Any plans for an "official" hosting server?

[Will]

It wouldn't be so terrible to have turns processed serially to avoid the file collision problem. The PBW server for SEIV processes games like this, and a quick count shows 90+ games running currently. I'm not sure how DomII and DomIII multiplayer games would work, but as long as it isn't running as a pseudo-TCP/IP game (everyone online and playing at the same time, only sending turns via email instead of TCP/IP) all the time, serial processing shouldn't be a problem. Just set an upper limit on processing time, and require an admin to authorize over-runs for games where it takes longer than that.

If DomIII could be tweaked to prevent temp file collisions (directory for each savegame perhaps, store temp files there?), then you could have a very large number of games running on a modest box, the only thing to work out is the queuing to throttle simultaneous processing of turns, so each instance isn't starved out of processor and memory resources.

That's how I see it anyway. I could be missing something obvious about Dominions multiplayer, having only played the demo for Dom2. I soon plan to be educated with a full copy of Dom3 though

[Arralen]

Will said:
If DomIII could be tweaked to prevent temp file collisions (directory for each savegame perhaps, store temp files there?), then you could have a very large number of games running on a modest box, the only thing to work out is the queuing to throttle simultaneous processing of turns, so each instance isn't starved out of processor and memory resources.

On windows Dom uses %tmp%\domWXYZ\ where WXYZ is a random number. Therefore it already uses temp directories with random folder names which are supposed to be unique - but somehow it doesn't work out that way sometimes for unknown reason.

Don't know where dom puts its files under linux -better ask Gandalf about that- but I guess it will be very similar.

[Graeme Dice]

Will said:
If DomIII could be tweaked to prevent temp file collisions (directory for each savegame perhaps, store temp files there?), then you could have a very large number of games running on a modest box, the only thing to work out is the queuing to throttle simultaneous processing of turns, so each instance isn't starved out of processor and memory resources.

Temporary file collisions were just a bug in Dom2 that happened because the server didn't always pick a different temporary directory than other instances of the server. So I don't really expect it to be a problem in Dom3.