Wow, and the games grind to a halt.
 

Just a post to notice how influential the Llamaserver is to us. When it goes down, most of the games go down.

Perhaps Illwinter should hire Llama as a permanent host :)

Thanks Lllama, hope everything goes well in the reboot.

Re: Wow, and the games grind to a halt.
 

Probably more a role for Shrapnel than Illwinter, but as soon as you get commercial interests involved, you'll wind up paying for the service. The great and amazing thing about llamabeast is that we get to call on his time, energy and resources for free.

On the other hand, maybe a commercial model would have an upside. I'm thinking that a deposit made at game start would only be refunded if you do the right thing (i.e. do not simply start staling) when you leave the game.

Re: Wow, and the games grind to a halt.
 

Though, how many would be willing to pay for using such a service? And how much? I would pay a small fee for it, if it had users, but I know that many wouldn't.

I guess this is why llamaserver has that little "donate" button down there on the right side. You can pay Mr. Llama for his awesome work if you deem it worthy enough ;)

Re: Wow, and the games grind to a halt.
 

Please donate! Llamabeast has devoted endless hours towards the task of creating, and recently maintain, the server. Including putting together a new server just for us.

I know it /is/ free, but consider giving back. Llamaserver is by itself responsible for a recent renaissance in in Dom3. I know the server is down, but when it's up, just go and count the huge amount of games being hosted on it. Maybe some of you don't remember what it was like ~before~ Llamaserver, but we didn't have nearly as many games starting, and nobody used the national mods because it was so difficult to get them working together.

http://pledgie.com/campaigns/1716

Jazzepi (I AM NOT SECRETLY LLAMABEAST!)

Re: Wow, and the games grind to a halt.
 

I hadn't noticed , and since he doesn't vocally ask for donation support I hadn't really thought about it. Now that you have brought it to my attention I will be hitting the donate button when I get home. The service is an integral part of my enjoyment of the game so it deserves supporting.

Re: Wow, and the games grind to a halt.
 

there are likely too many eggs in one basket, but I at least enjoy these occasional breaks :)

Re: Wow, and the games grind to a halt.
 

yeah, the enforced break is good sometimes, I didn't even turn my computer on last night, or this morningbefore work!

Re: Wow, and the games grind to a halt.
 

I wonder what the dollar to pound exchange rate is on the pledgie site.

Re: Wow, and the games grind to a halt.
 

I would suggest that Llama uses any future donations to putting a bigger hard drive on that server :)

Re: Wow, and the games grind to a halt.
 

Im not sure that a "bigger hard drive" would have avoided the problems. When Dom3 runs wild it can quickly exceed any hard drive, or cpu, or bandwidth, or whatever its breaking.

Also, you might reconsider having Llama's server become the official server. When Shrapnel was considering an official server there were some major items which disturbed both them and players which would be different BECAUSE it was an official Shrapnel provided server.

However I will also say that I heartily recommend that people who feel they have been supported consider supporting Llama back. That is how servers are best kept in business. I fully appreciate and try to earn the support that the Dom3 community provided me when the Dom3Minions.com server went down. (and by the way, "most of the games"?)

Gandalf Parker

Re: Wow, and the games grind to a halt.
 

I've already warned about this long ago when the Llamaserver became the de-facto standard for organizing games, but nobody cared. :) A while back, it wasn't so homogeneous, there were a lot more private game servers. This trend died out, though, after a couple of people vanished from here. Now the only other private Dom3 servers that host games are found on other gaming forums.

I wouldn't want to trade, though. Admining games is a pretty thankless job. :re:

Re: Wow, and the games grind to a halt.
 

I also host games.
But I havent had any hosting requests for quite awhile and havent been in the mood to generate interest. People seem happy enough to do them as pbem games on Llama's server instead of direct-connect or direct-connect and pbem mixed.

