Re: New & raw web based Dominion II game server
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">AFAIK, there is no way to "protect" a nation until the game is started. It would be a nice added feature if "open" network games are to become more standard.

One solution, I believe, would be to have the game start offline, as a PBEM game, then go TCP/IP. Not counting the upload question, do the command line switch allow this?

Re: New & raw web based Dominion II game server
 

The HD ran full today. I did manage to save the quickSundering game, though, so I suppose all's well that ends well.

As you can probably see on the webpage, the participants/waiting for aren't exactly working yet. I will address this another day -- I need to take a day off from this, to regain my energy.

And yes, the WarsOfGaia demostrates (another) error in the game server: uploadtime doesn't work. It does count down, but not as fast as it should. My current theory is that it only counts down when somebody is actually Online.

Too bad about being able to steal each other gods. I would call that a bug in the game. Short of supporting PBM, I do not see what I can do about this.

I'll try to find a place to report bugs to Illwinter.And maybe I'll look into converting the server to PBM --- the TCP/IP server has a lot more bugs than I counted on http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif Or maybe I'm just tired.

Re: New & raw web based Dominion II game server
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">At the least, it's a strange feature that there is no control of who can start the game or connect or whatever... I suppose the design was initially done with LAN games in mind.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">support@illwinter.com is at least OK to report bugs to.

As for the TCP/IP vs PBEM: I really like the TCP/IP option, but it might be much simpler to have a simple upload/download of turn files, with the hosting called when all turn files are in. Also, much lighter on the resources: you wouldn't have to keep a server running for each game. But the advantage of the Dom server is that it takes care of the password thing - only, it doesn't care until the game is actually started.

Re: New & raw web based Dominion II game server
 

The server is up again. I had forgotten had a query logger running. As I'm using mysql extensively, this log mananged to hog 75% of my HD on the server.

It should be fixed now. I've already restart quickSundering. Wars of Gaia seem against all probability to have survived a full HD, and restarting the mysql database server. Sometimes, Perl is quite cool. Also I'm impressed with the Gentoo folks: A full root partition is usually bad news for any Linux. It didn't even complain (much).

As for a PBM versus TCP/IP, here is my take on it:

Advantages of TCP/IP:
-----------------------------
We've tried to do this. It sort of work.
It's convenient
Fast games are easy/possible.
Doesn't require a mailbox.

Advantages of PBM
------------------------------
Uses few system resources
Easy to work around bugs
Easy to backup/make stable
Easier to make up for Dominion shortcomings.
Doesn't require a fixed IP address.

But that's just my take on it. If dominions had no bugs, I'd say convenience overrule everything else. Now I don't know.

Re: New & raw web based Dominion II game server
 

Forgot to say: I just happened upon the reason for the bug with "Waiting for" (I was assuming that all games were shortened to three chars). It's fixed, so now you can just surf to my servers main page to see if it's your time to move.

The Participants seems quite broken though. It may just be because QuickSundering has been started before I implemented this.

Re: New & raw web based Dominion II game server
 

Well, upload time is completely shot. At random intervals, the counter will start all over. I just watched it happen in the WarsOfGaia game.I think I will just kill that game sometime next week, and remove the upload time field from the webpage sometime.

An interesting observation is that the CPU requirement a game is actually quite low; except for the startup phase. So I think my little server could actually host quite a number of games, provided that only a few are in the upstart mode.

Anyway: interest in the server continues to be low. Anybody know why? Is such a server just not in demand; is it too buggy, does it miss a key feature...? At the current usage level, I cannot bring myself to use much time on it. I will let it run for a least a month, though, and see what happens. I will also watch this thread.

It was a fun little project in any case http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: New & raw web based Dominion II game server
 

Personally I think this auto server is a great idea, but I might be biassed http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif How much timer do you use when it counts in a strange way?

Re: New & raw web based Dominion II game server
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Probably the main reason is that it's missing the "get together" part of starting a game. I suspect that most of the time, when people are looking to start a MP game, they find that one of them can reasonably easily host, so that isn't really a limiting factor.

Re: New & raw web based Dominion II game server
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I hadn't realised it existed as I don't browse these forums all that often. I've not actually played Online yet, but something like this would greatly increase the chances of me doing so (and frequency in which I did).

Is that warsofgaia game waiting to start, or is it just between turns?

Re: New & raw web based Dominion II game server
 

The WarsOfGaia is suffering from a bug in the game: Uplaodtime doesn't work; it will restart counting down at random intervals, thus never starting. I could of course kill the game, and then restart it without upload time. Say the word and I'll try http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

I think PhilD is onto to something with the gettogether part. What do you think would work? A reference to an IRC channel? A built-in chat? A forum? I could manage those three rather easily, I think http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Johan K: I had some difficulty trying to understand what you wrote. Did you ask how much I had originally set the uploadtime to? Then it was 25 hours, or 1500 minutes. That is around 90000 seconds. And thanks about thinking it's a great idea.

As for visibility, I don't think I can do much more than posting in these forums http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif You are all welcome to spread the word, the server can surely handle it. Well, maybe not if you announce it on slashdot http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif