[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Richard:
This is also somethign we may help out with if you guys can give us the details.

help out with a Web page? Or a server?

Hmmm I had envisioned a page that would show thumbnail maps of the games they want to start, clicking the map would show a larger Version and a list of nations. That second page would update showing the nations that have been taken and allowing a browser to take a nation that is still open. This would be a good starting point and would be useful if we stopped there.

Added posibilities would be a script to create the game. Thinking like a SysAdmin Id say easiest would be just to script adduser to create a seperate account for each game. That could give it an email address, an ftp directory, a web page for that game, /etc /etc.

A cron job or a procmail script could manage the mailboxes so that incoming turns are retrieved from the email and moved to the turn directory. The nice thing abot this is it would give an archive of received turns so the game COULD be rolled back if someone REALLY needed to. This was something that came up in some Dom 1 games.

A cron job could watch for all the turns being turned in then run the dom hosting by command-switches. The turn files could be emailed out. Maybe made downloadable with a web-page link if people passworded themselves when coming into the game. Upload FTP directory could be managed with each player being given an upload password.

A cron job could check for turn files and update each games webpage. Also provice a "countdown" display for when the game will process even if someone hasnt turned their file in.

So.............. just as an example....
Lets say that www.dom2.net has a web page listing 30 games showing 30 little thumbnail maps. Some large, some small, some on equalized chess-board style maps, some on maps randomly generated. One of these is a high magic setting game to be called Academia. The www.dom2.net page handles getting all of the necessary players signed up.

The scripts would create a user on www.dom2.net named academia. The webpage for the game would be www.dom2.net/academia, the email address to send your turns to would be academia@dom2.net

Hmmm thats all I can think of off the top of my head. So far none of this is anything that couldnt run on a computer in someones closet because it wont run the newer games. You could run a hundred games off one machine this way.

[ November 01, 2003, 19:44: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]