RFC: public info on games?

[Gandalf Parker]

RFC is old old internet for "Request For Comment".
I need to know if publicly posting certain info is OK with you guys. I can do these things individually for a game but Id rather have a general agreement and change the game scripts to do it for all of the games. I know that everything has its pros and cons but anything that gets decided for these games doesnt mean that someone else might create a game and choose to do it differently.

A) First off, the info that you get when you connect which shows who has done a turn, who hasnt, and who is connected at that moment. The text output of the log looks like this..
Er+ Sa- Mi+ Ca+ Ag+ *Va- Ni+ Rl+ Oc+ La+
which says that Vanheim has not uploaded a turn but is connected at that moment.

B) Or I can change the blitz_chk link so that it shows the dates of the .2h files like this...
era 3 game bl_humeri on port 8691
.. started .. bl_humeri turn 18
Dec 22 12:23 late_ctis.2h
Jan 8 05:30 late_rlyeh.2h
Dec 20 09:38 late_tienchi.2h

C) How about the stats.txt which a game creates? It looks like this..
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomMaps/stats.txt
I could also keep track of previous ones by renumbering them as stats-1, stats-2, etc

D) What about the scores.html that the game creates. It looks like this..
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomMaps/scores.html
I could also keep track of previoius ones for comparison by renumbering them -1, -2, -3, -4, -5

E) Also, would you rather have the maps posted when the game is created? Or would you rather that blitzs did not allow people to decide their nation and scales based on things like how well the map would support or not support things like water nations? If I did it would be a link on the blitz_chk that goes to an image like this..
http://game.dom3minions.com/thmb_overgoad.jpg

There are also:
F) a load log that keeps track of the processing load and the time it takes to host but thats mostly for my own info.

G) and the game.log and game.err file but that provides too much game info. Its very interesting but it could be abused to see where everyone is and what they are doing. At some later date I might decide to grab out specific info and make it available

Gandalf Parker

[Gandalf Parker]

Personally Im leaning toward
A) no, more work than B and not needed if B is done
B) yes, it will help people figure out if a game has died or someone needs turned to computer player because they havent uploaded a turn in a week
C) neutral, I can go either way
D) yes, it seems good for blitzes altho it might be more game info than some people want visible
E) no, I prefer surprises but I can see how tacticians might want the info before selecting the god
F) no, not that useful with blitzes on a server
G) no, too much info about the game for players to have

Gandalf Parker

OK, I'll bite:

A) NO Nice to have, but not needed if you got B
B) YES Otherwise, if the game lags players will start dropping.
C) NO Isn't this the same info as A & B?
D) NEUTRAL This is basically the score graphs in numbers
E) YES I like having the most info. in order to decide. This one cuts both ways however, particularly regarding water nations: with no info. you can get stuck with just a lake or a couple seas & you are screwed unless your pretender can teleport to another bunch of seas, but knowledge of a map with many coastal posible locations for capitols gives on the other hand a hefty advantage to the aquatic powers.
F) NO Not needed, do not bury the players with too much info. which might scare away the new blood.
G) YES But only when the game is over.

[Gandalf Parker]

Good point. I can provide the final logs on closed games which might interest people to see how the game "thinks". Especially since its hard to explain how to get a log file in a simple way.

[Cainehill]

Regarding E : A big consideration is that I don't think you want all players to have to d/l the map just as a blitz-style game is about to start. Might not matter as much on 24/48 hour QH games, but even there people with a dialup connection might have problems.

[Gandalf Parker]

Hmmm actually I was just going to make the map image available for view (as a JPG) but I guess I could zip the map and copy it to the web download directory. That would make another level of cleanup though unless the other votes go in a direction that makes it worthwhile for each game to have a web subdir for all of its viewable files.

Side Coment:
So many views and so few comments. I hope people wont be too ticked off if I start adding these to the games. After all, I am asking ahead of time here.

[Gandalf Parker]

Up to 80 views and only two commenters?
Nobody is going to complain if some of these get put into place?

[Agrajag]

Not that I play any games of yours, but since you want some comments

A) yes, its useful to get that information without connecting to the server.
B) no, I like A better since it is less confusing :X
C) yes, also nice (though seems to me like a superior substitute for A)
D) yes, cool for games with graphs turned on.
E) yes, if you can look at the map before joining you can avoid games of a style you won't like.
F) no, not really interesting. You could occasionally publish it for the sake of a few people's common knowledge, but sounds like work for no reason to me.
G) no, yikes!

However, after reading G I'm wondering, can one of these files show stuff like dominion/scales in every province? (and how/where?)
I was thinking of perhaps making some app that will alter a map every turn according to stuff like dominion and scales and perhaps other things, but was unable to find an easy way to reach the information needed for that. (I tried the -d switch and wandering around the log searching for relevant information but was unable to do so :X)