Play by Web is now open
 

Hello everyone,

Please be advised that Play by Web for Space Empires IV is now open to all comers!

Many thanks to all the beta testers and the administrative team!

The genesis of this web site was a simple idea: while PBEM play in Space Empires IV is nice, there are often drags on its efficiency. The host has to manually run each turn; forcing turns to be played after a certain amount of time may not work if everyone's turns haven't been sent; and if someone drops out, it's often hard to find a new player to take his place.

PBW effectively combats these and other issues by automating the process by which turns are sent back and forth, and by which the turns are run. There are still some small bugs in this process, the most important of which is that it does not work with the current SE4 patch. (Aaron at Malfador has promised this will change with the next patch! Until then, you should use Version 1.30, the patch for which can be downloaded here.) In this sense the PBW site is still a work in progress, and you'll see changes from time to time that will be detailed in the news or in the forums.

We look forward to seeing you soon!

Cheers,

Admiral & Team

[This message has been edited by Admiral (edited 29 May 2001).]

Re: Play by Web is now open
 

I will testify to the fact that this thing works, and works well. It's convenient, and while not quite fool-proof, it certainly seems to be possum-proof http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif

I was skeptical at first, you know me. But after 8 or 9 turns, it all looks smooth and sweet.

Re: Play by Web is now open
 

Woo!!

As part of the team that built PBW, it's great to see us finally open to the public. Those of you playing in the mega-elimination tourney probably already know how nice it is.

But don't take my word for it; go see for yourself!

Also: many, many kudos to Admiral for having the vision to create this--and the ability to program it.

LL (AKA Eric the UI Guy)

[This message has been edited by LazarusLong42 (edited 29 May 2001).]

Re: Play by Web is now open
 

I'd like to add that Admiral and Lazarus are quite quick to reply to bug reports and feature requests, as well.

------------------
Cap'n Q

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft
, "The Call of Cthulhu"

Re: Play by Web is now open
 

Yes please check this out it is something I think is of great value to our community.

Thanks to everyone who worked hard on this, it's very cool...

------------------
Sarge is coming...

Richard Arnesen
Director of Covert Ops
Shrapnel Games
http://www.shrapnelgames.com

Re: Play by Web is now open
 

Do you know when support for mods will be ready? I would really like to play as a Pirate in a universe of humans http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif. All I gotta do is figure out how to get a good "capture ships" combat strategy.

Re: Play by Web is now open
 

The order of implementation for the remaining long-term to-do items is currently open. I'll be conducting a survey of the Users.

Admiral

Re: Play by Web is now open
 

Here is a priority list for you:

1) Support for PBEM helper.
2) Forced turn generation on work days (Mon-Fri) only. Maybe it has this already?

------------------
PBEM

Re: Play by Web is now open
 

Forced turn only on weekdays is not (yet) directly supported, but the game owner can go in on Friday and move the automatic turn generator ahead three days to Monday.

Re: Play by Web is now open
 

I'd imagine it would be quite easy to write a script to set the path.txt each time you run SE4, allowing players to use mods. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif

Re: Play by Web is now open
 

Your imagination is getting carried away. This is a highly multithreaded, multiprocess server. Hence, several instances of the same SE4 can be running at once. Therefore, to do it in the simple fashion you suggest would lead to problems. The solution, then, is to synchronize access to any particular instance of SE4, which of course will mean that fewer turns can be running simultaneously. Not a big problem now, but if the system gets thousands of Users and hundreds of games, it may become a problem. It would be possible to pool instances, but at 150 megs per install, it would get big fast, but would allow more instances to run simultaneously. If the ModPath could be specified on the command line, the simple Version would work.

Admiral

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Space Empires IV Play by Web

Re: Play by Web is now open
 

Wow.

I had no idea it was that large.

I guess you could just support the top few mods, or allow other people to host a PBW game on their own 24h servers...

Re: Play by Web is now open
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>or allow other people to host a PBW game on their own 24h servers...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

SJ, You can do that now by hosting a game on your own PC and having the players email you the files. That's the sort of thing that Fuerte's PBEM helper is ideal for, although you can even do it the hard way. Lot's of people have.

But I've done it myself and PBW is a LOT easier. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif

Geo

Re: Play by Web is now open
 

I do intend to fully support mods (including user submitted ones!), but it is more work than setting the path.txt file. I make a living building large, scalable systems and this is not as big as those by far, but it is designed with a similar level of scalability and modularity.

(Actually, it was interesting trying to figure out how to do things with only open source products like Tomcat and MySQL rather than Weblogic and Oracle.)

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Space Empires IV Play by Web

[This message has been edited by Admiral (edited 29 May 2001).]

Re: Play by Web is now open
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>SJ, You can do that now by hosting a game on your own PC and having the players email you the files. That's the sort of thing that Fuerte's PBEM helper is ideal for, although you can even do it the hard way. Lot's of people have.

But I've done it myself and PBW is a LOT easier. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
If you could create your own PBW server, then you could install most Versions and any mod of SE4 you wanted on your machine, and your PBW would run that mod without problems.
The PBW program would then not have to deal with multiple mods, just the one that is installed on your server...

Still, if the central PBW server could handle mods (and updates? http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif) that would be best.

BTW, how hard would it be to support the update of mods to a newer, compatible-with-savegames Version?

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 30 May 2001).]