Dommunion (a program to play a notification sound at every new turn)
 

Hi everyone!

I've only recently heard of this excellent game, and now I'm totally hooked http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Now, I had been playing some marathon games with a few of my friends, and the biggest gripe we had was the lack of a "new turn notification" sound.

Since there was no way of knowing if other players had played their turn, or if a new turn has begun without looking at the screen, I couldn't read a book or do something else while waiting for other players to finish their turns (actually I did anyway, but it was hard to concentrate while glancing at the monitor screen every minute or so).

So, this lead me to write up a simple program which would play a sound whenever:
A. a new turn has begun
B. a player has ended their turn

I remember reading on the forum that someone else was also working on a similar project, but didn't hear about it since.

My project, which I have named "Dommunion" (as a twist to the Astral spell Communion http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ), is turning out pretty nicely and I'd like to know if others would be interested in it. It's pretty bare at the moment, and I'm still ironing out some bugs, but it's basic functions are currently working.

If anyone's interested, I could host it myself or ask Arryn who's already running an excellent Dom2 resource site http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[ March 09, 2004, 07:51: Message edited by: Maximillian ]

Re: Dommunion (a program to play a notification sound at every new turn)
 

Sure i'm interested, its a very good idea!
I also have the same problems looking at the screen, so your program will be welcome http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Dommunion (a program to play a notification sound at every new turn)
 

I was messing with the idea abit. My brother-in-law has a habit of doing fast turns and then reading a book so we often end up having to call him or something to remind him that we are waiting for him to do a turn.

I was going to test and see if --postexec would work or if it was just at the host end. I also did some trial and error and was unhappy to discover that the programs for playing a sound arent even the same across different Versions of windows much less other OS's.

The best I could come up with would be a program that will watch for trn files to change in the games directory and play a sound. I started doing a search to see if one already existed but dropped it at that point.

Re: Dommunion (a program to play a notification sound at every new turn)
 

Oh, I forgot to mention that this program is written to run under Windows, and it basically runs under the same algorithm that Galdalf mentioned.

I've tested the program in a 4-hour network game with my friends Last night, and it seems to be working well enough without any glaringly major bugs. So, I think I'll release it tomorrow, after cleaning up some minor bugs that surfaced during the live testing.

Re: Dommunion (a program to play a notification sound at every new turn)
 

OK, I've been testing the program in live network sessions with my friends for a total of 10+ hours, and the program seems to be stable enough for an initial release.

I've hosted the file myself for the moment, but I'll be asking Arryn soon.

In the meantime, you can get it at:

Dommunion Master/Slave v0.3

Enjoy! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Dommunion (a program to play a notification sound at every new turn)
 

Cool, I'll make everyone uses it when I'm running a server.

I might try vocoding my voice for alternate sounds if anyone just happens to want it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ March 11, 2004, 05:40: Message edited by: Argitoth ]

Re: Dommunion (a program to play a notification sound at every new turn)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">hehe Argitoth, that's an idea I was playing with while creating the program, but in the end decided that the vast majority would prefer a generic sound to hearing my voice http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

[ March 11, 2004, 14:50: Message edited by: Maximillian ]

Re: Dommunion (a program to play a notification sound at every new turn)
 

Hmm i think i don't need such a program to notify me when the others made their moves. I need something that puts a message on the others computers, something like "Stop reading through all the items descriptions and make your move now you slow *** sob" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Dommunion (a program to play a notification sound at every new turn)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'll second that. Actually, a little lightbar indicating who has finished their turn in a live TCP Dom2 game would be pretty neat: Lets you keep track of whether you're doing your turns fairly quickly, or whether the game is being determined by how long it takes YOU to take your turn. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Dommunion (a program to play a notification sound at every new turn)
 

Oh btw, has anyone (cracked)/(successfully analyzed)/(have inside knowledge of) the .TRN or .2H file formats yet?

I have some interesting ideas and features to add to the Dommunion program, but I'll need access to the game data for that... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Gandalf? Anyone?