Mosehansen games ?

[Regen]

3 times now games that I have originally signed up for have been restarted cause various people have borked something, and when the game is restarted some dufus has taken the spot I was originally signed up for. Any thoughts on how to avoid this, or is it just inivitable?

[Thufir]

Regen said:
3 times now games that I have originally signed up for have been restarted cause various people have borked something, and when the game is restarted some dufus has taken the spot I was originally signed up for. Any thoughts on how to avoid this, or is it just inivitable?

I've hosted several games on mosehansen now, and I can say that there's no convenient way to avoid this, but that it is certainly not inevitable. One of the largest contributing factors is the fact that when you upload your pretender on top of an existing pretender, it does not successfully upload, but the UI gives you the impression that it has. This is a bug that IW needs to fix (I think I read in a post somewhere that this bug was introduced along the way, in one of the patches).

One thing that I think helps is if the game owner forces players to use the signup thread, rather than letting people claim spots via signing up on mosehansen. Another thing that is helpful is to not allow people to play anonymously. Since there is no forum or PM mechanism on mosehansen to allow communication, confusion is increased by letting players claim a spot simply by uploading.

To this end, Esben has indicated that if a game owner needs to kick someone off who has claimed a spot, but is not anonymous, he will do so manually if requested via PM.

[Cainehill]

Thufir said:
One of the largest contributing factors is the fact that when you upload your pretender on top of an existing pretender, it does not successfully upload, but the UI gives you the impression that it has. This is a bug that IW needs to fix (I think I read in a post somewhere that this bug was introduced along the way, in one of the patches).

Pretty sure that it's something Esben did, to counter the problem of people over-writing other people's pretenders. In a normal server game, the pretenders do get overwritten, but Esben saves the first pretender uploaded for a slot, and restores them when overwritten.

That's why the UI shows it as successful, but it doesn't actually work. It fixes the problem of thoughtless people taking a slot someone else already had, but doesn't allow for cases like restarts, or for when someone decides they uploaded a screwy pretender.

Ideally, the game owner could kick specific nations if need be, and a player could kick or overwrite his initial pretender, but that'd be a lot of work for Esben.

[Thufir]

Cainehill said:
Pretty sure that it's something Esben did, to counter the problem of people over-writing other people's pretenders. In a normal server game, the pretenders do get overwritten, but Esben saves the first pretender uploaded for a slot, and restores them when overwritten.

That's why the UI shows it as successful, but it doesn't actually work. It fixes the problem of thoughtless people taking a slot someone else already had, but doesn't allow for cases like restarts, or for when someone decides they uploaded a screwy pretender.

Ideally, the game owner could kick specific nations if need be, and a player could kick or overwrite his initial pretender, but that'd be a lot of work for Esben.

That does make more sense. I guess what I'll do next time I start a game is document the limitation clearly in the starting post and harass people a bit to make sure they did not attempt to upload over an existing pretender.

[Cainehill]

Regen said:
3 times now games that I have originally signed up for have been restarted cause various people have borked something, and when the game is restarted some dufus has taken the spot I was originally signed up for. Any thoughts on how to avoid this, or is it just inivitable?

That's one reason I despise doing restarts just because some people uploaded borked pretenders; the restarts kill time, and worse, something else always seems to happen. It isn't like people didn't have control over whether or not they uploaded the right pretender.

It's one thing in a game that's being email hosted, or blitzed; everyone is right there and the restart can go smoothly, but it seems that with the server restarts, it goes too long, and someone comes along and grabs a slot who shouldn't.

[Esben Mose Hansen]

• The fact that you cannot overwrite pretenders is my doing, on popular request from the days of Norfleet. See the server thread.
• To check the pretender, use that md5sum field. It is really easy to do, and 100% foolproof.
• I'll think about what can do done to help reduce this problem. Suggestions are welcome