The new PBW
 

Has there been any work on the new PBW server software?
I remember all the great ideas and so but haven't heard anything about it for a long time...
Will it be ready by SE5 launch?

Re: The new PBW
 

No. There hasn't been anything done or talked about for more than a year... [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Cold.gif[/img]

Re: The new PBW
 

I've been bugging various interested parties about it off and on but Tesco's too busy with work and everyone else says it's really Tesco's project... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif
Anyone here wanna go ahead and work on it without Tesco, perhaps? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: The new PBW
 

SJ has done a bit of experimenting with the code required for running turns... but I agree that Tesco is too busy to lead such a project... we need somebody with lots and lots of free time and webspace... Fyron? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: The new PBW
 

I placed a post on the site about 3 or 4 months ago. That was the first one since August or September some time. The state of it seems to be that everyone has their own preference about how to go about it, but no one has actually done anything. Until it's decided what system, language(s), etc will be used, the project is dead in the water.

Re: The new PBW
 

Maybe we can have a poll?
Programming language of choice: ASP.NET, JSP, Python, Perl, ???
Features desired: user installation of mods, SE5 support, open games (with no mandatory "accept/reject player"), closed games (with only invited players allowed to join), other archive file formats, prettier GUI, combined text/graphical UI, ???
Bugs to fix from existing PBW: graphical game administration broken, cannot upload .plr without refreshing after uploading replacement .gam, ???

Re: The new PBW
 

I've been learning ASP.NET the last couple months and I'm actually rather encouraged by my progress. I actually think I may be able to take a crack at doing a new PBW site using it at some point. Doubtful that I could have it ready right when SE5 is realeased though. If there are some experienced ASP.net people around that I can bounce questions off of, that would be awesome.

Of course, I'm not the fastest person when it comes to these sorts of projects and I'm still quite newbish. And I've been carrying the torch now for several years. If someone feels the calling and thinks they can put something together faster or better then what I can do using some software they are more familier with, I'm all for it. I thought that was going to be Tesco, but if real life has taken over for him, I can understand.

Either way I'll probably keep plugging away on it myself, if only for the practice.

Re: The new PBW
 

I've used ASP.NET before - ask away! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: The new PBW
 

You'd be better off learning Python or PHP (particularly PHP5), I think. ASP.NET tends to be excessively verbose.

Re: The new PBW
 

Verbose - Using or containing a great and usually an excessive number of words; wordy. See Synonyms at wordy

Re: The new PBW
 

curious here what is the present server written in and who do i talk to to get a look at the code ??

Re: The new PBW
 

Hey Geo, did you get that new box up yet?

Re: The new PBW
 

psimancer said:
curious here what is the present server written in and who do i talk to to get a look at the code ??

It is written in Java Server Pages and uses Tomcat, IIRC.

Re: The new PBW
 

I got it up and running and verified it works. I haven't got the PBW stuff moved over to it yet.

Re: The new PBW
 

I think you should program the new PBW with AJAX and Rounded Corners. I hear both of those programming languages are very popular these days.

Re: The new PBW
 

*assumes Urendi was being sarcastic*

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: The new PBW
 

Well, I wouldn't be able to be project lead on the next version of PBW. I could help out a little with design, and more with coding and testing, but I don't have enough background in server technologies to really take on this kind of project as lead. Give me a component of it though, either front end or back end, and I could probably get it working http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I'm language-agnostic, so I say use whatever the project lead is most comfortable with.

Re: The new PBW
 

What about SF?
They could offer professional progrmmers to make new pbw server. If we'll ask them of course. I think a hundred of signs will be quite enough. What do you think?

Re: The new PBW
 

dimes to dollars sfi would want to create a pay for play model and a rival pbw server which would be detrimental to the community IMHO it might be feasible when the communiy of pbw players exceeds 100k like the mmorpg ultima online
however the drawbacks to the community are multiple in such a model
and so far we have no track record from sfi to base trust upon regarding such a move

therefore i feel it is a better move to continue our efforts in the community and to provide support for THE pbw server
my only hope would be to be able sometime in the future to be able to setup a backup server operating in sync over the web with the prime so that the prime could go down for a hour or two then come back up resync and be back in business and all be seamless to us the users maybe even separated by a state or 4 thus one net outage wouldn't mean complete server loss (

twould also be nice to have a qoute secondary processor for the server such that it could offload game processing to the secondary processor in a queue thus long processing games could be run by secondary processor and short run games could be processed on the primary server processor but this would take some interesting programming

Re: The new PBW
 

I imagine just spawning a second SE process and leaving it up to the OS's task scheduler would be sufficent.

Re: The new PBW
 

If SE:V remains about the same popularity as SE:IV, and the load on the PBW server remains the same, I would agree that simply spawning a new process would work. But, we all know that SE:IV -- even after more than 5 years -- is getting more new people coming in. I think it would be safe to say that eventually, PBW will get too big to be handled by a single box in Geo's basement. It really wouldn't be too much programming-wise to add support for multiple machines behind PBW. A really simple way to do it is have one box as the gateway, which has the website and front-end controls, email, etc., and behind that, 1+ machines on a switch connected to the gateway (no connection to the 'net). The gateway computer keeps track of which turns are being processed where, and can farm out turn processing to the other machines by simple socket connections to turn processing controllers on the satellite boxes. When a turn is ready or scheduled to be processed, just pick a machine based on some criteria, send a message with the location of the turn files (probably best to keep everything on one big central RAID'ed drive), the satellite machine processes, and sends a message back when it's done so the gateway can send out the emails and update the website.

While it likely will not be immediately necessary, it would still be a good idea to design the capability in from the start. That way, when it is needed, it's just a matter of getting a donation drive started for equipment, and configuring the machines to network.

Re: The new PBW
 

Based on the hardware in use, it will be a while before he needs a cluster.