PBEM server - first beta Online
 

Like discussed in the recent 'PBEM recommendations'-thread, I have been working on a fully automatic PBEM server for 'Dominions II'.
This system, while easy to install (needing only PHP5 and a cronjob), will allow people to host a large number of PBEM games with minimal admin supervision.

It's not done yet (which most of all means, that no games are actually hosted), but I have put a first working beta Online at

http://rowlff.dotgeek.org/domserv/

where you can already set up player accounts, create games, edit and join them, upload .2h files, ...

Please have a go at it, to find the inevitable bugs, give me your ideas, wishes, complaints!

I'll continue the work in the next days - and if I could take Gandalf up on his offer to use his server, we might have a working Version with live games soon (^_^)

-Marc

Re: PBEM server - first beta Online
 

Only PHP5 and cron? Using comma dilimeted text files for a database? (which would be fine with me)

So this is going to be webbased PbEM? upload/download turm files and scripted "host & quit" cron jobs?

Re: PBEM server - first beta Online
 

I use PHP 5's built in SQLite as a database (which is the reason I didn't go with the more widespread Version 4).
That gives me full SQL capabilities without having to install anything else...

And yes to your other question: The cron job will just have to call a 'runhost' script every hour (or whatever 'granularity' of schedule you prefer), and this automatically determines the games that are due for a host and runs them!

Re: PBEM server - first beta Online
 

It looks really good. Simple. Maybe even simple enough for me to understand the scripts. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
PLEASE release it as a base workable Version and THEN start adding neat things.

As for hosting, thinking about getting a domain to go with it?
dommies.com
dominionist
dominionism
dominions2.net
dom2games.net
domgames.net
dom2taw.net
d2games.net

We can always tag it off of dom2minions.com but thats such a long name.

Re: PBEM server - first beta Online
 

Way to go, that was fast work!

Re: PBEM server - first beta Online
 

Good to hear that you seem to like it - it's still a way to go, when it comes to automatic hosting, though: The fact that there's no standalone server, and you have to more or less start the complete 'Dominions II'-application to do a simple host run, is a big problem.
So far, I haven't been able to do so from a php-script, but I am working on it (^_^)

Once this works (and I'm still confident), we can think about where to put it. And I will then immediately release it for everybody to play around with. Promise!

Re: PBEM server - first beta Online
 

Sounds cool. Dragonfire and I have 2 MP PBEM games going on. Maybe we can try to transfer them to your system to act as your guinea pigs.

Re: PBEM server - first beta Online
 

What about using a regular shell script to do the actual execution of the application? Have a php script do the command syntax of turns ready to run, and save those in a file, but do the actual execution from a shell script. It would only have to look in the php-prepared command file and run them. Just a thought, I'm not into the details of either php5 or Dom2 capabilities.

Re: PBEM server - first beta Online
 

I've tried this (and several other approaches) already! The problem remains that whatever way I try to open 'Dominions II', as soon as the original call is coming from PHP, 'Dominions II' can't start, because it can't connect to the Window Server (Error: "INIT_Processeses(), could not establish the default connection to the WindowServer."). Even using 'su' to pretend a normal user didn't help here...

Maybe it's due to me trying it on OS X. If somebody would like to give it a shot on Linux, I'll happily send him the appropriate scripts.

And does Illwinter read these threads? They should know a little something, too (^_^)

Re: PBEM server - first beta Online
 

Are you using text-only mode? Thats the only way I could get them to work. Are you looking for the start-game script or the process-turn script?

Re: PBEM server - first beta Online
 

Interestingly enough, having the '--textonly' parameter didn't help, either.
Here's the command I use:

dominions2 --tcpserver --port 4040 --noclientstart --uploadtime 0 --mapfile aran.map --textonly testgame

Besides, I can't use '--textonly' for a hostrun, anyway, can I?

But like I said, I can't rule out the possibility that it's OS X related, and might work under Linux... can I send you a little script to test?

Re: PBEM server - first beta Online
 

You might try adding -q and --host

Re: PBEM server - first beta Online
 

Thanks for the tip - but no change! I'll continue testing, but fear I have run into a wall here (>_<)
Hopefully Dom3 will introduce a separate server that's easier to use in textmode... but for the time being, I might have to go with Deccan's idea, and have 'domserv' only manage games, but hosts will actually have to download the .2h files to host on their own computers and reupload then once they're done.