htmlizing *any* tech ruleset.

> > > The idea from randomly shuffled techtrees is nice, but it would be nicer
> > > if you would have written it for the server in C. Perhaps gen-techtree.
> > i don't think it needs to be rewritten in C, but if anyone wants to
> > that's fine by me, the data files are the important bit.
> 
> For security reasons the server as shipped cannot execute Perl scripts.

the rulesets are currently designed to be run *before* the game is
started.

> So if the server has to trigger techtree generation after startup,
> it is best to write it in C.

Rewriting in C is fine, but C is not my strength, if the random rulesets
idea becomes popular, then someone will rewrite it im sure, as i said
above the most valuable part will be the datasets.

> > Ross Wetmore <rwetmore@xxxxxxxxxxxx> added:
> > > This is not likely to be used once the game starts, and hence how you
> > > access it or what its performance characteristics are is not of major
> > > concern.
> > 
> > I don't think the server could handle the ruleset being redefined once
> > the game has run.  Anyway the script writes out the rulesets to a
> > directory, and maybe this way a cool ruleset can be saved to be
> > replayed.
> 
> My concern is with the user interface.  At present, the ruleset cannot
> be inspected from the client side before the game has started.  For
> multiplayer use,players must be able to investigate the current ruleset
> in pregame state.  (Perhaps the CVS client allows this?  1.14.1-beta1 
> doesn't.)

hmmm, how are the Metaserver games started?

You could  run it this way...
  * define X (say 5) slots for rndCiv games, rndCiv1 rndCiv2, ...
  * before each game starts run rndCiv to populate a rule dir
  * this also publishes the ruleset to a known location
  * call server with rulesetdir = rndCiv2 (or whatever )

I have a dream that you could ask each player what rules to add...
 player 1: steampunk
 player 2: illuminati*
 player 3: space
 player 4: cthulu*

* not currently implemented

> > The icons for new units would best be handled by ESR's idea of each icon
> > being it's own file in a dir tree. Has this been done??
> 
> Look at the CVS version - there is no development on that at the moment.
> As long as everything falls back gracefully, it's OK.

As long as graphic_alt is assigned then it can fall back, maybe not
gracefully, but certainly reliably. Maybe once the datasets have been
filled out, argued over and balanced, a standard imageset of the
additional units can be made.

-- 
banjo <banjo@xxxxxxxxxx>