Gandalf Parker
--
per peer-pressure preoccupation
My maps, mods, and mullings can be found at
http://www.Dom3Minions.com

Re: Wow, and the games grind to a halt.
 

pbem has it's advantages. You have a whole list of old turns that you can look at, if need be. That's the main thing, I think.

Network games are nice, but they seem to be more suited to blitz type quick games.

Re: Wow, and the games grind to a halt.
 

True.
On the large games (such as all_nations megagames) Ive had users request to have their turns sent in email. They tended to still play their turns by direct connect but liked having their old turns stored in their mail folders by date.

Re: Wow, and the games grind to a halt.
 

Yeah, Gandalf, that's a good point. If you could request a send of an old turn, in a network game, it would be most helpful.

I actually used to prefer network games. It seems to speed the game along quite well. But the bonus of pbem games, with all turns stored, swayed me to that type of hosting.

Re: Wow, and the games grind to a halt.
 

Ive also done backups of games. The larger hosted ones (not the little ones I continually open on the server now).

Ive done a sloppy "features" list to help people plan large games for the server to host.
http://www.dom3minions.com/HostingGames.htm
But as I said, Im not up to being the host and the person starting games. Someone needs to be the person "running" the game. Start a thread, round up players, settle discussions, and just let me know whats wanted.

Gandalf Parker
--
To some people, unlimited options seems to them to be zero options.
Without a menu of choices, they are lost.

Re: Wow, and the games grind to a halt.
 

This is wandering off topic.
All Hail Llamaserver and sing praises for its service.
Long Live Llamaserver!
(if I didnt think so I wouldnt have helped so much to get it going)

Re: Wow, and the games grind to a halt.
 

I used to dislike pbem because of the slowness of downloading the attachment, overwriting the old .trn file, reattaching it, etc. But at the end of the day, the ability to just work on the turns in pieces, and then submit it when you're done is too valuable to me.

Jazzepi

Re: Wow, and the games grind to a halt.
 

You can download a turn to your machine then quit dom3. Re-enter dom3 and choose "play game" instead of "network" and you can work on your turn all day without uploading it. Only by going "network" again will your turn upload.

There might be a way to switch to offline play without quitting and re-entering but thats the method Ive always used.

Gandalf Parker
--
People complain that free things arent done on the net anymore.
Thats because so many have forgotten how to pay for free things.

Re: Wow, and the games grind to a halt.
 

Yes, as do I. But as you already say, there are no requests for hosting here, I only host Dom3 games for another gaming-related forum now.

That's the main point that makes them popular among lazy people, I think. I'm doing backups of all my turns automatically, but few other people seem to do that.

The only real difference is in the transport medium. If you communicate directly over the internet, you have instant gratification but can possibly run into firewall problems for radical setups; riding piggy-back on Email should overcome this by being a more indirect approach, but poses a couple of additional problems on its own, like spam filters for starters.

You can do the same with network games, and it's usually the advised way: Grab your turns online, work on it offline, upload again when you're done. But people have to be taught to do this every time, yes.

I don't want to shift this thread into a discussion of the merits of PBEM vs. networked games, though. I merely wanted to provide some historical anecdotes to the OP's post, how it came to this. I'm happy with the way that things are now, as it seems to have addressed the trade-off quite well, how much time an admin has to put into a game, and a user has to.

Re: Wow, and the games grind to a halt.
 

I'm hoping that the all-the-eggs-in-one-basket thing won't be an issue, since I am quite determined to continue hosting the LlamaServer for years to come. You don't need to worry about me just disappearing. Despite the occasional cockups I think it's pretty stable as well, and all the files are backed up.

I had assumed that PBEM would be inferior to network games, but PBEM seemed more practical to scale up (at least given my technical knowledge). I now actually prefer PBEM games, but I'd say it's pretty likely that that's a strong case of bias!

Re: Wow, and the games grind to a halt.
 

Yeah, I know how to play network games Gandalf. And I still like them. It just seems that the pbem game, with it's little bit of extra hassle, has come to be the preferred way to go.